U ntil recently, I didn’t have to think about disability accommodations at concerts. I could stand and dance for hours, navigate steep stairs, and lose myself in the euphoria of singing alongside friends and strangers. But cancer, a spinal issue, and three surgeries in three years changed my body and my sense of balance. Busy environments now overwhelm my equilibrium, and I often need the stability of a cane to move through the world.
Last October, I attended my first concert as a newly disabled person. My friends and I wore glitter, wigs, and seashell crowns. The four of us had flown to Southern California from around the country to be together for one night of unapologetic joy. That’s what live music can give us as fans — the ability to gather, feel, hear, and sing together. To experience the power of collective vibrations, especially for anyone who has ever felt different, unseen, or too much.
Still, I was unsure what to expect from the outdoor venue, which normally serves as a golf course. It was a general admission event, and the website was vague about accessible seating and capacity. Goldenvoice, the AEG Presents subsidiary managing the tour, only allows one companion per disabled attendee in the accessible (ADA) area. When I emailed ahead asking if my three friends could sit with me, I received a boilerplate response saying I could “switch out” companions by visiting the accessibility tent. Because of my disability, I could only sit with one friend at a time.
I wanted to bring my cane, but without clarity, I opted for a walker, which could double as a seat. At the venue, the accessible rideshare drop-off was nearly a mile from the ADA viewing platform. The route was mostly grass, gravel, and sand. By the time I arrived at the platform more than an hour later, my walker wheels were packed with dirt and the accessible area was full. “First come, first served,” a staffer told me with a shrug. After talking with two more staffers, they squeezed me into the back of an overflow area next to the ADA platform.
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When the concert ended, I asked if there was an ADA pickup closer than the original drop-off. “I don’t know,” a staffer said. I pushed my walker back over the same uneven terrain in the dark.
In the weeks after the concert, I filed complaints with the City of Pasadena and California’s Civil Rights Department. Filing a complaint is one of the few formal avenues available to disabled people who believe they have experienced disability discrimination. As I learned more about how ADA complaints are typically resolved through civil enforcement and mediation, I knew a lawsuit wasn’t what I was seeking. I wanted a conversation about how live music could do better.
Over the last year, I’ve spoken with more than 50 people across the disabled community and the entertainment industry about accessibility — its history, its present, and its future. I also attended more shows, where my experiences ranged from frustrating to perfectly fine to genuinely great. But despite bright spots and improvements in the disability landscape, the fact remains that too many disabled people still feel cast aside or left out entirely when it comes to live entertainment.
The ADA section at Brooklyn’s Paramount Theatre. Griffin Lotz Kelsey Peterson is a writer, dancer, and podcaster in Wisconsin who uses a wheelchair since sustaining a spinal cord injury in 2012 that left her paralyzed her from her chest down. She told me about seeing her favorite band, Widespread Panic, at Milwaukee’s Riverside Theater last October: “Thirteen years ago, I’d be in the balcony raging with a beautiful view and better sound. Now I’m stuck under the balcony because there’s literally nowhere else for me.”
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Peterson continued, “You’re like the afterthought misfits.” The emotional toll, she said, can outweigh the physical one. “You’re not just going to a show to experience joy. You’re going to a show to overcome all the microaggressions. And then try to get to the joy.”
ONE IN FOUR AMERICANS — nearly 70 million adults — live with a disability, according to the most recent CDC data available, from 2024. Those numbers are only growing as America’s population continues to age. Studies indicate a rising trend in people living with disabilities. Researchers describe the Covid-19 pandemic as a “mass disabling event” that has brought millions of newly disabled people into public life and forced spaces to confront long-avoided accessibility failings.
Most able-bodied people tend to think of disability pretty narrowly and visibly: people who use wheelchairs or people born with conditions like cerebral palsy. But disability is widely varied and nuanced. It is the cancer survivor returning to work with less stamina, the veteran reading lips after combat-induced hearing loss, the cyclist learning to trust their body again after an accident. And they all come to live music for the same reasons anyone does: to celebrate artists they love, let go, and feel less alone.
Amy Wood, an accessible events manager for Salesforce who is deaf and a dedicated Swiftie, says she is often met with surprise when she mentions loving live music. “I can feel the beat, and if I’m really close to the speaker, I can hear some of the music,” she says. “You always are having to dispel these stereotypes or these myths or assumptions about people with disabilities. People with disabilities want to party, too!”
John Kenefick is an Albuquerque artist, military veteran, wheelchair user, and massive EDM fan. He used to feel self-conscious and lonely in his wheelchair, until he transformed it with decorative large-scale papier-mâché sculptures at shows as a way of claiming space and inviting people into conversation. He is now a fierce advocate for fellow disabled veterans who want to enjoy concerts. “They just need to know that they’re wanted and there’s room for them,” he says.
The Americans With Disabilities Act, signed into law in 1990, has spurred much progress in carving out that space. Title III of the ADA requires public-facing businesses like concert venues and music festivals to provide disabled patrons with equal access to “goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages and accommodations.”
John Kenefick, a.k.a. “Mr. Mushroom, says fellow disabled veterans “need to know there’s room for them” at concerts. Griffin Lotz To fulfill these terms, venues and festivals should remove architectural and communication barriers for disabled customers, providing ramps, level entry options, and clear and navigable routes to move through spaces. They must also provide reasonable modifications — including accessible signage, websites, and ticketing systems for people who are blind, deaf, or have low vision — so that people with disabilities can participate fully and equally in their services. In practical terms, this means disabled patrons should be able to buy a ticket as easily as anyone else, get into the venue without extra hurdles, move through the space unimpeded, and have a safe place to experience the show. But in reality, access is often inconsistent or treated as a burden. Disabled concertgoers are still navigating systems that fall short of the law’s intent, even when concert venues and music festivals may be technically ADA compliant.
The ADA regulations for temporary events like outdoor concerts and music festivals were last updated in 2010 and set only the minimum technical requirements for access. As disability has grown in both numbers and visibility, these baseline requirements have become inadequate, advocates say. Compliance can amount to little more than proof that boxes were checked, even when the experience itself can feel exclusionary.
“Whenever I hear that a venue is ‘ADA compliant,’ my antennae go up,” says Jim LeBrecht, a Bay Area filmmaker, Deadhead, and wheelchair user, who co-directed the Oscar-nominated 2020 documentary Crip Camp, about a summer camp for disabled youth, with Nicole Newnham. “When the message is ‘we did what we were required to do,’ what you’re really saying is you don’t care about the intent of the law, which is to make sure people with disabilities can show up for an evening of entertainment like non-disabled people do.”
Disability inclusion, LeBrecht argues, is an opportunity for promoters and cannot stop at technical compliance. “We [disabled people] are not a pain in the ass,” LeBrecht tells me. “We live in a world that wasn’t built for us. If you choose to be in this business, it’s your responsibility to make sure everybody has a good experience. And I mean everybody.”
THE ADA IS A CIVIL RIGHTS law largely regulated and enforced by the Department of Justice. Civil rights laws are largely complaint-driven by design, to avoid overreach and excessive surveillance by the government. However, this setup places the burden on disabled people to recognize discrimination, document it, and push back. Meaningful change usually doesn’t happen until a disabled person has been harmed. And that change can sometimes have unanticipated effects.
In 2019, when Amy Fink was 20 years old, she bought tickets to a reggae-punk fusion show at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, the open-air venue in Colorado. But Fink, who uses a wheelchair, noticed something odd when she tried to buy a ticket. The price of a general admission ticket was $49.99, but when she checked the box to indicate she required accessible seating, the price increased $40. “Why should I have to pay more just because I need a wheelchair-accessible seat?” Fink wondered.
“You’re not just going to a show to experience joy. You have to overcome all the microaggressions. And then try to get to the joy.”
Podcaster and disability advocate Kelsey Peterson
At the time, Fink was undergoing cancer treatments and was fed up with how people treated her when she was using her wheelchair. “People stop you at the grocery store and ask why you’re in a wheelchair. They treat you like you are a nuisance and a leech,” Fink says. “I remember thinking, ‘I’m not going to put up with this. I’m not going to just let this happen to me and other people.’”
So, Fink filed a complaint with the Department of Justice.
Three years later, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado reached a settlement with Red Rocks Amphitheatre and its owner-operator, the City and County of Denver. Between 2018 and 2020, the DOJ determined, Red Rocks overcharged 1,817 accessible tickets across 178 events. Concert promoters Live Nation, AEG, and PBS12 each paid a civil penalty, amounting to a total of $47,950.90 refunded to disabled fans who were overcharged for wheelchair-accessible seats.
“It may not feel like a lot of money to Live Nation or AEG or the city of Denver, but it’s not always about that,” Peter McNeilly, U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado, says. “Money is simply a quantifiable way to say there was not fairness and there wasn’t equal access.”
McNeilly says the Red Rocks case had three goals: to ensure disabled people could access a historic venue, to make whole those who were harmed, and to change how things were done going forward. While settlements like this do not set legal precedent for other venues, he notes, they can create momentum. “If other venues see what Red Rocks did to work this out,” McNeilly tells me, “they may choose to do something similar.”
The DOJ process also prompted broader accessibility improvements at Red Rocks, including expanded accessible parking, rebuilt ramps and plazas, and upgraded accessible bathrooms. Because the amphitheater is built into a mountainside, wheelchair-accessible seating is limited to the very front and very back row. Before the settlement, that setup forced disabled fans into either the highest or lowest ticket prices, excluding them from equal access to purchasing mid-priced tickets available to other fans. Red Rocks now requires all accessible seats to be sold at the lowest ticket price.
But even that victory came at a cost. Red Rocks venue director Tad Bowman says that while the ticketing changes improved the overall experience for disabled fans, they also created an unintended consequence: non-disabled fans buying up wheelchair-accessible tickets just to get a front-row bargain.
Improvements were made to walkways and ramps at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in 2024, following a civil rights complaint filed by a disabled concertgoer. Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post/Getty Images “There’s not much we can do about that,” Bowman says. Venues are legally prohibited from requiring proof of a disability, a safeguard meant to protect disabled patrons’ privacy and dignity. Venues have to take a buyer’s word for it when they attest they need an accessible seat. “We can’t go up to someone and say, ‘We don’t think you have a disability, prove it,’ because then we’re also violating the ADA.”
Of the roughly 9,500 seats at Red Rocks, just 121 seats are wheelchair-accessible at each show. When non-disabled people game the system and buy up the limited quantity of accessible seats, disabled fans are excluded from being part of the music. Because of barriers like these, many disabled fans simply stop going to shows, deciding it is not worth the physical toll, the anxiety, or the indignity. It’s the exact opposite result of what cases like the Red Rocks suit are intended to address.
As Mike Foehse, a Minneapolis entrepreneur and musician with low vision and hearing loss, puts it, “How many people are sitting on the sidelines saying, ‘I wish I could go to that show, but I’m just not gonna deal with it’? I can’t do what I used to do, it’s really frustrating. You become less and less relevant. And that’s hard to swallow. Am I obsolete?”
DISABLED MUSICIANS ALSO FEEL the impact of navigating inaccessible venues. In 2018, Portugal. The Man played the Burton Cummings Theatre in Winnipeg. Erik Howk, the band’s guitarist who uses a wheelchair, couldn’t visit the venue’s green room because it was only accessible by a spiral staircase. “I just remember chain smoking alone in the alleyway in February in Manitoba until showtime,” Howk tells me.
But when Howk and the band returned to the venue in 2023, the green room had been updated to be wheelchair accessible. “That wasn’t me shaking my fist or getting on a soapbox,” Howk says. “They saw what the experience was for a disabled musician, determined that it was unacceptable, and fixed it.”
While the Burton Cummings Theatre recognized and addressed the issue, Howk says that outcome is the exception, far from the rule. What frustrates him most is the reflexive apology that typically accompanies the accessibility gap instead, often getting in the way of real problem-solving. “Getting past the apology is 100 percent of the game,” he said. “To start off a concert experience with an apology is a bummer. The apology is a given. Shame becomes a stopping point instead of a starting place. Figure out solutions.”
Eric Howk of Portugal. The Man says venues and promoters need to “[get] past the apology” when it comes to accessibility and “figure out solutions.” Griffin Lotz One challenge is that the music industry still has remarkably little data to guide those solutions. Disabled audiences, artists, and music professionals remain vastly understudied, particularly in the United States.
Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities (RAMPD), founded by musicians Lachi and Gaelynn Lea, hopes to help change that. Their goal is “to amplify disability culture through the music industry,” says Lachi, a blind recording artist whose music blends EDM, pop, and soul sounds. Or, put another way, “I entertain people into giving a crap about disability.”
Alongside its advocacy work, the organization is conducting one of the first large-scale studies of disabled fans and music professionals in the United States. The results, expected sometime next year, could establish an important baseline for measuring disability access and participation across the American music industry.
Until research efforts like these might encourage broader industry change, progress often depends on individual venues deciding to make improvements on their own. For the Burton Cummings Theatre, that has meant continuing to update the historic 1907 building using the ADA as a benchmark — despite operating in Canada. “We’re inviting people into our building,” Ruben Ramalheiro, director of live entertainment for True North Sports + Entertainment, which operates the theater, says, “so we want people to feel like they would in their own home.”
FESTIVALS AND OUTDOOR SHOWS, of course, present distinct challenges when it comes to accessibility. Some promoters outsource that work to specialized contractors like Accessibility Live. Founded by Austin Whitney in 2016, the company is the primary accessibility services provider for both Live Nation and AEG, overseeing accessibility at 120 to 130 concerts and festivals each year. Accessibility Live hires hundreds of temporary seasonal employees to staff teams at large festivals like Coachella, EDC, and more recently Bonnaroo.
Whitney has a very personal view of accessibility across the industry. In 2007, a car accident severed his spinal cord, paralyzing him from the waist down. “I was scared, depressed, and anxious,” he tells me. “I had all sorts of body image issues. I felt alone.” He found solace in experiencing live music when he attended Coachella in 2008 as a new wheelchair user, with his friends helping him overcome the accessibility barriers he encountered at the festival.
“People treat you like you are a nuisance. I thought, ‘I’m not going to put up with this. I’m not going to just let this happen to me and other people.’”
Amy Fink, who filed a civil rights complaint after an experience with Red Rocks
Whitney began working at Coachella in 2011 and started running their accessibility program five years later. He is drawn to temporary infrastructure events, because “it’s a blank slate every year.” Unlike permanent venues, festivals are built and dismantled in a matter of days, requiring accessibility teams to adapt to varied terrain, temporary infrastructure, and changing weather. Those parameters can offer the opportunity for creativity and on-the-fly problem-solving. Yet they don’t always make for lasting change.
“Built infrastructure has memory,” Whitney tells me. “We [festivals] don’t have that, so it relies a lot on people. Most frontline festival staff, they’re temporary. Their training has to be short, repeatable, and specific. That’s where a lot of the breakdowns unfortunately happen.”
Whitney acknowledges that communication is one area where the industry can improve, particularly in giving disabled fans clearer information about what to expect for accessibility accommodations before they arrive.
“People now take in so much different information from different places,” Whitney says, citing social media and online fan communities. “A website with accessible information probably isn’t going to convey enough in order to help prepare fans with disabilities to set expectations for them to have a great time.”
In reporting this story, I struggled to find meaningful public data about disabled fans and live music. I searched high and low for information about how many disabled fans utilize accessibility services at concerts of various sizes and types of venues and how often accommodations reach or exceed capacity. Whitney tells me there are “a lot of data points for any given show.” But, he adds, “It’s data that I can’t really delve into. It’s not my data to share.” Without that information, it is difficult to know how frequently disabled fans encounter barriers, if the same problems recur across events, or how feedback and demand translate into improvements.
The live-music ecosystem is largely controlled by a small number of powerful promoters, namely Live Nation and AEG. When I asked the industry giants how accessibility decisions are made, evaluated, and improved upon, I was met with more caution than candor.
After six weeks of back and forth, Live Nation declined to answer my specific questions about accessibility decision-making, vendors, budgeting, feedback evaluation, and accountability. Instead, the company provided a brief values-based statement from its head of venues and highlighted its partnership with KultureCity, a nonprofit focused on sensory accessibility through venue certification and tools like quiet spaces and sensory bags for neurodiverse patrons.
It is notable that Live Nation created a director of accessibility role in 2023. However, after my repeated requests, the company declined an on-the-record conversation with the person who leads accessibility work at the largest live-entertainment company in the world.
AEG did respond to one of my specific questions about disabled fan feedback and follow-through. Erik Barker, director of risk mitigation for AEG Presents and Goldenvoice, told me via email, “For concerns that are raised through our official channels, fans should expect to receive a response. We strive for a 100 percent response rate. Our email inbox is monitored 24/7, 365 days a year.” Barker added, “The majority of the feedback we get is complimentary.”
Yet, this is not what happened in my experience. After my own accessibility concerns in California last fall, I emailed my feedback to the official AEG accessibility email. I never received a reply.
When I asked major festivals for comment for this story, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza declined. Coachella did not respond.
Accessibility failures thrive in the dark, where no one has to explain how decisions are made, why capacity isn’t anticipated accurately, or what accessibility actually looks like when thousands of disabled people often have to navigate barriers. The gap between fear and possibility is where progress gets stuck.
Crip Camp co-director Jim LeBrecht puts it more bluntly: “If you’re not willing to be quoted for this article, it speaks to a fear of being called out. Fear that you’re opening yourself up for criticism. If that’s your fear, then maybe you aren’t doing it right. Or you want to let sleeping dogs lie. That you know that there are problems that you’re not fixing. Well, fuck ’em. You can quote me on that.”
IF THE INDUSTRY DOESN’T want to do the right thing for its own sake, concert promoters could consider how much money they’re leaving on the table by ignoring the needs of disabled consumers. Disabled people represent an emerging economic force that businesses systematically under-serve. A 2024 study shows that people with disabilities in North America and Europe control roughly $2.6 trillion in annual disposable income.
“Inclusivity is a term that’s used a lot. [But] if you can’t get in the gate, you can’t go to the festival. If you can’t use the bathroom, you can’t go to the festival.”
ADA coordinator Holly Maniatty
Speaking with many disabled music fans about how they like to spend their money, I learned that those who are treated well tend to be deeply loyal. When access works, when communication is clear, when staff know what they are doing, disabled fans come back. They bring friends. They buy merch. They build community around artists and venues that make them feel welcome.
Carly Webster recently graduated from college in Ohio with a degree in arts management. She also has cerebral palsy, uses a walker, and works VIP and merch booths at concerts and festivals. So Webster understands the accessibility gap from multiple angles, both as a fan and as someone trying to build a career in live music.
“When I first entered the music industry, I wanted to go on tour,” she told me. “But they could just as easily hire somebody who doesn’t have accessibility needs. That’s a hard pill to swallow. But I also want to be visible, out there with my disability. I want younger disabled people to see that they can go to shows and work in the industry.”
Webster speaks bluntly about the business case. “Disabled folks are a valuable investment. If 25 percent of the U.S. population is disabled, imagine the revenue if those people knew your shows were accessible and that you actually cared.”
Last December, business leaders gathered in Tokyo for Sync25, a global summit focused on disability accountability in business. Marcie Roth, CEO and executive director of the World Institute on Disability, said at the gathering that disability inclusion offers “one of the greatest economic opportunities of our time. Companies that fail to include us [disabled people] are not only perpetuating inequity, they are leaving enormous innovation, talent, and market value on the table.”
“We worked really hard to get these rights,” Roth adds. As a mobility scooter user who loves Bruce Springsteen’s music, she channels the Boss’ lyrics when it comes to disability justice: “‘No retreat, no surrender.’ Disabled people just want to boldly go where everybody else has gone before.”
HOLLY MANIATTY IS A CERTIFIED ADA coordinator who started in the industry as an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter for artists like Wu-Tang Clan, Eminem, and Dave Matthews Band. Her accessibility coordination consulting includes large-scale events like NASCAR and 13 years on the accessibility services team at Bonnaroo. Maniatty notes that many of the most meaningful accessibility failures do not boil down to budgets or bottom-line business decisions: “It’s time spent and communication.”
Maniatty’s accessibility approach is rooted in what she calls “experiential equity.” She explains further, “Inclusivity in general is a term that’s used a lot with disability. I think of it more as experiential equity. Because if you can’t get in the gate, you can’t go to the festival. If you can’t use the bathroom, you can’t go to the festival.”
ASL interpreter and ADA coordinator Holly Maniatty (left, in 2016) strives to foster what she calls “experiential equity” at concerts. Erika Goldring/FilmMagic Maniatty finds hope in a growing group of independent festivals that are approaching accessibility as a core value. “These smaller festivals, they’re really raising the bar for the industry giants,” she says.
Colorado’s Meadow Creek Music Festival, launched in 2025 with 10,000 guests in its inaugural year, is one example. “We’re 280 acres in the middle of nowhere Colorado. Everything we do has to be intentional,” founder Jake Frommer says. That included bringing Maniatty into the process early and treating accessibility as foundational. “When Holly said, ‘These are the ways to really make sure everyone feels included,’ we were like, amazing, let’s make this happen.”
Frommer, a longtime producer who’s worked at Electric Forest, Coachella, and Stagecoach festivals, wanted accessibility to be more than a value statement at Meadow Creek. “It’s really easy to write a core value down,” he says. “But how are you actually living that? How are you bringing it to life?”
Maniatty sees that mindset as the real differentiator. “It is about creating a pathway for people to have moments where they feel truly free.”
David Sussman has been navigating live music using a wheelchair longer than most venues have been thinking about accessibility. “There’s lots of opportunities that weren’t there 48 years ago when I became disabled. The world is opening up for us, and has been for many decades. Now we just have to move to the next level, be more inclusive. It just makes for a better world.”
Sussman remembers the 1999 Glastonbury Festival as both frightening and unforgettable. He and his friends were caught in a crush of people trying to reach R.E.M. on a narrow bridge. Sussman grabbed onto his friend and said “Listen, man, this is life or death for me. If I go down in this crowd, I’ll be trampled.”
After his spinal transverse myelitis diagnosis at 15 years old, his father told him, “This sucks. But now go live your life. Don’t look back.”
I REMEMBER MY FIRST CONCERT vividly, piling friends into my tiny Geo Metro on a frigid Iowa night in 1995 to see the Indigo Girls. I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since: watching U2 wail on their guitars in the pouring rain, seeing the Rolling Stones at Soldier Field with brand-new college friends, hearing Mumford & Sons sing “Nothing Compares 2 U” in Minnesota the night Prince died, feeling 17 again at the Eras Tour with my daughter.
Over the last year attending shows as a disabled person, I’ve noticed what makes a difference in accessibility services: infrastructure and personnel training. Permanent venues, as Whitney pointed out, often have an advantage over temporary events as they are built with specific access requirements. Brick-and-mortar facilities also tend to have more regular staff who are trained to understand accommodating disabled guests within their specific location.
I recently saw a show at the Armory in Minneapolis. Before attending, I emailed to figure out my accessibility options for a standing general admission ticket. The box office promptly emailed me back with clear answers, so I knew what to expect. When I arrived, an elevator attendant helped me get to the general admission floor and asked which songs I was most excited to hear. They told me what to do if I needed more assistance before I headed into the crowd with my walker.
None of this was extraordinary. But that’s what made it extraordinary. I didn’t have to spend the night problem-solving my disability. I could just enjoy the show.
Living with disability hasn’t fundamentally changed who I am or what I love. I still want to experience live music the way I always have: immersed, part of the energy, sharing moments of connection and joy with friends and strangers for a few hours. What has changed is my awareness of how often access is treated as optional or an afterthought. Once you experience that gap, you can’t unsee it.
But there is another path forward. One where experiential equity is built in from the beginning, where disabled fans are assumed to be an integral part of the audience, and where live music becomes more expansive.
I’d buy a ticket to that world. Wouldn’t you?
