Four days before the start of the music and art festival Burning Man in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, Jillian Mercado made a spontaneous decision that defied every practical concern: She scored last-minute tickets, booked her first solo flight, and headed to one of the most physically demanding festival environments in the world. As a wheelchair user, the model, actor, and self-described “down to clown” adventurer saw this moment as both the promise and the paradox of festival culture. “It was my first big ‘let’s see what happens’ trip,” she recalls.
The music-festival industry is experiencing rapid economic growth, generating around $3 billion in 2025, and projected to generate roughly $7 to $9 billion by 2030, with North America among the leading regions. Coachella, for instance, regularly draws 125,000 attendees per day across two weekends. Together with its sister festival Stagecoach, which spotlights country music, the event generates about $400 million for California’s Coachella Valley.
Lollapalooza hosts more than 460,000 people across four days in Chicago. As these festivals continue to grow, so does their need for accessibility for all ticket holders. And though in recent years, major festivals have begun integrating changes like dedicated viewing platforms and accessible camping areas, a crucial question remains: How do festivals really measure up when it comes to meaningful access for disabled attendees?
Mapping the Accessibility Landscape
The landscape of accessibility at festivals reveals a fragmented approach. Coachella operates the “Access+” program that requires pre-event application and verification to access designated services. Austin’s South by Southwest Festival and conference integrates accessibility requests into its badge system, provides complimentary support-person access, and includes an app filter that allows attendees to identify events based on specific accessibility features such as American Sign Language interpretation, audio description, or strobe warnings.
Meanwhile, the notoriously muddy and tricky-to-navigate Glastonbury Festival in the U.K.'s Somerset offers a detailed accessibility-planning guide covering camping, viewing platforms, and transport. Lollapalooza provides FAQ documentation but still charges fees for companion tickets. This patchwork of policies—including complimentary versus fee-based access and centralized hubs versus grassroots networks—means disabled festivalgoers must navigate a maze of event-specific protocols, application deadlines, and infrastructure models well in advance of attending.
For Mercado, who has attended Coachella six times, the contrast between policy and practice is stark. “Imagine everyday access issues, but, like, 20 times more,” she explains. The “planning tax,” her term for the exhausting prefestival logistics, consumes roughly 60 percent of her festival experience. “The joy leaves my body because of all the planning,” she says.
The Lived Experience
Model and actor Jillian Mercado at Burning Man, where the challenges of access collide with a culture of radical inclusion that reshapes what festival participation can look like for disabled attendees
Photo by Pandora Pictures/Shutterstock; photo by Jillian Mercado
Shailynn Taylor’s experience at Coachella in 2022 revealed a similar pattern. Navigating the festival in her power wheelchair, she encountered accessibility infrastructure that demonstrated genuine effort but fell short of creating true inclusion. The viewing platforms, though offering excellent sight lines, restrict disabled attendees to a single companion, a policy that fundamentally alters the social fabric of the festival experience. “I felt separate from the overall experience,” Taylor recalls. “Freedom of choice was taken away.”
Transportation barriers amplify these challenges. When Taylor tried to leave a festival spontaneously, accessible transportation simply wasn’t available. She and her friends were stranded overnight waiting for the next morning’s taxi service to resume, and her friends ultimately had to carry her into a standard car. The freedom to come and go, taken for granted by most festivalgoers, was another barrier.
Mercado faced a similar ordeal when she arrived for Burning Man. She encountered a scenario familiar to many disabled travelers: no accessible vehicles. She and her friends improvised, throwing a Home Depot ramp against a truck and loading her wheelchair like cargo. The accessible golf cart that the festival promised her? It never materialized.
Yet, despite facing some of the harshest physical conditions imaginable—extreme heat, dust storms, and an unforgiving alkaline playa surface—Mercado found something unexpected at Burning Man: a culture of inclusion. “The reason I loved it so much is because I never felt excluded,” she says. “Ableism didn’t seem to exist at Burning Man.” The festival’s ethos of radical self-reliance extended naturally to communal support. “We’re all human. We’re all the same,” she reflects.
From Retrofit to Revolution
Progress is happening. Festivals are investing in accessibility infrastructure, training staff, and establishing dedicated programs. But a gap remains between accommodation and integration, between checking boxes and creating meaningful access.
Comprehensive access includes ASL interpretation and real-time captioning, physically accessible pathways across varied terrain, sensory-friendly quiet spaces, properly equipped accessible restrooms, and emergency protocols that account for disabled attendees. The gap between reactive accommodation and proactive inclusion determines whether disabled attendees feel welcomed or merely tolerated.
The next stage of the evolution requires embracing accessibility as foundational design rather than retrofitted updates. Instead of adding accessible features to existing infrastructure, festivals must integrate accessibility into initial planning: universal pathways, flexible viewing options, and transportation partnerships that treat accessibility as standard, not special. Some festivals are discovering that accessibility innovation can enhance the experience in unexpected ways.
Ottawa Bluesfest has partnered with Whimble, an on-demand caregiving platform, to provide on-site attendant care, addressing a critical but often overlooked need. They also introduced accessible lavatory RVs equipped with adult-sized changing tables and enough maneuvering space for a mobility device. These aren’t just accommodations; they’re dignity-preserving innovations that transform accessibility into experience enhancement for people with disabilities.
Additionally, policies that isolate disabled attendees from their friend groups fundamentally misunderstand what festivals are for. Meaningful access means designing for the full social experience, not just physical presence. The most successful innovations emerge from listening to disabled attendees and inviting them into the design process. Organizations like Attitude Is Everything, Accessible Festivals, RAMPD, Lavant Consulting, Xenia Concerts, and The Disability Collective are leading this shift. New models like Toronto’s AccessFest, a festival that has been designed with accessibility in mind since its inception—a core value of the festival—demonstrate what’s possible when inclusion drives the creative vision.
For Mercado, who continues to attend festivals despite the barriers, the motivation is simple: representation. “Festivals are supposed to be a celebration,” she says. “I show up to say we’re here as disabled people, and we’re not going anywhere.”
