Rebecca S. Williford

Rebecca S. Williford was still relatively new to practice when she helped try the 2013 challenge to New York City's emergency plans. Disability Rights Advocates gave her work on every aspect of the trial, an opportunity she later credited to its commitment to developing young lawyers. In Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled v. Bloomberg, the team represented a class of roughly 900,000 New Yorkers with disabilities whose ability to evacuate, find shelter and obtain essential information depended on the city's preparations.

The trial exposed gaps between the services the city described and those residents could use. The city did not know which shelters were accessible or whether it had enough accessible vehicles for people needing evacuation. Its reliance on the 311 telephone system also left people without another way to request help when lines failed or phone batteries ran out. In November 2013, Judge Jesse Furman held that the emergency-preparedness program violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act and the New York City Human Rights Law in evacuation, shelter access and communications, among other respects.

The settlement, finally approved in March 2015, addressed high-rise evacuation, shelters, transportation, canvassing, communications and recovery planning. It required a coordinator responsible for disability access and an advisory panel through which disability organizations could review plans. A new door-to-door canvassing operation would identify residents needing food, water, power or medical help after a disaster and send their requests to a central data center.

The Lawyer on Your Side

Williford had encountered inaccessible buildings after becoming a wheelchair user as a teenager. As she met other disabled people, she saw how legal representation affected their ability to obtain accommodations and pursue education. "I saw what a difference it made when a person had a lawyer on their side," she recalled, recognizing how few disabled people could afford that help. She graduated with highest honors in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned her law degree there as a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar.

While in law school, she co-founded the National Association of Law Students with Disabilities and served as its president. She also served on North Carolina's Statewide Independent Living Council through a governor's appointment from 2006 to 2009. Her student-organization work brought her into contact with DRA co-founder Larry Paradis. In a later interview, she described the prospect of his mentorship as a decisive reason to join the organization.

She began as a legal fellow, held eight different roles over more than fifteen years and became DRA's president and CEO in April 2023. The national nonprofit, with offices in Berkeley, Chicago and New York, represents clients without charging them. In 2025, she described its cases as lasting an average of four years, sometimes much longer. Its work with incarcerated young people with disabilities has included investigating abuse and neglect and seeking the accommodations those children needed. Williford described teams spending more than a year visiting facilities, speaking with young people and assembling evidence before asking a court to act.

Access Behind Walls

In Legal Services for Prisoners with Children v. Ahern, Williford litigated a taxpayer action over inaccessible conditions and disability-based segregation at Alameda County's Santa Rita Jail. The 2016 court-enforceable settlement required wheelchair-accessible cells, toilets, showers, dining and recreation areas, visiting areas, entrances and health-care facilities. DRA and the Disability Rights Legal Center represented the prisoner-rights organization and two taxpayers.

The agreement also required sign-language interpreters where necessary and videophones for incarcerated people who are Deaf or hard of hearing and use American Sign Language. Updated policies and grievance procedures gave prisoners a way to raise continuing access problems, while an outside expert would evaluate compliance with the physical improvements.

Using the Streaming Service

Williford and colleagues at DRA and the Disability Law Center represented blind and low-vision users in American Council of the Blind v. Hulu. The October 2018 settlement required the service to bring its website and applications into conformity with recognized accessibility standards so people using screen readers could navigate them. Hulu also agreed to test updates for accessibility before release, address accessibility bugs alongside equivalent losses of other functions, train customer-service staff and publish support information.

Audio description required additional work: obtaining narration of important visual information, providing controls to turn it on, and allowing users to search and filter for described titles. Hulu committed to provide description where it controlled the necessary rights and to seek it for licensed content where commercially reasonable.

When an Elevator Is Out

In July 2026, DRA announced a proposed settlement over the reliability of New York City subway elevators, subject to court approval. The agreement addressed what riders would need when an elevator was unavailable: real-time information, street-level signs, announcements, alternate accessible routes, staff training and responses to complaints. A separate 2022 agreement called for making at least 95 percent of the stations then inaccessible usable without stairs by 2055. The two agreements addressed different problems—getting into a station and navigating the system when an available route was disrupted.

Disabled Lawyers and Leaders

Williford serves as a lawyer representative to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Council for the Northern District of California and on Disability Lead's board. She previously served on the American Bar Association's Commission on Disability Rights and the Disability Rights Bar Association's board. She co-edited Lawyers, Lead On: Lawyers with Disabilities Share Their Insights, published by ABA Press in 2011, and was named to Diversability's D-30 Disability Impact List.

In 2025, Disability Lead appointed her to chair its new Strategic Growth Committee as it expanded from Chicago into Southwest Pennsylvania. Asked about her DRA leadership, she described working with both lawyers and members of the disability community: "I often find myself translating across those communities." For members of the bar, that can mean explaining how to represent disabled clients or make a legal conference accessible; for community members, it means explaining how litigation can address barriers such as inaccessible sidewalks throughout a city.