Blind siblings who grew up with disability rights now fear what may come next
BRICK, N.J. — Cody and Kaleigh Brendle grew up learning the world with canes, bikes and a lot of trust in each other. Now the. Blind — full details here.
BRICK, N.J. — Cody and Kaleigh Brendle grew up learning the world with canes, bikes and a lot of trust in each other. Now the blind siblings are facing a different kind of test: whether the rights their generation inherited will hold.
The Brendles spent time together at their parents’ home in Brick, New Jersey, before Kaleigh heads across the country for law school. They grew up near the Jersey Shore, going out on their grandfather’s boat on weekends, learning to swim and riding bikes side by side. Small freedoms. Big meaning.
Raised with a sense of possibility
Kaleigh, 23, remembers being “the annoying little sister” who begged Cody to slow down. She watched her older brother, now 27, tackle rock-climbing walls and waterslides at summer camp and drew her own lesson from it. “Wow, he’s doing all this — maybe I can try,” she recalled.
Both siblings say they have leaned on each other to navigate daily life as blind people. Cody lives at home with their parents. Kaleigh is preparing for a new chapter in law school. Different paths. Same foundation.
They are part of what advocates call the “ADA generation” — people who grew up after disability rights gained broader legal recognition in the United States. For them, access and inclusion were not abstract ideas. They were the baseline.
Why the fight matters now
That baseline now feels less certain to many disability advocates, who worry about a return to institutionalization after a Justice Department memo stoked fear across the community. The concern is not theoretical. It cuts to where people live, how they move through public life and how much independence they can keep.
The Brendles’ story lands at a tense moment for families and advocates who see disability rights as something that still has to be defended, not just remembered. The next test, they say, is whether the promises of integration can survive the current political pressure. The stakes are personal.
And for siblings who grew up cheering each other on from a boat, a pool deck or the base of a climbing wall, the question now is what kind of freedom the next generation will inherit.
