The ADA At 35: Before, During, and Hopes for the Future By Katherine Schneider, Ph.D.

By Katherine Schneider, Ph.D.

I was born blind in 1949, so I have lived over half my life before the ADA (The Americans with Disabilities Act) was passed. I attended public schools before Section 504 and got to ask for my own accommodations. One of the first things I remember requesting was not to play volleyball in fourth-grade gym class. “Go stand in the corner,” I was told. Most of the accommodations I got were better than that, like the geometry teacher who used his wife’s sewing tracing wheel to make raised line drawings to try to explain perspective.

I learned early to ask nicely, persist, and make it seem easy to meet my needs. I learned to have a Plan B if my first request didn’t work. I also learned to recruit allies. An official from Delta airlines advocated for me to be able to ride on the little feeder plane that went to Alexandria, Louisiana, where I was doing my internship. They didn’t want to take “live animals” on the plane, even if it was a Seeing Eye dog, but they gave it a try because of the man from Delta. The Seeing Eye dog did not hijack the plane!

In 1990, Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, and President Bush signed it into law. The Act is a federal civil rights law designed to prevent discrimination and to ensure that individuals with disabilities have equal access to, and may participate fully in, all aspects of American society. It guarantees equal opportunity in public accommodations, employment, transportation, state and local government services, and telecommunications. This important piece of legislation has raised awareness of barriers and challenged perceptions and expectations of people with disabilities. It has empowered many more individuals to live their lives with dignity and choice.

When the ADA is mentioned, we often think of ramps, accessible bathrooms, and other physical access needs. Here are some of the ways the ADA has affected my life as a blind person:

• Standard service animal laws exist across the country, and more people know the laws
• An app for identifying currency so the blind can tell denominations of U.S. paper currency apart if they have a smartphone
• Two of the New York Times’ daily games, Wordle and Connections, are doable with a screen reader 
• Schneider Family Book awards for children’s books with disability content and Schneider Disability Journalism awards are receiving more entries every year, showing that mainstream interest in disability issues is increasing
• Checkers or other accessible board games are more widely available 
• Large print programs at worship services and public events are more common 
• Print/Braille books are sometimes available at public libraries for blind parents and sighted kids, or vice versa, to read together 
• Voting machines with audio capabilities so blind people can vote independently are available in every polling place 
• Local sources of gizmos like Independent Living and Aging and Disability Resource Centers exist, so newly disabled people can try before they buy 
• Occasional audio descriptions are provided in theaters, on Netflix, and on television 
• A few  audio-described movies are available at libraries 
• Audio and touch tours of museums are more common 
• Electronic access for blind people to websites, newspapers, email, etc., is slowly improving 
• Occasional Braille menus, bank statements, greeting cards, etc.
• Audio-enabled ATMs so I can do my own banking
• Paratransit
• Reasonable accommodations so that jobs are accessible
• Virtual meetings, so I don’t have to hunt up a ride to get there

With all this progress, people often ask, “Are we done?” The short answer is “No.”  With every digital improvement, for example, there’s the chance it will go from accessible to my screen reader to inaccessible. Accessibility takes people monitoring and designing for it continuously.

And it takes little personal acts of accessibility like:

• Telling me that there are doughnuts on the counter or a wet paint sign down the hall 
• Labeling those pictures in your social media posts so I know what you’re excited about!
• Volunteering  for Be My Eyes duty 
• Advocating with Congress so vital programs like Bookshare and National Library Service are not cut.
• Advocating with the FCC so broadcasters don’t get yet another pass on making weather warnings like those text crawls at the bottom of the television screen accessible to the blind  

For those who are new to disabilities, it takes realizing that one has to ask and ask repeatedly for accommodations. Even with a new hearing aid, you may have to ask friends to speak up when dining out in a noisy restaurant. It takes trying new adapted equipment and being patient with yourself when results are not perfect. One also has to be (or at least pretend to be) patient with the person you’re asking for an accommodation. They may not know what to do. For example, the city assessor stopped by recently and handed me her card at the end of the house assessment. I said, “I’ll bet you don’t have a Braille card,” and she agreed she didn’t. I then asked her to email me her info, and she did. It was an easy fix, but I had to suggest it. Since she was so pleasant about making the accommodation, I emailed her boss bragging about her customer service. I also hope that the boss spreads the word that accommodations can be easy, simple, and cheap sometimes.

July 26 is the 35th anniversary of the ADA. The ADA gives a standard of what one can ask for, but it takes people of good will to implement it, and it takes patience, time, energy, and persistence to advocate for needed accommodations. We humans don’t change our ways quickly, so all of us need to work together to make changes happen. I remind myself when I get discouraged that every change I help make happen will not just benefit me, but will help the next person with my access needs who encounters it. Onward!

Katherine Schneider, Ph.D. (blind from birth) is a retired clinical psychologist living in Eau Claire, WI, with her tenth Seeing Eye dog. She has served on several boards, including the Eau Claire County Board, the Governor’s Committee for Persons with Disabilities, and the Benetech/Bookshare Board. In addition to numerous professional papers and articles, Katherine has published a memoir To the Left of Inspiration: Adventures in Living with Disabilities, a children’s book, Your Treasure Hunt: Disabilities and Finding Your Gold, and two books for seniors (half of whom will develop disabilities in later life), Occupying Aging: Delights, Disabilities and Daily Life, and Hope of the Crow: Tales of Occupying Aging. 

She originated the Schneider Family Book Awards for children’s books with disability content through the American Library Association and an award for superior journalism about disability issues through the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University.

Locally, Katherine started the Access Eau Claire fund through the Eau Claire Community Foundation to help non-profit organizations work toward full inclusion of people with disabilities. She’s a passionate advocate for access for all to the good things of life, like chocolate, puzzles, and thrillers. Subscribe to her blog http://kathiecomments.wordpress.com for details.