Despite COVID-19, disabled reporters say disability is still inconsistently prioritized in news

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many access needs — like remote and hybrid work, which disabled people had been long asking for — became the norm across journalism and other industries. 

Cara Reedy, executive director of the Disabled Journalists Association, told The Objective that the number of people working from home in 2020 made “the things that disabled people have been asking for became norms, because non-disabled people needed them.” 

“Which is great for disabled people, but it should have always kind of been that way,” she said.

When SARS-CoV-2 struck, launching a pandemic that affects the lives of millions to this day, conversations about disability and accessibility entered newsrooms and their coverage. Some changes expanded who could become a journalist and where they could work — by 2021, hybrid work was expected to be the norm for many journalists, with Nieman Lab reporting 34% of news organizations had adopted a remote or hybrid working model. Others, like style guide updates, put more focus on how disability was covered.  

But six years later, newsrooms have sought to return to pre-pandemic policies. The second Trump administration is taking aim at independent living policies securing disabled people’s autonomy, which disability scholars and advocates have contextualized as an echo of eugenics, making accurate reporting on disability more necessary than ever. So The Objective spoke with several disabled journalists who reflected on how the advent of COVID-19 has changed reporting norms on disability and broader newsroom culture. 

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Related: Q&A: Guide for Reporting on Disabled Communities

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Journalism became temporarily more accessible — in some ways

Julia Métraux, disability reporter for Mother Jones, told The Objective that accessibility has been improving in newsrooms in some ways, such as the addition of alternative text which she took on when she was an intern at Dame Magazine and now at Mother Jones.

“It’s hard to say how much of this accessibility stuff is coming from the top down,” she said. “In my instance, for example, pushing for alt text … definitely has come from me, and I think a lot of disabled people in general are the ones that push for accessibility stuff to improve. It would be great if there are examples of it coming from the top down, but who knows how widespread that is.”

While remote and hybrid work became commonplace in U.S. newsrooms, this wasn’t the case in all countries. Priti Salian, a freelance reporter based in India, acknowledged that there was a shift in reporting norms throughout the years following the start of the pandemic, including an increased acceptance of remote reporting. 

However, not all newsrooms in India adopted work-from-home policies.

“Whatever shift has happened [with accessibility of journalism] did not happen because of the pandemic in India. Newsrooms did not implement work-from-home post the lockdown,” she said. “In 2021 itself, people were called back to the office when there was no lockdown. There were staff and journalists, everybody was back in the office, so we really didn’t have that, especially the bigger newspapers, and the more mainstream news sites.”

Métraux works remotely, which is written into her contract. But many disabled reporters who need remote work as an access need aren’t as lucky. 

In 2026, a majority of U.S. newsrooms require at least three days in office, Axios reported.

When discussing accessibility in newsrooms, she said, it’s important to acknowledge that there are disabled reporters who are not open about their disability, which means even the initial ask for accommodations is something that doesn’t happen. While some reporting requires in-person attendance, the pressure to work from office in journalism and other fields can create an environment where disabled people either have to be open about their disabilities or continue to hide them. 

“I think when we talk about accessibility in journalism [and] that force to return to work — which isn’t just exclusive to journalism — it definitely creates more barriers for people … who are private about their invisible disabilities,” Métraux said.

New approaches to covering disability 

In May 2020, the Associated Press updated the disability section of its style guide to allow people to use identity-first language rather than solely person-first language (i.e. disabled person vs. person with a disability). Métraux characterized the push as led by “members of the disability community who were … fed up and frustrated by this guidance to just use person-first language.”

This, coupled with the rise in the disabled population after 2020, has contributed to discussions on disability increasingly making their way to the forefront of online spaces.

“As more people started to be online more … at least people following COVID [stay-at-home] restrictions, and also more people becoming disabled … I think this led to more people being aware of disability conversations, just through the vibrance of the online disability community,” Métraux said.

In India, Salian said that some small independent newsrooms are doing better than mainstream ones when it comes to disability coverage, noting that mainstream news outlets are often still fixated on stories of inspiration porn and pity. 

Still, in the U.S., Ariana Martinez, an artist, educator, and radio documentarian, has noticed changes in the types of disability stories being covered, often spearheaded by disabled reporters themselves. 

Among the groups that have emerged to improve disability stories and create a space for disabled journalists is the Society of Disabled Journalists, a professional membership nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting disabled journalists and increasing representation of and perspectives from disabled journalists in newsrooms, media, and storytelling spearheaded by former Washington Post disability reporter Amanda Morris. 

Martinez mentioned investigations into climate justice and disability, like the Rural Disability and Climate Justice series by Grist and the Disabled Journalists Association, and noted that The Sick Times has done a great job at maintaining coverage of the ongoing effects of the pandemic.

“They keep that information clear and relevant to other things that we’ve had going on [in our] lives, and do a really good job of [including] so many different perspectives of how different kinds of people are still impacted by COVID and its effects, so I think they’re really great,” they said.

The future of disability in the newsroom

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in disability reporter positions at major news outlets and organizations created to further disability reporting. In 2021, The New York Times launched its Disability Journalism Fellowship, created in partnership with the National Center on Disability and Journalism at Arizona State University. The Washington Post also created accessibility engineer and disability reporter positions — the latter being the first of its kind for the legacy news outlet. The Sick Times is focused on covering the ongoing impact of COVID-19, including Long COVID and other infection-associated chronic illnesses, and long-time disability journalist John Loeppky started independent media project CRPL. 

But before 2020, Métraux, who formerly worked as a freelancer, said she often heard news outlets she pitched say “we already have a disability story.”

“I think it’s absolutely crucial for disability stories to be told at a local level, and a lot of people just trust local news more than they trust national news,” she said. 

Among the people doing good disability reporting, Métraux named two public media reporters: Emyle Watkins, a disability reporter for WBFO, and Meghan Smith at WGBH. 

“I think that work is so important, and both [Watkins and Smith] have really built up their beats in their newsroom,” she said, pointing out that there are also freelancers and staff journalists working for mainstream news outlets who don’t necessarily focus on disability as a beat but working to incorporate it into their stories.

In reflecting on newsrooms that sought to make themselves accessible, Reedy, the Disabled Journalists Association founder, named The 19th, emphasizing that it was founded on an openness and infrastructure that could accommodate disabled people, unlike a lot of mainstream news outlets.

“If you lead with what people need to be successful, then that’s how you have accommodation, that’s how you account for all of those things, and it doesn’t become weird,” she explained. The DJA began community meetings in 2024 and officially launched as a newsroom in 2025, and Reedy said it was built for disabled people with their needs in mind. 

“But if you’re trying to jam that into, let’s say, CNN or NBC, where that’s not how the structure was built … then your accommodations become a threat or a problem, because they didn’t account for it, and they didn’t build for it, and so then you become a problem, and that culture is always going to be at odds with disabled people’s bodies.”

Martinez added that mainstream news outlets lack the infrastructure to understand why disabled perspectives on any number of topics are valuable and distinct. 

“It’s a shame,” they added, “because there is a lot of specialized knowledge, experience, and technical skill sitting dormant due to financial barriers preventing people from doing this work and lack of places willing to publish [disability stories].”

“It’s very complicated in terms of supporting disabled journalists themselves in being able to do the work they know how to do, get compensated for it in a way that makes sense for their lives, and uplift and honor their perspectives as people who have continued to be shut out of what otherwise is very accessible work,” Martinez said. “I think, if it weren’t for the economics of journalism, [it] could be one of the most accessible careers for a lot of people.”

Editor’s note: Shruti Rajkumar is on the board of the Society of Disabled Journalists, which did not review this piece before publishing.

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Shruti Rajkumar is a freelance reporter focused on a disability beat and a student at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.

This piece was edited by James Salanga. Copy edits by Jen Ramos Eisen.