Alyssa Brown of King George is Miss Wheelchair Virginia 2026
Brown is advocating for informed sensitivity training on disability for people who work in public-facing jobs.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
Email Adele
Alyssa Brown recalls one experience in college that inspired her to become an advocate for people with disabilities.
Brown, 28, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair to get around, was trying to enter a building to attend one of her college classes, but the door was not equipped with an automatic opener.
“One of the receptionists saw that I was having trouble,” recalled Brown. “So she called whoever she had to call to get one of the buttons installed [to open the door automatically], and I was the reason that happened.”
Brown, who is Miss Wheelchair Virginia for 2026 and is currently fundraising to attend the national Miss Wheelchair contest, has plenty of experiences of feeling discriminated against to draw from to inform her advocacy.
Just in the past year, there was the yoga class she tried to attend, only to be told she didn’t belong there and should attend the adaptive class.
“I had already been to adaptive yoga and I know my body more than anybody else does,” she said. “I kept trying to explain to the instructor that I know how to do it from my upper body and that I was there for the experience. But the instructor told me the class wasn’t a good fit for me.”
The same thing happened recently in a swimming class.
“They told me the class was too fast-paced for me and that they didn’t know how I would be able to handle it, even though I had my mom there and I also had a life jacket, so I knew what it would be like,” Brown said.
These negative experiences are motivating, but the positive experience of being an agent of change—and feeling seen by others—was a major catalyst for her.
“There are good people, and seeing other people advocate for me when I don’t realize it’s happening is what inspired me to become an advocate as well,” Brown said.
Brown grew up around the country in a military family, but has lived in King George for the past two years. She won the title of Miss Wheelchair Virginia based on her platform, which is required disability sensitivity training for all people who perform public facing jobs.
She doesn’t want anyone to feel the way she did in the yoga class or in the swimming class—like they are seen as liabilities instead of people.
Brown studied communications and uses that tell her story effectively in person and on social media. She’s also using her platform to help raise awareness of the Changing Spaces Campaign, which advocates for the inclusion of height adjustable adult sized changing tables in public bathrooms.
“I don’t want my adult friends to be changed on a bathroom floor or in the back of the car or be told they belong at home and not as part of society b/c there’s not the ability to deal with that [in public facilities],” Brown said.
A bill that would have required the Virginia Department of Transportation to include adult changing tables in rest areas and welcome centers was introduced in the General Assembly this session. It did not make it out of committee, but VDOT is now aware of this need, according to an update posted to the Changing Spaces Virginia/DC Facebook page—and that in itself is a small win.
“I can see that every time I roll into a room to speak about my platform, everybody is like ‘Oh, I didn’t even think about that,’” Brown said. “The more that I talk about it, the more people want to hear more about it.”
As Miss Wheelchair Virginia, Brown is also the state coordinator for the Miss Wheelchair program. In addition to speaking about her own platform everywhere she can, her job is to recruit other women in wheelchairs to become the next Miss Wheelchair Virginia.
“I would love to connect with as many people as possible,” Brown said.
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