Stephanie Armour at KFF Health News:
For years, White House press conferences included sign language interpreters for the deaf.
No longer. Interpreters have been noticeably absent from Trump administration press briefings, advocacy groups say. Gone, too, are the American Sign Language interpretations that used to appear on the White House’s YouTube channel. A White House webpage on accessibility, whitehouse.gov/accessibility, has also ceased working.
From halting diversity programs that benefit people with disabilities to staffing cuts at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Trump administration has taken a slew of actions that harm those with impairments or chronic health conditions. Decades of hard-fought gains risk being undone by cuts to federal programs, freezes on research funding, and a White House ban on practices that support diversity.
Advocacy groups are pushing back, setting the stage for years of lawsuits and pitched health policy battles. Some leaders at organizations that serve disabled people are loath to publicly criticize the White House actions because of concerns their groups could become targeted by the administration, especially if they rely on federal funding or grants.
“The silencing of opposition is quite chilling,” said Michael Rembis, director of the Center for Disability Studies at State University of New York-Buffalo. “The denial of disabled people’s humanity and their voice, as well as the actions against disabled people in terms of the removal or evisceration of core infrastructure, are directly related to the ableist language being used by the administration. It is all part of a larger fear and loathing of people who are unlike themselves.”
