"Accessibility Benefits Everyone" – Marta Gil's Bold, Timely Vision for Centering Disability in the Climate Crisis

Have you ever thought about how crucial information is to our survival? A clear example - one most of us lived through - is the COVID-19 pandemic. Information about social distancing, handwashing, mask use, the importance of vaccines, and which medications to avoid was fundamental in preventing the pandemic from being even more devastating. But what if that information had never reached people in their own language?

My own example is a small one, but it illustrates the point: when I traveled to Germany for the first time without speaking German, I took the subway in the wrong direction because I couldn't fully understand the information, even with the help of translation tools, which made me late for an appointment.

Now, another example - one that connects to me through identities I carry, though I did not personally live through it - is the AIDS epidemic. In the early 1980s, HIV (the human immunodeficiency virus) was identified, but little was still known about its transmission and progression to AIDS. At the time, the most publicly prominent cases were invariably linked to gay men, which led to the direct association of every AIDS-related death with sexual orientation, perpetuating stigmas that persist in society today and causing people to be treated as responsible for their own diagnosis - not as victims of a public health failure, but as if the disease were a punishment for their lifestyle or sexuality. At least in Brazil, the country where I live and whose history I know best, because HIV was seen as a problem limited to minorities, public policies and research in this area received little encouragement. This was especially true during a post-military dictatorship period, when the country was still rebuilding a basic democratic culture and constructing its Unified Health System (SUS). As a result, Brazil alone recorded 148,206 deaths between 1982 and 2002.

The fight against misinformation, along with the work of Brazil's Unified Health System through wide-reaching educational campaigns, and all the information produced and gathered to offer free treatment and decentralize diagnosis and prevention, was fundamental in changing the course of HIV/AIDS in Brazil.

Because of all the stigmatization and impact on the LGBTQIA+ community, which led to lasting setbacks and ongoing violence against that community, I felt personally connected to this moment as someone who identifies as part of it.

One day, in one of my conversations with Ashoka Fellow Marta Gil, one of the founders of Amankay and a member of our community since 1989, she told me about the impact of the AIDS epidemic on the Deaf community due to the lack of accessible information about HIV/AIDS for that community. At a time when we were finally learning more about HIV, prevention, and treatment, that information was not being interpreted in sign languages; news and stories on television had no captions; and there were virtually no Deaf people in the community with knowledge about HIV to teach others. This led to thousands of Deaf people contracting HIV without ever having access to information about the epidemic.

Faced with the current climate crisis, once again the lack of accessible information and protocols for rescuing victims of such disasters has had a severe impact on the disability community. The creation of "green signs", that is, sign language vocabulary for environmental issues, is relatively recent. Until not long ago, it was necessary to spell out long, complex scientific terms for the Deaf community, letter by letter.

I also learned all of this through Marta Gil, who conceived and coordinates the project "Inclusive Rescue: People with Disabilities and Extreme Climate Events", an initiative aimed at creating and ensuring accessibility and participation at every stage of risk management, producing accessible and informative content, guaranteeing the human right to information, training community multipliers, creating accessible rescue protocols for people with disabilities affected by climate disasters, and advocating for inclusive public policies.

When Marta told me about this initiative, I found it truly innovative and necessary. I had never thought about it before. Marta, who was elect as an Ashoka Fellow for creating an initiative at the intersection of education, accessibility, and inclusion, is now launching a new initiative at the intersection of climate change, a strong example of what I see in the Ashoka community: people committed for life to identifying urgent problems, creating innovative solutions to address them systemically, and engaging others in actions that are part of a larger movement to recognize the power of individuals and our shared responsibility for the common good.

It was all of this that led me to invite Marta to an interview in which she could share with the Ashoka ecosystem what moved her to create this initiative, how she is putting it into practice, and the importance of promoting accessibility and inclusion so that people with and without disabilities, in moments of climate crisis, can have full access to their human rights and to life itself.

Below is the interview, conducted in April 2026:

Ricardo Sanches Tomazoli: Thank you, Marta, for accepting this conversation for Ashoka's Canopy team. We are very excited to write this article sharing a bit more about your trajectory and your work with the "Inclusive Rescue" project, an innovative initiative at the intersection of accessibility, inclusion, disability, and climate change, which I consider extremely urgent. You were elected as an Ashoka Fellow in 1989 for your work with REINTEGRA (the Information Network on Disabilities) which aimed to disseminate information and knowledge about accessibility and the inclusion of people with disabilities. And recently, you launched Inclusive Rescue. I wanted to hear from you how this initiative came about, and also to reflect on the different impacts that climate change has on people with different disabilities. For example, I wonder whether rising temperatures might cause greater discomfort for some people on the autism spectrum. So: how did Inclusive Rescue come about, and what are these different impacts?

Marta Esteves de Almeida Gil: Ricardo, I continue working within the same axis: information and communication, both the content I produce and the content produced by others. Another permanent axis, since the initial project, is network-based work.

Up until the floods in Rio Grande do Sul in 2024, the focus areas of my work were education, employment, and accessibility. When I started hearing news about the floods, which caught everyone by surprise, I began to notice the complete absence of people with disabilities in the reporting. There was no mention of them at all. And of course there were people with disabilities there.

So I started reaching out through my network and discovered a whole other world. I made contacts with the climate community, with environmentalists, with people from Rio Grande do Sul. The environmentalists and climate researchers knew these changes were coming and had been sounding the alarm, but that knowledge stayed confined between them and academia. It wasn't reaching government, let alone society. And no one was thinking about people with disabilities.

When the floods hit, they hit everyone. These climate events are democratic, they affect all of us. But they hit harder the populations in vulnerable situations: people living on hillsides, in favelas, in underserved communities; people with disabilities who often live in those same areas; people with more fragile socioeconomic conditions.

My personal contacts made it clear that people with disabilities were not being considered in the rescue operations. For example: there were cities in Rio Grande do Sul where the streets had turned into rivers, and rescue teams were going by boat with megaphones. If there was a Deaf person without a hearing person nearby, the megaphone was useless. I also heard that a blind person was rescued, and the rescue team forgot their cane - the person was so desperate they didn't think of it, and the rescue teams weren't prepared for that. When the person arrived at the shelter, they were completely dependent on others to move around, whereas with their cane they would have had autonomy.

Autistic people - and autism is a spectrum, so it can't be generalized - many went into crisis because they sensed everyone around them was in distress. And some shelters refused to accept them.

In the shelters, which are generally improvised in public schools with no accessibility whatsoever, wheelchair users were placed on mattresses on the floor. To lift someone out of a wheelchair and place them on the floor, and then back again, requires knowing how to do it properly. These individuals are often heavier. The bathrooms also had no accessibility features. And there were reports of violence, including sexual violence.

After the event ends, the psychological impact sets in. People are left in an extremely stressful state, not knowing whether their home was robbed, whether it's still standing, how their child's school is doing, whether they still have a job. The uncertainty was so great that many didn't want to leave the shelter.

In some places, community-led support circles emerged to listen and offer care. And it's worth remembering: we had just come out of two years of COVID, with all that accumulated stress. Just as everyone started to breathe again, the floods hit Rio Grande do Sul.

All of this hit me intensely. I dropped what I was doing, began studying, because this wasn't my area, and people started joining. We formed a team that worked on a volunteer basis throughout that entire time. By 2026, the project is structured and we are now in the fundraising phase.

In the contacts I was making, I personally went to the Palácio dos Bandeirantes to speak with the Colonel responsible for Civil Defense in the State of São Paulo. When I asked what the rescue protocols were for people with disabilities, he didn't know what to say. There were no protocols. The same was true with the Médecins Sans Frontières team, no protocols. The Red Cross of São Paulo told me: "Look, if something comes up, we'll run a campaign, collect donations, and find an organization to donate them to." I thought to myself, but didn't say, that donations are incredibly important, but people need to be alive to receive them.

Ricardo: Your work seems both innovative and systemic, especially in engaging public policies and key organizations. This makes me think of concepts such as environmental racism, and perhaps environmental ableism. Does that term exist?

Marta Gil: It does. That term has started to be used. One of the contacts I've been pursuing since last year is with CEMADEN, the National Centre for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters, under the Ministry of the Environment. They developed a glossary of terms related to environmental issues with full scientific rigor, very well done. But they did not consider people with disabilities, and terms like environmental ableism weren't included. I began a conversation with them last year and want to continue it this year to incorporate these perspectives and such terms.

Another area we are emphasizing strongly is intersectionality. There are Black people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people with disabilities. These movements need to be more united in embracing that cross-cutting dimension. Of course, each has its own specific issues, and that is absolutely right, we don't want to erase anything. But there are points of intersection that cannot be ignored.

For example, I am in contact with an Ashoka Fellow who works in Rocinha, in Rio, who is developing ways to bring people down from the hillside, not only during climate disasters but in everyday situations: a woman about to give birth, someone who has broken a leg. The favela is steep; there are no proper streets. They developed a kind of stretcher-net for this purpose, and it can be adapted for climate emergencies and for people with disabilities as well.

Ricardo: That reminds me of something you always point out: that accessibility isn't just for people with disabilities, but for all of society, pregnant people, those with temporarily reduced mobility, parents with young children. Everyone can benefit.

Marta Gil: Yes, it's for everyone.

Ricardo: I'd like to better understand, from your experience, why people with disabilities remain invisible in climate disaster contexts, even after decades of legislative progress, including the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Marta Gil: I don't know of any study on the matter, but there is a hypothesis raised by some authors: the issue of disability touches on a narcissistic wound. If I wasn't born Black, there's no way I can become Black. But I may not have been born with a disability and could acquire one over the course of my life. For that reason, some people unconsciously avoid the subject - "I don't even want to know, I don't even want to look" - because they might see themselves in it.
Rosângela Berman Bieler, who is an Ashoka Fellow and uses a motorized wheelchair, tells the story of how when she used to go out, children would be fascinated by the chair - it has a horn, it goes in reverse. But many mothers would pull their children away and say: "Don't ask, don't stare, it's rude." As if it would embarrass Rosângela, who is fully aware she has a disability. She would say: "Go ahead, look how cool it is!", and would do a little spin to break the awkwardness.
Disability is a human condition. It is neither better nor worse, it is simply a condition. One you can be born with or acquire for any number of reasons - a stray bullet, an accident, and so on. That is why visibility matters so much: showing positive examples of people with disabilities who work, study, have families, and live full lives.

Ricardo: To bring in some data: PAHO (the Pan American Health Organization) indicates that people with disabilities are two to four times more likely to die in climate disasters. You've already shared concrete examples from Rio Grande do Sul, but how does this lack of structure, protocols, and information translate into higher mortality?

Marta Gil: The core issue is the lack of accessible information. Without access to information, a person cannot act.
For example: Deaf people need communication in sign language, including appropriate vocabulary for climate-related topics, the so-called "green signs." I learned that Argentina and Uruguay are already working on this, and we are now making contacts in São Paulo to develop our own. A Deaf person needs to be informed; without information, they cannot take action.

There is also the issue of educational inequalities. In many countries, and in Brazil as well, women in more vulnerable contexts have lower levels of education. "She finished fourth grade, for a woman, that's enough", that mindset still exists in many families. This increases exposure to risk, because of the difficulty in accessing information, which is often confined to certain "bubbles" and doesn't always use simplified language.

And in Brazil, we don't have a culture of prevention. Information needs to go beyond informing: it needs to prepare, to build a preventive mindset. Not to frighten, but to build that culture.

Ricardo: You expressed this beautifully in a previous conversation: the idea that information must inform action. And speaking of trajectory, you have been working with people with disabilities for over 30 years. What do you celebrate in this field?

Marta Gil: Many things. Our legislation, for example, is considered among the most advanced in the world. In addition to incorporating the International Convention into our Federal Constitution, Brazil took a further step in 2015 with the Brazilian Law of Inclusion (LBI), which, as far as I know, is the only one of its kind in the world. The LBI takes the principles of the Convention and transforms them into laws that need to be known and, above all, applied.

The challenge now is to translate that legislation into effective public policies at the state and municipal levels. And in parallel, we need people to know these laws exist, because if I don't know a law exists, I won't fight for it. 

We have oversight mechanisms, but they are insufficient.

Ricardo: How do you see the urgency of an intersectional perspective in climate change, but also in other areas such as technology and gender equity?

Marta Gil: It is not possible to isolate one characteristic of a person and ignore the others. When I say "women," those women are not invisible souls, they have race, ethnicity, sexuality, and age. If I am in a wheelchair and need to climb a staircase with no other option, it is not my race that will be the obstacle in that moment, it is my physical condition. But in another context, it might be my race. Ignoring part of a person is ignoring something fundamental about them.

The difference between integration and inclusion lies precisely there. Under the previous model, the school would say "we accept the child with a disability", but it was the child who had to fit into the school's model. Under the inclusion model, you adapt the environment: teaching methods, materials, specialized teachers. Think of Cinderella's glass slipper: it was made to fit exactly one person. That's not how we should design society. Society must account for all people, because that is a richness.

Ricardo: To close: Ashoka seeks to build a world where everyone is a changemaker. What is needed for more people with disabilities to see themselves as such?

Marta Gil: One important step is to learn more about Ashoka and to understand that this door is open. There are still many people with disabilities who do not see themselves as potential changemakers, and this often begins within the family, depending on whether or not that belief is nurtured.

The more Ashoka shares stories of people with disabilities who are already acting as agents of change, the more others will see themselves reflected in those stories. There is Rosângela, and there are many other Fellows. Sharing these examples helps people think, “I can do that too.”

Social media is a key channel for this. To reach a broader audience, platforms like TikTok and Instagram are especially powerful. The more stories that are shared, the more people will recognize themselves in them and realize their own potential.

Ricardo: Thank you so much for sharing your experience and reflections. This was an extremely enriching conversation.

Marta Gil: It was a pleasure. Thank you for the invitation.

About Marta Gil: 

Marta Almeida Gil is a sociologist with a degree in Social Sciences from the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters at the University of São Paulo. She has worked professionally in the field of Disability Inclusion since 1990, with a focus on producing and disseminating information on Education, Employment, and Accessibility. She has been an Ashoka Fellow since 1989, is a member of the Administrative Council of the Brazilian Federation of Down Syndrome Associations (FBASD), and a member of the Rotary Club World Disability Advocacy (RCWDA).