Grateful Yet Impatient: The Americans with Disabilities Act Turns 31
This week marks the 31st Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Unfortunately, I am not in much of a party mood.
On July 26, 1990, President George H.W. Bush declared, "Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down," as he signed the ADA into law, the most significant disability civil rights legislation to date.
It feels like the wall is still up, however. And actually, that it is longer, higher, and wider than ever. With every year that passes that the statutes of the ADA are not enforced, the bigger that wall grows. But before we travel further down that metaphor, let's refresh our memories about what precisely the ADA is.
The ADA is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. It affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made discrimination based on race, religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics illegal, and later sexual orientation. In addition, unlike the Civil Rights Act, the ADA also requires covered employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities and imposes accessibility requirements on public accommodations.
The ADA has 5 Titles or subsections. They are:
Title I: Employment
Title II: Public Entities and Public Transportation
Title III: Public Accommodations (and Commercial Facilities)
Title IV: Telecommunications
Title V: Miscellaneous Provisions (Technical and anti-retaliation or coercion provision)
For the full explanation of the law and its Titles, you can click on this Wikipedia Article.
For a law that seems so comprehensive, tell me why then, are disabled peoples' rights violated daily?
For example,
I can't navigate all of my neighborhood sidewalks safely because there is not a curb cut on every corner.
Not all businesses are fully accessible.
When I travel, I worry that my mobility and medical equipment will be damaged (because it has before).
Disabled people receiving SSI benefits cannot marry without it affecting their benefit.
I receive SSDI and I am limited to what the government considers "significant gainful activity."
Businesses that say they are accessible but don't have bathrooms I can use because the doors are too narrow, and the stalls are too small.
I do not have a visual or hearing impairment, but I have friends who do, and I recognize all the ways that the world is not accessible for them.
My friend is a quadriplegic, and I see how she struggles to maintain affordable, safe, and quality caregiving staff.
The majority of my friend's and family's homes are not accessible.
Getting accessible cabs is very difficult. And Lyft and Uber are not even an option for me because I use a mobility scooter.
And don't even get me going on all of the ableist and prejudicial B.S. we have to put up just for existing.
Speaking of prejudice, part of what I believe ADA’s mission is that it defines rules and guardrails that create an environment where prejudices and biases can be questioned rather than fostered. The ADA is meant to create an open, equal, and accessible society for disabled people. A society where we can go to school, and work, ride on buses and airplanes, get married, have children--do all the same things that non-disabled people do every damn day, with them, among them, alongside them.
So that over time, disabled people will be regarded as no less worthy, capable, valued, or desired than any other non-disabled person. You see, what changes attitudes is exposure. And while I shudder to think that disabled people are something that non-disabled people need "exposure" to, the sad fact is that they do. Human nature, for the most part, dictates that what we don't understand, we fear. It is only through interaction that real inclusion can happen. It is only through shared experiences that relationships can form. Only through living our lives together will we ever fulfill the true promise of the ADA.
I am thankful for all of the disability rights leaders who fought so hard for the ADA passage and those who have continued the hard advocacy work since. And I am not just talking about the politicians or lobbyists or prominent policy leaders who fill board room across the country. I am talking about the community activists who work full time at their 9-5 and then write letters, make phone calls, and run petition drives in their evenings and weekends. Every win or success of our civil rights moment has happened because one person led the charge to say, "this is not okay." Please make no mistake: nothing has ever been given to us. Every victory has had its sacrifice. You can't be thankful without also being grateful.
And yet, the fight goes on. Currently, in the U.S. Senate, a bill awaits passage that would improve the accessibility of transit stations across the country. Sen. Tammy Duckworth-D, Illinois, is an Iraq war veteran who became a wheelchair user following an injury she sustained flying helicopter missions in the Iraq war. She is a lead sponsor of this legislation because she knows what it feels like to be denied access. It is personal for her.
According to this Bloomberg Article, even 31 years after the passage of the ADA, at least 18 percent of all transportation stations are not accessible. Along with a handful of Democratic senators, Duckworth is pushing for $10 billion over ten years to be included in the Biden Administration's "Build Back Better" infrastructure plan currently being debated in Congress.
Anytime I am using public transit in a major metro area, the first thing I do is make sure I educate myself on where all the stops are with elevators. And then, I always call the 1800 number to make sure the elevator station I want to use is in working order. My worst fear is getting to a station I can't access safely. And so there again, the burden of access is on me. It shouldn't have to be this way.
But as long as there continue to be loopholes and a lack of enforcement of the ADA, it will continue to be disabled peoples’ responsibility to navigate a world that limits our ability to live freely.
Maybe I'll be in more of a party mood next year... or decade.