Happy 20th Birthday ADA

Despite the law, stigmas against people with disabilities are prevalent, and many argue that society and its systems have yet to catch up to the intent of ADA. Although accessibility is the law, it is often not the social practice.  Until inclusion is a fundamental part of the collective mindset, the fight for people with disabilities will continue.

Suzanne Robitaille is the founder of ablebody.com and is a disability advocate. Ms. Robitaille also has firsthand experience with the law, as she is deaf.

Ms. Robitaille offered this quote to Ablegamers regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act: “To me, the real purpose of the ADA is to spark the current of social change, to bring more people into the workforce, to undo attitudes, to advance acceptance of differently abled people and to encourage diversity. The ADA has done this to some extent, but our society and systems still make it very hard for the disabled to work full-time, to get accessible transportation, to get affordable healthcare. The ADA is not a tool to be used bluntly, like a hammer, when things go wrong. It should be used like a paintbrush to depict a fuller picture of how justice should look when something seems askew.  I see too many people abusing the ADA for bad and not enough people using the ADA for good.

What the ADA does is gives us a means for making and benchmarking progress over the years. Twenty years from now I hope there's no such thing as an inaccessible subway, or a job that can't be modified for a qualified person who is house-bound, or a cell phone that plays videos without captions. Right now, we in the disability community push for this, and mostly we get backlash. There has not been that significant, pivotal point where businesses and our larger society is saying, 'How dare we think we can create a product or service that is totally unusable for the disabled?" Especially if it;s a technology product, because the disabled are probably the group that will reap the highest benefit from it, whether it's an e-reader or a smart phone or a video game console. We still have to change our thinking in America about disabilities. The ADA is there as a backdrop, but we still need a larger social movement or else we are going to end up trying to legislate everything we want.”

An important part of equality is the recognition that people deserve real rights beyond legislative concessions. Although the letter of the law is realized, the spirit of the law, inclusion, has yet to be realized. Until that happens, the fight for people with all levels of ability continues.

Comments (1)

Daniel Linger

July 27, 2010

Votes: +0

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*applause*

A worthy cause to celebrate, not least as anything to bring a bit more awareness to the plight of the disabled among us is a good thing, right?

As a UK resident, we introduced our version of this law (mostly) in 1995, although there's still some parts of it that aren't due to come into effect for some time.

And, to be brutally honest, it's not been an easy ride. Part due to our pathetic governments giving us these rights, but not giving us the means to do anything about it! In other words, should I suffer inequal rights of access to something, I can happily phone the Equalities Commission who can tell me whether or not someone's breaking the law, and then say good luck in getting it sorted out - wonderful.

This is one of the reasons I became a disabled access auditor. So that I COULD do something about it. Should anyone come to me with a problem, I can better advise them legally, and pursue the case on their behalf to a large extent (then it's on to the solicitors of course).

However, as mentioned in this article, one of the major problems we both (the US and UK) share is that of social attitude.

In the main, I get work from either an aggrieved disabled person, or from a business needing further advice on modifications, etc. And I have to say the vast majority of those cases fall into two categories: those that welcome me with open arms to the problem(s), and those that fight it - there seems to be no middle ground.

It is sad to say that there still is an amount of public resentment from, dare I say it, "normal" people. From a business point of view, I've witnessed many an example of not wanting to provide any disabled assistance because of bizarre reasons such as "you get more help than anybody, anyway".

So, I do hope we're moving onwards to better things, but until public attitude as a whole changes, we won't ever reach that situation where the "how dare we think we can create a product or service that is totally unusable for the disabled?" is taken for granted.

As far as I'm concerned, I only see things at present as being the beginning.

Although, I can sincerely say that I hope things do improve markedly, the extent that I'm out of a job! Bizarrely, nothing would please me more.

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