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AMA
Weru Lawrence. Assert One's (Rights). The ENABLE Model website. Published 2025. Accessed 2026-05-16. https://enablemodel.com/docs/navigator-side/assert-rights

APA
Weru, L. (2025). Assert One's (Rights). The ENABLE Model. https://enablemodel.com/docs/navigator-side/assert-rights

MLA
Weru, Lawrence. "Assert One's (Rights)." The ENABLE Model, 2025, https://enablemodel.com/docs/navigator-side/assert-rights.

Chicago
Weru, Lawrence. "Assert One's (Rights)." The ENABLE Model. 2025. https://enablemodel.com/docs/navigator-side/assert-rights.

BibTeX

@misc{enable2025assert-rights,
              author = {Weru, Lawrence},
              title = {Assert One's (Rights)},
              year = {2025},
              url = {https://enablemodel.com/docs/navigator-side/assert-rights},
              note = {The ENABLE Model}
            }

Assert One's Rights

Asserting your rights means taking formal action to demand accessibility -- through legal complaints, policy escalation, or public accountability. It's a last-resort compensation when every other avenue has failed. It requires knowledge of the law, courage to speak up, and often, personal resources that many don't have.

Role in the ENABLE Model​

This is where the burden falls when care fails repeatedly across every builder-side stage. The onus shifts to the individual to fight institutional neglect -- often alone. It reveals just how late the system is to recognize the harm already done.

Why it happens​

When barriers persist despite feedback, workarounds, or assistive tools, people may have no choice but to escalate. They're forced into roles as advocates, plaintiffs, and whistleblowers when neglect leaves them with no other path to access.

Grounding​

Asserting rights is not metaphorical in this model. ADA.gov explicitly frames filing a complaint as one of the core tools the ADA provides to fight discrimination.1 The U.S. Department of Education and HHS Office for Civil Rights both maintain formal disability-discrimination complaint processes for education and health-related services.23

Recent enforcement shows what happens when users escalate. In September 2025 the Justice Department sued Uber over repeated discrimination against passengers with service animals and mobility devices, and in October 2024 the Department of Transportation issued a $50 million penalty against American Airlines for its treatment of passengers with disabilities.45

This category names the user labor required to reach that stage: documentation, escalation, persistence, and the willingness to invoke legal rights after ordinary access has already failed.

Judith Heumann and Kristen Joiner's memoir Being Heumann follows denial of school access, a lawsuit over Heumann's teaching license, and the 504 sit-in, making rights-assertion part of disabled life rather than a last-minute abstraction.6

David Koenig reported that repeated passenger complaints, wheelchair damage, and injuries built the enforcement record behind the American Airlines penalty.7

Examples​

In the news

Justice Department Sues Uber for Denying Rides to Passengers with Service Dogs, Wheelchairs (September 2025)
-- U.S. Department of Justice

  • The DOJ filed a lawsuit seeking $125 million from Uber for systematic discrimination against passengers with disabilities. The complaint alleges Uber drivers routinely refuse service to guide dog users and wheelchair users, and that Uber charged improper "cleaning fees" for service animal shedding. This action follows over a decade of complaints and a 2017 settlement that failed to stop the discrimination -- demonstrating that when users assert their rights, enforcement may take years.

DOT Issues $50 Million Penalty Against American Airlines (October 23, 2024)
-- U.S. Department of Transportation

  • The DOT fined American Airlines $50 million -- 25 times larger than previous disability-related airline fines -- for mishandling thousands of wheelchairs and providing unsafe, undignified treatment to wheelchair users between 2019-2023. This landmark penalty came after users asserted their rights through complaints to DOT, demonstrating that legal protections can produce meaningful accountability when enforcement agencies act.

Bashin v. California: $2 Million Qui Tam Settlement for Web Accessibility Violations (2024)
-- Accessibility.Works

  • Bryan Bashin, a California resident with vision loss, used the qui tam whistleblower provision of the California False Claims Act to win a landmark $2 million settlement after ReserveCalifornia.com failed to meet its contractual WCAG requirements. This innovative legal approach -- asserting rights through fraud statutes rather than ADA alone -- created new accountability pathways for web accessibility.
  • The National Federation of the Blind files complaint against Uber for its inaction around discrimination. (2014)
  • Filing an ADA complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice.
  • Suing a rideshare company for failing to accommodate wheelchair users.
  • Bringing inaccessible websites to the attention of OCR (Office for Civil Rights).
  • Joining a class-action lawsuit against an employer's inaccessible hiring platform.
  • Repeatedly contacting a university's disability office over inaccessible course materials.

Compensation sounds like​

“I filed a complaint with the DOJ. I didn't want to, but they weren't listening.”
“They finally made the PDF accessible -- after I got a lawyer involved.”
“I showed them the WCAG violations and gave them 30 days to fix it.”

Burden sounds like​

“I spent hours documenting every failure on their site, just to be taken seriously.”
“I'm not a lawyer. Why should I have to become one just to access my bank?”
“I had to relive everything in front of a hearing board. I just wanted to use the service.”

Real-world Scenario​

After being locked out of his student portal due to inaccessible CAPTCHA challenges, Jordan, a blind graduate student, reported the issue multiple times. When nothing changed, he filed an OCR complaint with the Department of Education. The university only took action after the investigation began -- updating their login system months later. But in the meantime, Jordan missed critical deadlines and felt isolated from the rest of campus life.

Footnotes​

  1. ADA.gov: File a Complaint ↩

  2. U.S. Department of Education: File A Complaint ↩

  3. HHS.gov: Filing a Civil Rights Complaint ↩

  4. U.S. Department of Justice: Justice Department Sues Uber for Denying Rides to Passengers with Service Dogs, Wheelchairs ↩

  5. U.S. Department of Transportation: DOT Issues Landmark $50 Million Penalty Against American Airlines for its Treatment of Passengers Using Wheelchairs ↩

  6. Judith Heumann and Kristen Joiner, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist (Beacon Press, 2020) ↩

  7. David Koenig, Associated Press, US fines American Airlines $50 million over mishandling of disabled passengers and wheelchairs ↩


Manifestations

The following manifestations are associated with this ENABLE Model location:


Edited by Lawrence Weru S.M. (Harvard)

Disclaimer

The ENABLE Model draws on the principles of anthropology and the practice of journalism to create a public ethnography of accessibility, documenting how people intervene or compensate for accessibility breakdowns in the real world. Inclusion here does not imply endorsement. It chronicles observed use -- how a tool, organization, or strategy is actually used -- rather than how it is marketed. References, when provided, are for verification and transparency.


📚 Cite this page

AMA
Weru Lawrence. Assert One's (Rights). The ENABLE Model website. Published 2025. Accessed 2026-05-16. https://enablemodel.com/docs/navigator-side/assert-rights

APA
Weru, L. (2025). Assert One's (Rights). The ENABLE Model. https://enablemodel.com/docs/navigator-side/assert-rights

MLA
Weru, Lawrence. "Assert One's (Rights)." The ENABLE Model, 2025, https://enablemodel.com/docs/navigator-side/assert-rights.

Chicago
Weru, Lawrence. "Assert One's (Rights)." The ENABLE Model. 2025. https://enablemodel.com/docs/navigator-side/assert-rights.

BibTeX

@misc{enable2025assert-rights,
              author = {Weru, Lawrence},
              title = {Assert One's (Rights)},
              year = {2025},
              url = {https://enablemodel.com/docs/navigator-side/assert-rights},
              note = {The ENABLE Model}
            }