35 Years of the ADA, and Hotels Still Can’t Get It Right // Toby Geeks Out!

Published on Substack on 1/26/2026

The Americans with Disabilities Act will turn 36 later this year. In the last thirty-five years, there has been a requirement for accessible hotel accommodations. And yet, NPR just published an investigation showing that wheelchair users are still dealing with the same frustrating barriers that shouldn’t exist after three decades of the law being on the books.

NPR talked to 50 wheelchair users and surveyed over 200 more. The stories were depressingly familiar. You call ahead, you book an accessible room online, you show up… and there’s no reservation. Or the room’s been given away. Or—my personal favorite—the room exists, but it’s not actually accessible.

Eileen Schoch uses a wheelchair after having two strokes. She told NPR she couldn’t use the hotel toilet without help from her family because the grab bars were in the wrong place. The shower door was too narrow for her wheelchair. She went three days with only sponge baths. “You feel that you’re treated as a second-class citizen,” she said.

Travel blogger Cory Lee has a simple solution: hotels should just post photos and videos of their accessible rooms online. Show people what they’re actually getting. “The first chain that actually does that and publishes those videos is really going to get all the business from disabled travelers,” he says. It’s such an obvious fix. And yet.

Here’s the thing, though, hotels aren’t the outlier. They’re the pattern.

Healthcare Is Where It Gets Dangerous

I’m deaf, so my accessibility battles look different than what wheelchair users face. But trust me, the problems are just as persistent. And in healthcare, they’re not just frustrating—they can be deadly.

Medical offices are supposed to provide qualified ASL interpreters. It’s required by law. Has been for 35 years. But in practice? Doctors expect you to lip-read (which doesn’t really work—and good luck if they have a mustache or turn away while talking). Or they want you to write notes back and forth. Or they ask if a family member can interpret. None of these is adequate. None of these is legal. And all of them have been happening for decades.

A 2024 study found that 65% of deaf and hard-of-hearing patients had trouble communicating with healthcare workers in emergency rooms. That’s not a minor inconvenience—that’s a crisis.

And sometimes the consequences are devastating. In Minnesota, two deaf parents were in a hospital with their son. He was dying right in front of them, and they had no idea because the hospital wouldn’t provide interpreters. They finally got access to communication—and moments later, their son died in a nurse’s arms. They sued. They lost. (Watch their story)

The worst part? Doctors know this. A study found that although 63% of physicians knew that signing should be the initial method of communicating with deaf patients, only 22% actually used sign language interpreters more frequently than other methods in their practices. They admit communication is better with interpreters. But they often don’t use them. Physicians cite the unreimbursed cost of interpreter services as a barrier—especially for smaller practices—even though the ADA explicitly requires medical offices to provide interpreters.

Nobody’s Enforcing Any of This

Want to know why this keeps happening? Because there are basically no consequences.

In June 2025, the National Association of the Deaf had to sue the White House—again—for not providing ASL interpreters at press briefings. They’d already won this lawsuit once under the previous administration. A new administration comes in; interpreters disappear. So here we are, 35 years after the ADA passed, and deaf people are back in court just trying to access information from their own government.

Or look at websites. Nearly 8,800 ADA lawsuits were filed in 2024 over inaccessible websites. And here’s my favorite detail: 22.6% of those lawsuits were against websites that had installed those “accessibility widget” overlays—you know, the ones that promise instant compliance? The FTC fined one of the major widget companies $1 million for false advertising. Turns out the widgets don’t work. They never did. But companies bought them anyway because it was cheaper than actually fixing their websites.

The Department of Justice got 23,000 complaints about disability discrimination in 2024. The highest number ever. But here’s the problem: unless someone actually takes a business to court, nothing happens. There’s no proactive enforcement. There are rarely consequences.

So hotels give away accessible rooms. Doctors don’t provide interpreters. Websites stay broken. Government agencies remove accommodations, and nobody stops them. Technically, all of this is illegal. But without enforcement, the ADA is more like a strongly worded suggestion.

So What Actually Fixes This?

The ADA was huge when it passed in 1990. It established that disabled people have the same legal right to access services and spaces as everyone else. But clearly, the law by itself isn’t enough.

We need actual enforcement. The DOJ needs the resources and staff to investigate complaints and pursue businesses that violate the law. And the penalties need to hurt—not just be something companies can write off as a cost of doing business. Repeat offenders should face escalating fines.

We need standards that keep up with reality. The digital accessibility rules for government websites are a start, but private businesses need clear requirements too. And those standards need to evolve as technology changes.

We need to build accessibility from the start. Not’t bolt it on as an afterthought. That means training architects, web developers, healthcare workers, hotel staff—everyone whose job affects whether disabled people can actually participate in society.

And honestly? When government agencies ignore the ADA—pulling interpreters from press briefings and failing to provide accessible voting—it tells everyone else that compliance is optional. It’s not.

That NPR investigation about hotels isn’t really about hotels. It’s about the gap between what the law promises and what disabled people actually experience every single day. Thirty-five years in, we should be past this. Hotels should be able to keep accessible rooms available for the people who need them. Doctors should provide interpreters. Websites should work for everyone. The government should lead by example.

Laws on paper mean nothing if institutions can ignore them without consequences. It’s been 35 years. It’s time to actually enforce the ADA.

35 Years of the ADA, and Hotels Still Can’t Get It Right

Healthcare Is Where It Gets Dangerous

Nobody’s Enforcing Any of This

So What Actually Fixes This?

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