A version of this post, with some of the same content, was published last year. A bit of reorganization and some new commentary has been added. I’ve opted to use some of the same content because I do have to ask what has changed in the last year?
If anything, I’d say 31 wasn’t a great year for The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or at the very least, the future is looking less optimistic. The last couple years and months have certainly shown that societal progress is not a certainty and in fact progress can backslide amazingly fast.
July marks the 32nd anniversary of the signing of the ADA. Each year as another year goes by and we celebrate the signing of the legislation, I am torn between feeling celebratory and sad.
I do feel celebratory about the fact that the work of many allowed us to reach this point. As someone who has worked on various accessibility efforts over the years in a small way, I know all too well the toil, endless negotiations and so much more that is required to make progress. So congratulations for sure to those involved in getting this landmark legislation passed and sustained. That is assuredly worth acknowledgement on a grand scale.
Great, celebrate the reality that we have a law that at least gives some hope if it is your choice. I understand perpetual exposure to commentary that it is all trouble can be tough to experience. While you are celebrating, just remember, it isn’t as if in passing the ADA, the amendments to the ADA or other accessibility legislation, Congress has said any of the eight findings they list have gone away.
I urge anyone reading this to read the congressional findings that are listed in the legislation. Like a lot of civil rights legislation, the congressional findings detail that as a class, in this case one to which I belong, people with disabilities are not treated very well and in fact that’s an understatement. Frankly we suffer a staggering amount of outright discrimination and I’m of the opinion that far too often the level of discrimination people with disabilities experience is drastically softened when speaking about the reality of life in the U.S. today. From what I know, the same holds true around the world.
I know from numerous firsthand experiences, calling something discriminatory makes a lot of people uncomfortable. But trust me, experiencing the actual discrimination does much more.
Lest you think discrimination isn’t the right word, here’s the dictionary definition:
“The unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of ethnicity, age, sex, or disability.”
I’m not sure what else you would call much that people with disabilities experience.
To be clear, not all discrimination is intentional in my opinion. In addition, the discrimination is often not the actions of any specific individual but rather the inaction of an organization of some sort, where often well-meaning individuals can find it difficult to go against the inertia that is causing the problematic situations. I also think people get uncomfortable around the term because they think, “Of course I couldn’t discriminate.”
Just because something isn’t intentional does not mean it isn’t happening. Words do matter and how we label what people with disabilities experience daily has an impact on how it is perceived. I recognize on the continuum of circumstances in life, I’m amazingly fortunate. The fact that I can write these words on a computer as someone who’s blind speaks volumes by itself. I have a high degree of security—food, shelter, employment, freedom from war, health insurance and so much more.
If reading that there are multiple challenges is tough or that something seems discriminatory, just remind yourself that the following are still part of the society we’ve created here in the U.S. according to our own congress.
The Congress finds that
(1) physical or mental disabilities in no way diminish a person’s right to fully participate in all aspects of society, yet many people with physical or mental disabilities have been precluded from doing so because of discrimination; others who have a record of a disability or are regarded as having a disability also have been subjected to discrimination;
(2) historically, society has tended to isolate and segregate individuals with disabilities, and, despite some improvements, such forms of discrimination against individuals with disabilities continue to be a serious and pervasive social problem;
(3) discrimination against individuals with disabilities persists in such critical areas as employment, housing, public accommodations, education, transportation, communication, recreation, institutionalization, health services, voting, and access to public services;
(4) unlike individuals who have experienced discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, religion, or age, individuals who have experienced discrimination on the basis of disability have often had no legal recourse to redress such discrimination;
(5) individuals with disabilities continually encounter various forms of discrimination, including outright intentional exclusion, the discriminatory effects of architectural, transportation, and communication barriers, overprotective rules and policies, failure to make modifications to existing facilities and practices, exclusionary qualification standards and criteria, segregation, and relegation to lesser services, programs, activities, benefits, jobs, or other opportunities;
(6) census data, national polls, and other studies have documented that people with disabilities, as a group, occupy an inferior status in our society, and are severely disadvantaged socially, vocationally, economically, and educationally;
(7) the Nation’s proper goals regarding individuals with disabilities are to assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for such individuals; and
(8) the continuing existence of unfair and unnecessary discrimination and prejudice denies people with disabilities the opportunity to compete on an equal basis and to pursue those opportunities for which our free society is justifiably famous, and costs the United States billions of dollars in unnecessary expenses resulting from dependency and nonproductivity.
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