It’s been 35 years since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
This landmark civil rights legislation enshrined protections and rights for Americans with disabilities into law, and as the people who were there for its passage remember, it changed the world.
To celebrate 35 years of the ADA, HDI assembled a panel to talk about how the ADA changed their lives, discuss work that is still needed, and the future.
The panel was moderated by Jason Jones from the University of Kentucky Human Development Institute and included Jerry Wheatley, from the Kentucky Assistive Technology Services Network, David Allgood of the Center for Accessible Living, and Kathy Williams, who worked for the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation. Most members of the panel had lived experience with disability.
Allgood acquired his disability in the 1980s, and remembers clearly the difference between the world before the ADA and the world after.
“Before that, you could discriminate against me because of my disability in access to public buildings, employment, transportation,” he said. “It gave us federal protections and opportunities which I’ve taken advantage of on numerous occasions to have my rights as a person with a disability to be included in our community, in our society.”
Even in places where accessibility lagged, the ADA caused a cultural shift in how people thought about it.
“Before the ADA, you go into a restaurant, you didn’t even expect anybody to mention a braille menu,” Wheatley said. “After the ADA, they might not have a braille menu, but they would apologize for not having one.”
According to Williams, this monumental change didn’t come out of nowhere – it was the end result of decades of work by millions of people, and even after passage, the work wasn’t over.
“It took a long time after passage for people to get on board,” she said. “We had a huge contractor in Kentucky building courthouses and spending tons of money. Those courthouses, five or six or seven years after the passage, were not accessible. So if you were lucky enough to get a summons for jury duty, it was interesting when you got there and could not access the building.”
Even so, the ADA has been a massive force in ensuring a more accessible America, but panelists warned that parts of that could be stripped away.
But in a world where the ADA can pass, it can be protected. Williams said one of the easiest ways to ensure that is to get active in the community and share stories of why it’s important.
“We need to know our state senators. We need to know our state senators. We need to have discussions with them. We need to show them how the ADA is working for us,” she said. “We don’t have to be in war mode right now, but we need to be prepared. We need to know the folks that are going to make the decisions that have to do with our lives every day.”
The content of this article includes the personal opinions of panelists participating in a commemoration event and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the author of the article, the Human Development Institute, or the University of Kentucky.
Image Credit: ADA National Network (adata.org)
