Disability is part of every society, yet most systems, from education to employment, still treat it like an exception. Too often, access is reactive. Inclusion comes with conditions. And when disabled people build their own spaces, they’re still seen as the outliers. Tiffany Yu has spent the last fifteen years challenging that idea, and it’s the reason she founded Diversability.
Yu’s path to advocacy began with personal tragedy. “At the age of nine, I was involved in a car accident where my dad was driving, and he unfortunately passed away,” she says. “And I acquired a handful of injuries and disabilities, including permanently paralyzing one of my arms, breaking a couple of bones… and much later being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).” For more than a decade after the accident, she didn’t talk about it. “I told everyone that my dad was away on a trip.”
That silence eventually gave way to a search for connection and to a question: What would it look like to build a disability-centered community?
In 2009, as a student at Georgetown, Yu started what would become the university’s first disability student club. At first, the idea seemed too fragile to hold. Emails went unanswered. A trusted staff member called her vision “too radical.” But when Yu shared her story publicly for the first time during a campus panel, something shifted. A student from Gallaudet University handed her a note. It read: Diversability. Let me know if I can help.
That small gesture was enough to keep going.
Yu hosted her first event and waited to see if anyone would come. People showed up. “The group was open to disabled people and our allies,” she says. “That has always been a pinnacle of the community that we've built… we don't want to out anyone. But we also want nondisabled people to be witnesses to the types of conversations that we're having so that they can show up better for us in the spaces that we're not in.”
Today, Diversability is a global platform. Its mission is clear: “elevating disability pride, together.” Yu emphasizes the word pride. “You can still be aware of disability, but think that disabled people are less than, or broken, or need to be fixed,” she says. “But disability pride as a concept is asserting our value and worth in a society that may think otherwise.”
The work spans four core areas: digital communities, events, storytelling, and recognition. Diversability hosts weekly programming from professional development to disability history talks. It runs a leadership-focused membership group and a larger Facebook community that functions as “a digital town square.” It curates and publishes stories that traditional media overlooks. And it manages the D-30 Disability Impact List, one of the few global platforms recognizing disability leadership. “When we couldn’t find a list that recognized disability leadership, we created one,” Yu says.
What sounds seamless now took years of trial, learning, and doubt. “You have to be really intentional,” Yu says. “Oftentimes, I talk about the ways that inclusion needs to be intentional.” That means building systems, not just vibes. It also means learning what makes a community stick. “Community happens in big group, in small group, and in one-on-one engagement,” she says. “And just having a community doesn’t mean that people are going to feel like they belong.”
For Yu, belonging is the real goal. And that means creating spaces where people not only show up, but stay, grow, and lead.
“I call it disability-centered economic justice,” she says. Diversability doesn’t just spotlight disabled leaders, it hires and pays them. It trains and supports its own team, then empowers them move on to other opportunities. “One of the rewarding things has been… using the social capital built through working at places like Goldman Sachs and Bloomberg to write letters of recommendation or serve as references for our team members as they go on to get their dream internships or dream jobs.”
Beyond Diversability, Yu leads the Disability chapter of the Awesome Foundation, a microgrant program awarding $1,000 each month to creative disabled-led projects. “We will surpass awarding $100,000 of these $1,000 grants,” she notes. Projects span from adaptive sports to workshops in 15 countries.
She also speaks and writes to push the conversation further, especially in her book The Anti-Ableist Manifesto. The book is structured around a framework called Me, We, Us and aims to give people tools without shaming them for not knowing. “Learning should never be about shame,” she says. “I hope the book leaves you feeling hopeful that building a disability inclusive culture and society is possible.”
Yu is clear that progress won’t come from policy alone. “We need an attitudinal and perception shift,” she says. “Because if you have a policy, but then you are still devaluing disabled bodies and disabled minds, then you’re not going to implement those policies.”
She points to how often people make decisions as if disabled people don’t exist. “Being on a video call and assuming that there aren’t people who would benefit from captions… putting out a podcast and assuming someone who is deaf doesn’t want access.” These aren’t edge cases. They’re design flaws and signs of broader assumptions that need to be undone.
Still, Yu sees real change happening. “Social media is making it so that we as disabled people are finding community quicker… finding community becomes that first place where you start to find your voice and realize your power.” She’s optimistic, but never passive. She keeps building, and investing directly in others. “In this one project of writing a book,” she says, “there were so many different ways that I could support disabled people.”
When asked what individuals or institutions should do next, her answer is both personal and practical: start with The Anti-Ableist Manifesto art, a visual piece at the end of her book that lists 30 statements. “Pick one or two phrases that resonate with you and have that be your starting point into this conversation,” she says.
Yu has been disabled for almost thirty years. She’s been an advocate for more than fifteen. And if there’s one thing her work proves, it’s that inclusion doesn’t happen by invitation - it happens when disabled people build their own systems and make space for others to join.
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