Blog

Nina Leach is a student worker with the Northeast ADA Center who offered to share her perspective as a student and a person with a disability.

Growing up, I did not realize what allowed me to succeed had a name. To me, it was simply my mother rearranging labels around our house, driving me to countless appointments, and refusing to let anyone tell me what I could not become. Now, I understand that what she created for me was accessibility.

When I was young, I experienced developmental delays and was nonverbal until I was six years old. I also have ADHD, and for many years communication was one of my biggest obstacles. Something as simple as naming the objects around me required lots of practice and encouragement.

My mother would place labels around our house identifying objects. Every few days she would remove them and ask me what each object was called. Sometimes I knew the answer; other times I stared at the object, searching for the right word. She never made me feel ashamed when I struggled. She smiled and celebrated every small victory. Those moments may have seemed small, but they were opening doors that I could not yet see.

Accessibility is often imagined as ramps or assistive technology. Those resources are incredibly important, but accessibility is also people creating opportunities that allow everyone to participate fully in the world. For me, my accessibility was free speech therapy, teachers who believed in my abilities, and a mother who never let me accept someone else’s limitations as my future.

Because of those supports, I eventually left special education classrooms and entered more academically challenging environments. There were many moments when I questioned whether I belonged. At age fourteen, I entered college through an early entrance program. Sitting beside students several years older than me, I often wondered if everyone else could see the gaps I felt inside myself.

Writing was especially difficult. I spent hours trying to imitate other people’s voices because I thought that sounding intelligent mattered more than expressing my own ideas. Eventually, I realized that my perspective was what belonged on the page.

That lesson applies to more than just writing: accessibility, to me, is not lowering expectations; it is removing barriers so people have the opportunity to meet those expectations.

Today, I attend Cornell University, where I study biology and hope to become a physician. When people hear that, they rarely imagine the little girl who struggled to say the word “couch.” They do not see the years of therapy, advocacy, and community support that made this journey possible. My success has never been an individual achievement. It belongs to every teacher who stayed after school to help me, every health care provider who treated me with dignity, every family member who refused to let me settle for less than my potential, and every person who believes that disability should never determine someone’s future.

Because of them, I hope to practice medicine and become a physician who takes health care accessibility beyond the exam room, so financial barriers, transportation challenges, communication differences, cultural backgrounds, and countless other factors do not determine whether someone can receive care.

Now, through my work with the Northeast ADA Center, I am continuing to learn that accessibility means something different for every person. My own experiences taught me how life-changing support can be, but this work is helping me understand disability beyond my own story. I am learning more about the barriers people face in health care, employment, education, and everyday community life. The support I received helped me imagine a future for myself, and now I want to help build a world where more people have that same opportunity.