Monday, July 26, 1998
Disabled-rights act turns eight
with some wins, but work ahead
BY DEBORAH KENDRICK
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Eight years ago on this date, on a sunny Thursday morning, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was born.
President George Bush signed the law with the flourish of four pens, which he then distributed to four of the bill's ''parents'' gathered with him on the dais.
Three-thousand close relatives (disability-rights advocates, invited for this historic occasion), assembled on the White House south lawn, looked on with the wonder appropriate to such a birth.
The atmosphere was that of a dignified festival: guests were giddy with excitement, yet restrained, wearing their Sunday manners in the face of an awe-inspiring occasion.
Across the nation and the world, word was spreading that the most comprehensive civil rights legislation since the celebrated 1964 Civil Rights Act had just been passed.
President Bush talked about the walls of exclusion tumbling down, and more than 40 million Americans with disabilities were ready to breathe the air of freedom.
Most people knew such sweeping change couldn't possibly be effected overnight. Even the most impatient knew that it would take time to change buildings and programs and attitudes.
Those who didn't realize within that first year came to understand that the ADA would not be the blanket fix for all the injustices experiences by Americans with physical or mental disabilities.
There is still far more work to be done than has already been completed, but there are points of real victory and progress in these eight years, too.
Most notably, the law has attracted media attention - which means that most people know there is some kind of law protecting the civil rights of people with disabilities.
For each section of the law, regulations have been developed that specify everything from the width of a toilet stall door to the height of a Braille dot on an elevator button. That doesn't mean that every business in America has incorporated ADA regulations into its building code and program guidelines.
Far from it.
It does mean that far more people - on both sides of the business transacting table - know that such regulations exist.
On the ADA's eighth birthday, unemployment among the working-age disabled population is still at an appalling 70 percent. Yet, because of the ADA, awareness has been raised to the point that most employers know that to ask about disability in ways unrelated to the job is not legal in job interviews.
An increasing number of potential workers who have disabilities are realizing that they can not be discriminated against on the basis of disability. Legislators are exploring ways to remove disincentives from our Social Security and Medicare programs, and the president has created a task force under the U.S. Department of Labor to find out why unemployment among those with disabilities is so high and, presumably, to do something about it.
Sure, there are abuses of the law that are insulting to people with real disabilities and heart-breaking to others. But there have also been some truly positive legal decisions made on the strength of this eight-year-old law.
In Maine, a student who could not attend middle school graduation because the gymnasium was inaccessible to her wheelchair learned that she does have rights. When charged with discrimination, the school district settled out of court and agreed to modify its policies and practices.
In New Mexico, Texas, and Pennsylvania, state lottery commissions have been forced to make retail facilities accessible after being charged with discrimination.
And because certain voters believed in themselves and the power of the ADA, there are now polling places in Texas offering ballots in Braille.
''Thursday's child has far to go,'' runs the nursery rhyme, and that is certainly true of the Americans with Disabilities Act. But on this, its eighth birthday, we can celebrate how far it has already come.
Deborah Kendrick, a Cincinnati free-lance writer, is a nationally recognized advocate for people with disabilities. Write: Deborah Kendrick, Cincinnati Enquirer, 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202; e-mail: 71340.473@compuserve.com.
KENDRICK ARCHIVE
