Trauma-Informed Disability Inclusion: Rachel Kaplan's Perspective
Top TLDR
Trauma-informed disability inclusion in Rachel Kaplan's perspective recognizes that people with disabilities experience significantly higher rates of abuse, trauma, and violence, requiring consulting approaches that prioritize safety, empowerment, and choice. Drawing from experience in sexual assault and rape crisis support services, domestic violence awareness, and abuse prevention education, Rachel integrates trauma-informed principles into organizational accessibility work. Organizations serve vulnerable populations more effectively when disability inclusion efforts account for trauma's impact and create environments that support healing rather than retraumatization.
Rachel Kaplan, MPH, has worked with disability advocacy and program management, the homeless population, youth with type 1 diabetes, domestic violence awareness, sexual assault and rape crisis support services, and mental health advocacy and medical adherence. This variety of experience has provided Rachel with insight regarding populations that are often overlooked or excluded from important conversations and services.
This breadth of experience—particularly in trauma services—fundamentally shapes how I approach disability consulting. People with disabilities face disproportionately high rates of violence, abuse, and trauma. When organizations fail to recognize this reality, they create programs and services that can inadvertently retraumatize the very people they aim to serve.
Trauma-informed disability inclusion isn't a separate specialty—it's an essential foundation for all accessibility work. Organizations that truly want to serve people with disabilities must understand how trauma intersects with disability and build systems that support healing rather than perpetuate harm.
Understanding Trauma's Intersection with Disability
The statistics are staggering and sobering. People with disabilities experience violence at rates two to three times higher than people without disabilities. Youth with disabilities face significantly elevated risk for sexual abuse and assault. Adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities are seven times more likely to experience sexual assault than adults without disabilities.
These aren't abstract numbers—they represent real people navigating real harm while also navigating systems and services that rarely acknowledge this reality. When I work with organizations on disability inclusion, I bring awareness of these statistics and their implications for how we design programs, create spaces, and interact with community members.
Why Trauma Rates Are Higher Among People with Disabilities
Multiple factors contribute to elevated trauma exposure among disabled populations:
Increased vulnerability to perpetrators who target people they perceive as less able to report abuse or be believed.
Power imbalances in care relationships where disabled people depend on caregivers who may abuse that position of trust.
Social isolation and limited support networks that reduce protective factors and leave people with fewer resources when abuse occurs.
Communication barriers that make reporting abuse more difficult, especially for people with speech, cognitive, or developmental disabilities.
Institutional settings and congregate care that create environments where abuse can occur with limited oversight.
Pervasive ableism that devalues disabled people's autonomy, bodily integrity, and right to safety.
Understanding these dynamics is essential for disability consulting work that genuinely serves vulnerable populations rather than simply checking accessibility boxes.
The Compounding Effect of Trauma on Disability
Trauma doesn't just coexist with disability—it often compounds disability's impact and creates additional barriers. Trauma can:
Exacerbate existing mental health conditions including anxiety and depression
Create new symptoms including hypervigilance, dissociation, and difficulty trusting others
Complicate medical management as trauma responses interfere with healthcare engagement
Increase isolation as trauma survivors withdraw from potentially triggering situations
Reduce capacity to advocate for needed accommodations when trauma depletes emotional resources
When organizations ignore trauma's presence, they attribute these additional challenges to disability alone and miss opportunities to create supportive, healing-centered environments.
Core Trauma-Informed Principles in Disability Consulting
My experience in sexual assault and rape crisis support services taught me fundamental trauma-informed principles that now inform all aspects of my disability consulting practice. These principles apply whether I'm training organizational staff, adapting educational curriculum, or consulting on program accessibility.
Safety: Physical, Emotional, and Psychological
Trauma-informed practice prioritizes creating environments where people feel genuinely safe. In disability consulting, this means:
Physical accessibility that eliminates environmental barriers creating vulnerability or dependence.
Emotional safety through clear communication about what to expect, predictable processes, and respect for boundaries.
Psychological safety by validating disabled people's experiences, believing their reports of harm, and supporting their agency.
Cultural safety that acknowledges how marginalized identities compound trauma exposure and create additional barriers to safety.
Safety isn't just about preventing new harm—it's about creating conditions where healing from past harm becomes possible.
Trustworthiness and Transparency
Trauma fundamentally disrupts trust. People who have experienced abuse or violence—especially at the hands of people in positions of authority or care—understandably struggle to trust institutions and service providers.
Building trust requires consistent transparency about:
Organizational processes and decision-making
How information will be used and who has access
What people can expect from services and interactions
Limitations and constraints on what organizations can provide
How concerns or complaints will be handled
When I work with organizations, I emphasize that trust must be earned through reliable, transparent action over time—not demanded or assumed based on organizational role or authority.
Peer Support and Mutual Self-Help
Trauma-informed approaches recognize the power of connection with others who share similar experiences. In disability inclusion work, this principle manifests through:
Centering disabled voices in designing services and policies that affect disabled people.
Creating opportunities for peer connection and mutual support among people with disabilities.
Valuing lived experience as expertise that complements professional knowledge.
Supporting leadership development for people with disabilities to guide inclusion efforts.
Through my collaborations and partnerships, I consistently work to ensure disabled people aren't just consulted but are actively leading conversations about accessibility and inclusion.
Collaboration and Mutuality
Trauma often involves powerlessness and loss of control. Trauma-informed practice actively counters this by maximizing collaboration and shared power in service relationships.
In disability consulting, this means organizations should:
Partner with disabled community members as equals in planning and implementation
Recognize that disabled people are experts on their own needs and experiences
Share information openly and invite input at all stages of projects
Make decisions with disabled people, not for them
Acknowledge organizational limitations honestly while remaining committed to solutions
The motto "Nothing About Us Without Us" perfectly captures this trauma-informed principle of collaboration and mutuality.
Empowerment, Voice, and Choice
Perhaps most fundamentally, trauma-informed practice centers empowerment and restores choice wherever possible. Organizations serving people with disabilities must:
Maximize autonomy in how services are delivered and accommodations are provided.
Respect choice even when people make decisions organizations wouldn't prefer.
Amplify disabled voices in organizational communications, leadership, and decision-making.
Provide multiple options rather than single prescribed pathways.
Support self-advocacy by providing information and resources that enable informed decision-making.
When I provide consultation services to organizations, empowerment isn't a buzzword—it's a concrete commitment to structuring programs and policies that maximize disabled people's control over their own lives and experiences.
Applying Trauma-Informed Principles to Sexual Health Education
My work focuses significantly on making sexual health education accessible and inclusive for people with disabilities—an area where trauma-informed approaches are absolutely critical. Youth with disabilities are often purposefully excluded from sexual health education and conversations, which places them at increased risk for abuse and assault.
The Urgency of Trauma-Informed Sexual Health Education
Through partnerships with organizations like SafeBAE (Before Anyone Else), whose mission is to end sexual assault among middle and high school students, I've presented on centering the disability experience and normalizing sexuality for young people with disabilities.
This work requires deep integration of trauma-informed principles because:
Many youth have already experienced abuse by the time they receive sexual health education, if they receive it at all.
Educational content itself can be triggering if not delivered with trauma sensitivity.
Power dynamics in educational settings can mirror abusive dynamics if not consciously addressed.
Lack of education increases vulnerability to future abuse by denying young people information they need to recognize, refuse, and report harmful situations.
When I provided education at the SafeBAE 2021 Virtual Summit on "Centering the Disability Experience: Normalizing Sexuality," I emphasized that comprehensive, trauma-informed sexual health education is abuse prevention. It empowers young people with disabilities to understand consent, recognize red flags, trust their instincts, and advocate for their boundaries.
The SCOUT IT Method: Trauma-Informed Curriculum Adaptation
The SCOUT IT Method, which I created to assess and adapt sexual health education curriculum for accessibility, integrates trauma-informed principles throughout. This method helps educators examine curriculum through multiple lenses including:
Physical accessibility of activities and materials
Cognitive accessibility of concepts and language
Sensory considerations that prevent triggering or overwhelming experiences
Communication adaptations that ensure all students can participate
Trauma sensitivity in content delivery and discussion facilitation
By building trauma-informed considerations into systematic curriculum review, we ensure that adaptations serve students' healing and growth rather than inadvertently causing harm.
Partnering with NASHIA on Brain Injury and Sexuality
My partnership with the National Association of State Head Injury Administrators (NASHIA) on their three-part education series "Sexually Speaking: Brain Injury, Development and Behavior" further demonstrates trauma-informed approaches in action.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is itself a trauma—both in the neurological sense and often in the psychological sense. People with TBI may have experienced the injury through violence, accidents involving loss of loved ones, or other traumatic circumstances.
The webinar series addressed how physical, cognitive, and emotional challenges stemming from brain injury affect sexual development and relationships—topics requiring tremendous sensitivity and trauma-informed delivery. We focused on providing education to parents and professionals that empowers rather than pathologizes, that normalizes sexuality for people with brain injuries rather than treating it as inappropriate, and that provides concrete strategies for supporting healthy development.
Trauma-Informed Approaches to Organizational Accessibility
Beyond educational programming, trauma-informed principles should guide all organizational accessibility efforts. When I consult with organizations on broader inclusion work, I emphasize several key applications.
Creating Physically and Emotionally Safe Spaces
Accessibility isn't just about ramps and captions—it's about creating environments where people with disabilities feel genuinely safe. This requires attention to:
Predictability and consistency in how spaces are organized and services are delivered, reducing anxiety and hypervigilance.
Clear wayfinding and communication so people know what to expect and how to navigate physical and social environments.
Private spaces for sensitive conversations about accommodations, disclosures, or concerns.
Flexibility in service delivery that allows people to engage in ways that feel safest for them.
Sensory considerations including lighting, sound levels, and environmental stimuli that can be overwhelming or triggering for trauma survivors.
When organizations approach accessibility from this holistic perspective, they serve everyone better—not just people with disabilities, and not just trauma survivors, but all people navigating organizational spaces and services.
Building Trust Through Consistent, Reliable Processes
One of the most common complaints from people with disabilities is inconsistency in how organizations handle accommodations and accessibility. Someone receives support from one staff member but faces barriers from another. An accommodation works in one context but isn't available in another.
This inconsistency is particularly harmful for trauma survivors who need predictability and reliability to feel safe. From a trauma-informed perspective, organizations must:
Document accommodation processes clearly and follow them consistently
Train all staff in disability inclusion, not just designated accessibility coordinators
Create accountability when staff fail to provide agreed-upon accommodations
Communicate proactively about any changes or limitations
Acknowledge and repair harm when systems fail people
Trust isn't built through policy statements—it's built through reliable, consistent action that demonstrates organizational commitment.
Empowering Self-Advocacy While Reducing Burden
A significant tension exists in disability services between empowering self-advocacy and recognizing that constant self-advocacy creates exhausting burden, especially for trauma survivors whose resources are already depleted.
Trauma-informed organizations navigate this tension by:
Proactively offering accommodations rather than requiring people to request everything.
Providing clear information about available accommodations and how to access them.
Normalizing accommodation so people don't have to disclose disability or justify needs.
Training staff to notice and address barriers rather than waiting for complaints.
Creating multiple pathways for people to communicate needs based on their comfort and capacity.
The goal is supporting people's agency and voice while not making support contingent on their ability to advocate through potentially retraumatizing processes.
Addressing Intersectionality in Trauma-Informed Disability Work
I am a big advocate in acknowledging the intersectionality of different minority populations and believe that until we understand the impact that history has made on different minority groups, there is not an authentic way to address the issues occurring presently.
Trauma-informed disability consulting must account for how trauma exposure, types, and impact vary based on intersecting identities.
Race, Disability, and Trauma
Disabled people of color face compounded trauma exposure including:
Higher rates of police violence and incarceration for disabled behaviors
Medical racism that results in inadequate treatment and trauma in healthcare settings
Historical trauma from medical experimentation and forced sterilization
Intergenerational trauma from systemic oppression and violence
Additional barriers to reporting abuse due to justified mistrust of systems
Trauma-informed work with disabled people of color requires understanding these specific realities and building approaches that acknowledge historical harm while creating pathways to healing.
LGBTQ+ Identity, Disability, and Trauma
Disabled LGBTQ+ individuals experience elevated trauma rates from:
Rejection by family and community support systems
Conversion therapy and other harmful interventions
Discrimination in accessing affirming healthcare and services
Violence and harassment based on multiple marginalized identities
Lack of accessible LGBTQ+ spaces and resources
Trauma-informed disability inclusion must actively address LGBTQ+ inclusion and create explicitly affirming environments.
Economic Vulnerability and Trauma
To understand someone, it is essential to understand the barriers they and others before them have faced and how that may impact decisions and beliefs today. Economic vulnerability compounds both disability and trauma:
Poverty limits access to trauma treatment and disability services
Economic abuse often accompanies intimate partner violence
Homelessness creates ongoing trauma exposure and exacerbates disability
Lack of resources reduces options for escaping harmful situations
My work with the homeless population taught me that trauma-informed services must address material needs alongside psychological and emotional support.
The Kintsugi Philosophy and Trauma Recovery
The name Kintsugi has significant meaning for me. Kintsugi is the Japanese tradition and art of mending broken pottery. The cracks created when something is broken are filled with gold or silver so that the item can still be used moving forward. This art form encourages growth, acceptance of flaws, and the opportunity to see the beauty in diversity.
This philosophy perfectly captures trauma-informed approaches to disability inclusion. Trauma—like the cracks in kintsugi pottery—is real and has lasting impact. We don't deny it, minimize it, or pretend it doesn't exist.
But we also don't define people solely by their trauma. Like the gold in kintsugi repairs, trauma-informed support can help people integrate difficult experiences into stronger, more beautiful wholes. Organizations become the gold—providing services and environments that support healing, growth, and wholeness rather than perpetuating brokenness.
Let me be the gold that mends the cracks of your organization to create one that can grow from mistakes or missed opportunities while enriching the culture and services being provided to include those within the disability community. This includes learning to recognize and respond to trauma in ways that support healing rather than causing further harm.
Practical Steps Toward Trauma-Informed Disability Inclusion
Organizations ready to integrate trauma-informed principles into disability work can begin with concrete steps.
Educate Your Team
Provide training that builds understanding of:
Trauma's prevalence among people with disabilities
How trauma affects people's engagement with services
Trauma-informed principles and their practical application
Recognizing signs of trauma without diagnosing or overstepping
Responding supportively when trauma surfaces
My training services can be tailored to address trauma-informed approaches specific to your organizational context and populations served.
Audit Policies and Practices
Review organizational policies through a trauma-informed lens:
Do policies maximize choice and control for people with disabilities?
Are processes predictable, transparent, and consistently applied?
Where might policies inadvertently retraumatize or create barriers for trauma survivors?
How do complaint and reporting processes account for trauma's impact on disclosure?
Consultation services can support systematic review and revision of policies to increase trauma sensitivity.
Create Safety Throughout Your Organization
Examine physical spaces, communication practices, and service delivery for opportunities to increase safety:
Physical accessibility that reduces vulnerability and dependence
Clear communication about what people can expect
Multiple options for how people engage with services
Private spaces for sensitive conversations
Sensory-friendly environments that don't overwhelm
Center Disabled Voices
Nothing about disabled people without disabled people—especially when addressing trauma. Ensure people with disabilities and trauma survivors are:
Leading organizational inclusion efforts
Providing input on program design and policy development
Represented in organizational leadership
Compensated fairly for their expertise and labor
Visit my consultant page to learn more about partnering with consultants who bring both professional expertise and lived experience.
Commit to Ongoing Learning
Trauma-informed practice isn't a destination—it's an ongoing commitment to learning, reflection, and growth. Organizations should:
Regularly evaluate services and practices for trauma sensitivity
Seek feedback from disabled community members about their experiences
Stay current on trauma-informed best practices
Acknowledge mistakes and commit to repair when harm occurs
Recognize this work is never "complete" but requires sustained attention
Moving Forward: Your Organization's Next Steps
People with disabilities are not flawed or broken, but the services which are provided often leave them out and can make them feel excluded. When those services also fail to account for trauma's impact, they compound exclusion with retraumatization.
Organizations have the opportunity to do more, do better, and make significant strides in ensuring that individuals with disabilities are represented and supported in ways that honor their full humanity—including their experiences of trauma and their capacity for healing.
Whether you're developing educational programming, designing organizational spaces, creating policies, or providing direct services, trauma-informed principles can strengthen your disability inclusion work. This isn't about adding another layer of complexity—it's about providing more effective, humane services that genuinely support people's wellbeing and agency.
Contact me to discuss how trauma-informed approaches can enhance your organization's disability inclusion efforts. Together we can assess current practices, identify opportunities for improvement, and develop strategies that account for trauma's intersection with disability.
Diversity and inclusion are what makes an organization stronger. When we build accessibility and inclusion on trauma-informed foundations, we create organizations that truly serve vulnerable populations with the safety, respect, and empowerment they deserve.
Bottom TLDR
Trauma-informed disability inclusion in Rachel Kaplan's perspective applies principles from sexual assault services and domestic violence work to organizational accessibility, recognizing that people with disabilities face elevated trauma exposure requiring safety-focused, empowering approaches. By integrating trauma-informed principles—safety, trustworthiness, peer support, collaboration, and empowerment—into disability consulting, organizations better serve vulnerable populations while supporting healing rather than retraumatization. Start by educating staff on trauma's intersection with disability, auditing policies for trauma sensitivity, and centering disabled voices in creating truly accessible environments that honor both disability and trauma experiences.