Welcome back to the Disability Pride Readathon! I had such a blast running this last year, and I’m so excited to bring it back for Disability Pride Month 2026! The readathon this year will include: 12 main prompts and a bingo board, an international bingo raffle for a $25 giftcard, exclusive content, and more! Let's get into the details:
What Is Disability Pride Month?
July is Disability Pride Month in commemoration of the Americans With Disabilities Act which was signed into law on July 26, 1990. The goal of Disability Pride is to celebrate disabled lives and challenge ableism and the stigmatization of disability.
The CDC estimates that 1 in 4 Americans have some form of disability, and WHO estimates that 1.3 billion people are disabled worldwide. Despite the widespread existence of disabled people, disability remains heavily stigmatized, and disability rights are under attack, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. As systemic ableism and discriminatory laws seek to dehumanize and further marginalize disabled voices, now more than ever, we need disability pride.
What Is the Disability Pride Readathon?
In honor of Disability Pride Month I’m hosting the Disability Pride Readathon throughout the month of July, beginning July 1st and ending July 31st. My hope for this readathon is to celebrate disability representation, disabled authors, and the disabled experience. Reading from a diverse perspective increases empathy, and reading and promoting disability representation spreads awareness and builds acceptance.
This community that I have means the absolute world to me, and as someone who is myself chronically ill and disabled, I want to use my platform to uplift disabled voices, disability representation, and promote a more accessible equitable world for disabled people and all people. Someday, I hope that this Bindery community will have enough paid subscribers to become its own publishing imprint, publishing books starring disabled main characters, all written by disabled authors. By subscribing to my Bindery for $5 a month, you help us towards that goal (and get access to exclusive content!) as well as support my ability to keep making the content that I'm so proud of. But even if the paid subscription isn't for you, joining this community on the free tier brings us closer to this goal and means the world to me!
As excited for this readathon as I am (and trust me, I am so excited!), I also know that it takes more than awareness and reading books to enact societal change, which is why I will once again be donating all of the money that I make from my Bindery subscribers during the month of July to the American Association of People With Disabilities (AAPD), a national disability-led disability rights organization. If you are able, I invite you to donate as well to support their work fighting for and supporting the rights of disabled Americans.
The Disability Pride Readathon will be mainly hosted in the Chronically Bookish discord server (which all members of my Bindery community have access to, whether you are a free or paid subscriber--if you are not already in the discord, you can find that link HERE) as well as here on my Bindery–entirely on the free tier. I will also, of course, be posting on my social platforms as I read, and I encourage you all to as well to help spread the word!
The readathon will include:
A Bingo consisting of 12 main prompts and 4 free "any book" prompts
An international raffle for those who get bingo/blackout for a $25 USD giftcard to bookshop.org (if you're in the US/UK, otherwise it will be to a bookstore in your country!)
Exclusive content (including book recs for each prompt from disabled content creators and authors!)
Ongoing discussion, casual reading sprints, community, and more on the Discord server!
The disabled experience is not a monolith, which is why this readathon consists of 12 prompts encouraging you to read across the expanse of what it can mean to be disabled:
A book with a physically disabled main character
A Book with a multiply-marginalized disabled main character (BIPOC disabled MC, LGBTQ+ disabled MC, etc)
A book recommended in the Chronically Bookish Discord server
A book with a visibly disabled character on the cover
A book where the main character has an invisibly disability
A book with a neurodivergent main character
A book set in a country other than where you live
A book where the main character has a sensory disability
A book with two or more disabled characters
A memoir by a disabled author
A self-published book
A book where the main character has a psychiatric disability/mental illness
These prompts can be found in the form of a Storygraph challenge HERE (please note this is UNOFFICIAL and DOES NOT count as logging your bingos!!!)
Every book read for this readathon must have a disabled main character, and while it is not strictly required, I strongly encourage you to read books by own voices and disabled authors. Audiobooks, of course, will count towards the challenge, as will graphic novels, comics, and novellas. At this time, fan fiction will not count towards the bingo, but basically anything that could be logged on GoodReads or The Storygraph will!
Bingo Rules and Guidelines
These 12 prompts plus 4 "any book" prompts in the corners make up the Disability Pride readathon bingo board! One lucky winner will receive a $25 USD giftcard to bookshop.org if they're based in the US or UK, or to a bookstore in their country if not (if all else fails... we'll do Amazon).
Each book read for the readathon can be used for up to two prompts--this means you only have to read two books to get a bingo, or six to get a blackout!
Your first Bingo = your first raffle entry
Blackout = your second raffle entry
Raffle entries will be doubled for Inner Circle members (so 2 entries for first bingo, 4 for blackout)
In order to be entered into the raffle, you must post a photo of your completed Bingo board to the #bingo channel in the Chronically Bookish Discord server. You can post as soon as you get a Bingo and then again when you get Blackout, or you can post once at the very end–your entries will be counted either way. If you’re a Bindery subscriber who doesn’t have Discord but still wants to participate, you can email your completed Bingo card to kaleyreads@gmail.com.
Thank you so much for participating in the Disability Pride Readathon and for all your support in my bookish endeavors–I cannot express how excited I am to bring this readathon back for year 2!!
