Most accommodations start with a narrow purpose.
- Extra time on an exam lets a student with a processing disability show what they know.
- A parking placard puts a person with limited walking tolerance near the entrance.
- A camera built into a pair of glasses lets a blind person hear what is printed on a menu.
Each of these also turns out to be useful to people without a disability. Unfortunately, people often misuse these accommodations. The response to that misuse rarely affects the people misusing the benefit. The sequence runs the same way every time:
- An accommodation is created to remove a barrier for a specific group of disabled people.
- Non-disabled people discover the removal of the disability barrier also provides non-disabled people some advantage, and some obtain or use it fraudulently.
- Social media and news coverage build a story that everyone who uses the accommodation, including people with disabilities, is suspect.
- Institutions narrow eligibility, add documentation, or remove access to the accommodation altogether.
- Disabled users are negatively impacted by the restriction on the accommodation, while most people who misused it move on.
Here are five items intended to benefit people with disabilities that have gone through this exact cycle.
Extra Time on Tests
The ADA regulation for testing entities states that required modifications may include changes in the length of time permitted for completion (28 CFR 36.309(b)(2)). In March 2019, federal prosecutors in Boston announced charges in the college admissions case known as Operation Varsity Blues. According to the Department of Justice, William “Rick” Singer told clients to seek extended time for their children on the SAT and ACT, which included having the children claim learning disabilities to obtain the required medical documentation. Approval moved the student to a separate room on a separate date at a test center where Singer had bribed the administrator.
A small number of wealthy families ran that scheme. When the news broke, it made every person who ever requested this accommodation suspect. Standardized testing services have a decades-long history of discriminating against disabled students. The Law School Admission Council used to flag LSAT score reports for test takers who received extended time, which told every law school that the applicant had a disability. This cost them almost 10 million dollars in 2014. Tightening documentation after a fraud case raises the price for truly disabled requestors: getting current medical documentation often takes months and costs thousands of dollars. Students who cannot pay are forced to go without the accommodation.
Accessible Parking
California’s DMV issued 2,485 misdemeanor citations for placard misuse in fiscal year 2017 to 2018 during 256 enforcement operations, with fines from $250 to $1,000. SFGATE reported in January 2026 that Bay Area citations had fallen to a decade low after the DMV combined sting operations with a redesigned renewal process. Investigators check the placard against the vehicle registration and the driver’s identification, so the citation reaches the individual who misused it and doesn’t affect any other placard holder.
Enforcement by strangers works differently. Placard eligibility isn’t limited to wheelchair users; California covers people with a diagnosed disease that substantially impairs or interferes with mobility, which includes many heart, lung, neurological, and chronic pain conditions. To someone who has read about placard fraud, a driver who walks from the car without visible difficulty looks like a cheater. Drivers with nonapparent disabilities routinely describe notes left on windshields, confrontations, and photos posted online. They hold placards issued on a physician’s certification, and a parking lot gives them no way to demonstrate that.
Service Animals on Airplanes
Many people picture a guide dog as a blind person with a German Shepherd in a rigid harness, and treat every other working dog as a pet in a vest. The ADA regulations define a service animal as a dog individually trained to do work or perform tasks for a person with a disability (28 CFR 36.104), and the work covers much more than guiding:
- Providing physical support and help with balance and stability for a handler with a mobility disability, and pulling a wheelchair.
- Retrieving items such as medication, a phone, or something dropped out of reach.
- Alerting a deaf or hard of hearing handler to sounds, including an alarm, a doorbell, or someone calling their name.
- Alerting before a seizure and assisting the handler during one.
- Alerting to a cardiac event, such as a change in heart rate or a drop in blood pressure.
- Alerting a handler with diabetes to blood sugar that is rising or falling.
- Interrupting behavior tied to a psychiatric or neurological disability, including waking a handler from a nightmare or applying pressure during a panic attack.
The regulatory list provides examples, not limits. Cardiac alert and diabetic alert dogs arrived after the 2010 rule and qualify on the same basis, because the dog performs a trained task tied to the handler’s disability. Handlers of these dogs face more scrutiny than guide dog handlers because the disability is often not visible and the task is not what bystanders expect. Staff at a covered business may ask only two questions: whether the dog is required because of a disability, and what work or task it has been trained to perform (ADA.gov). They cannot ask for documentation, demand a demonstration, or ask what the disability is. Purchased emotional support letters made people more willing to ask anyway.
Before 2021, airline rules allowed emotional support animals in the cabin with a letter from a mental health professional, and online services sold those letters cheaply. The Department of Transportation’s final rule, effective January 11, 2021, listed its reasons: disruptions from requests to transport unusual species, which DOT said had “eroded the public trust in legitimate service animals,” travelers fraudulently representing pets as service animals, and misbehavior by emotional support animals. The rule now in 14 CFR Part 382, Subpart EE defines a service animal as a trained dog and lets airlines treat emotional support animals as pets. Psychiatric service dog handlers gained parity in the process. The rule also lets airlines require attestation forms about training, behavior, health, and relief, sometimes two days before travel. Those forms fall on the handlers of trained dogs described above, because of untrained passengers.
Theme Park Queue Access
Disney’s Disability Access Service gives eligible guests a return time equal to the standby wait. According to FindLaw, DAS approvals had tripled since 2019, and Disney attributed part of that growth to misuse. In 2024, Disney narrowed eligibility to guests who cannot wait in a conventional queue because of a developmental disability such as autism, and added a video call tothe approval process. A lawsuit filed in February 2025 seeks class status on behalf of guests with physical disabilities who say the criteria screen them out. The barrier DAS addresses is an inability to wait in a long line, and many conditions produce that inability. Disney redrew eligibility around a diagnosis category, which a reviewer can apply in a short video call without assessing how long a particular guest can stand in a 60-minute queue.
Smart Glasses
Meta’s glasses describe surroundings, read text aloud, and connect a blind user to a sighted volunteer through Be My Eyes (Meta). Vision Australia has noted that specialist assistive eyewear can cost around $5,000, while consumer smart glasses do many of the same things for a fraction of that (Man of Many). The camera that reads a menu aloud can also record the people at the next table. The frames look like ordinary eyewear, and the recording indicator is a small light that bystanders often miss. In July 2026, Meta updated the glasses so the camera shuts off if that light has been tampered with or destroyed.
Bans followed. Pubs, theaters, and private clubs in the United Kingdom prohibited the glasses, including J.D. Wetherspoon and Soho House (Stuff). A New York City nightclub bars anyone carrying them, even in a bag (Digital Trends). New York’s Unified Court System, the first state court system to do this, banned them in every facility as of July 20, 2026. The memorandum covers any eyewear containing a camera, microphone, computer, or other recording technology, prescription or not; applies to everyone entering a court building; and requires people to surrender the glasses to court officers. The signage tells people with prescription smart glasses to bring a regular pair.
That instruction assumes the glasses correct vision. For a blind person who uses them to read a posted docket, find the right courtroom, or identify a document a clerk hands over, no regular pair does that job. Courts have a real interest in preventing recording of proceedings, and courts are also Title II entities. Under 28 CFR 35.130(b)(7), a public entity must make reasonable modifications to its policies when necessary to avoid discrimination, unless doing so would fundamentally alter the service, and under 35.130(h), safety requirements must rest on actual risks rather than speculation or stereotypes. A court could allow the glasses outside courtrooms with the camera covered, assign a staff escort, or provide a reader under 28 CFR 35.160. Private venues have a parallel obligation under 28 CFR 36.302. The New York memorandum names no decision maker, no request procedure, and no standard for granting an exception. Tech Policy Press adds a point worth keeping in view: blind bystanders cannot perceive the recording light either, so blind people have an interest in limits on covert recording and an interest in continued access to the glasses.
The Fights Already in Progress
Every example here asks a disabled person to do something extra: document a disability again, sit for an eligibility interview, explain a placard to a stranger demanding personal health information, or hand over a device at a security desk. Those requests arrive while disabled people in the United States are already spending a great deal of time defending rights they had reason to consider settled.
- In Texas v. Kennedy, formerly Texas v. Becerra, five states asked a federal court to strike the community integration provisions of the 2024 Section 504 regulations. On June 18, 2026, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion stating that neither Section 504 nor Title II of the ADA contains an integration mandate. DOJ rescinded its Olmstead guidance on July 20, 2026, and on August 31, 2026, DOJ and the remaining states jointly asked the court to enter final judgment removing every reference to community integration from the rules (DREDF).
- Medicaid community engagement requirements must be in place by January 1, 2027. The CMS interim final rule published June 3, 2026, requires affected adults to document 80 hours per month of qualifying activity and ties the medically frail exemption to a showing that the condition limits the person’s ability to meet those hours. Disability organizations expect people who do qualify for exemptions to lose coverage through paperwork failures rather than ineligibility.
Those fights are full-time work for national organizations and personal work for individuals, on top of the ordinary load of requesting accommodations, appealing denials, arranging transportation, and correcting insurers. A note on a windshield, a video screening that asks a wheelchair user to justify why she cannot stand in a line, and a court officer taking a blind litigant’s glasses are small events next to a federal rulemaking. They reach the same people in the same week, and each one delivers the message that the person’s own account of their disability is doubted. The combined effect is overwhelming, which is why social gatekeeping belongs in the same conversation as the federal fights rather than in a footnote.
Why the Cost Lands on Disabled People
- Someone caught misusing an accommodation faces at most a one-time cost. A disabled person faces the restriction every time they need the accommodation and can’t easily obtain it.
- Restrictions are easier to write around categories, such as a device, a diagnosis, or a placard, than around the behavior that caused the harm.
- Documentation requirements cost money and time, and those costs fall hardest on disabled people with lower incomes.
- Suspicion attaches to everyone who uses the accommodation, and people with nonapparent disabilities absorb most of it.
- Institutions track the drop in misuse after a policy change and rarely track how many disabled people stopped asking.
Backlash is strongest where the accommodation involves a limited resource or affects other people. Captions and curb cuts get used by non-disabled people constantly and draw no resentment, because that use takes nothing from anyone. Parking spaces, queue position, cabin space, and time relative to other test takers are limited or perceived that way, and camera glasses affect the privacy of everyone nearby. Those two questions predict which accommodations are most exposed to this cycle.
What Organizations Should Do Instead
Target the conduct
A courtroom rule prohibiting recording covers the conduct that threatens witnesses and survivors, and it applies equally to a phone, a pen camera, and a pair of glasses. A rule written around a category of eyewear reaches people who had no intention of recording and misses devices that do not look like glasses.
Build an exception process into every restriction
State how a disabled person requests a modification, who decides, and how quickly. Publish it wherever the restriction is published.
Define eligibility by functional need
Ask whether the person can wait in a standard line, walk a long distance, or read printed material, rather than which diagnosis they carry. Functional criteria are harder to game and less likely to exclude people with legitimate needs.
Keep documentation proportionate and unmarked
Accept evidence of prior accommodations, give weight to professionals who know the person, and avoid demands for recent testing when a disability is stable. Do not flag, label, or otherwise announce who received an accommodation.
Enforce against misuse directly
California’s placard operations reduced misuse without adding barriers for legitimate holders. Identifying and penalizing the individual is more effective than restricting access for everyone.
Consult disabled users, then measure the effect
Blind users of smart glasses, service dog handlers, and students who receive extended time can usually identify the least restrictive way to address misuse. After a change takes effect, track requests, denials, and complaints, and revisit the policy if legitimate requests fall sharply.
Closing
Misuse of accommodations is real and deserves a response. However, the response should target the misuse and not the people with disabilities who need this legitimate accommodation. The people writing that response need to check, before it takes effect, who will carry the restriction day to day. In each example here, that burden fell on disabled people who had not misused anything, and the result was foreseeable.