Five Things to Know About the American Disabilities Act

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In honor of the 30th anniversary of the American Disabilities Act (ADA), we break down five things you need to know about this historic legislation. On Tuesday, we'll be back with our thoughts and shared experiences from people directly affected by this law.

  1. It took decades of thousands of people working locally to pass the ADA 

  2. Defining "disability" under the ADA is very fact-intensive

  3. The ADA helped bring about massive changes

  4. But we have a long way to go.

  5. There are many ways you can work toward disability justice.  

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Episode Resources:

Transcript:

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Pantsuit Politics. We are thrilled to be here with you today celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities act. This landmark legislation is a massively important part of our country's history and deserves the attention it's getting this year during such an important milestone.

So we are going to do two things today. We're going to walk you through the five things you need to know about the ADA. And then on Tuesday's show we're going to share interviews with experts and people who have really been impacted by the ADA. So, that's the plan! 

Beth Silvers: [00:00:37] As we get start I want to say a little word about our language in this episode because this is an area where there's a lot of debate, healthy debate I think, about the words that we use to describe what we're talking about. Disability is controversial in some circles. We're going to use that word here today because it is the language of our laws. And it's also the language that consistently comes up as you research advocacy in this space. But I hope that, you know, whatever language you prefer, that we are open to learning about that and that everything we say today comes from a place of real respect. And our intention is to lift up people who are looking for greater accessibility in our society. And we'll do our best with the words that we use as we described that intention. 

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:01:23] So there are 61 million adults in the United States living with a disability: 26%. That is one in four of adults in the United States have some type of disability.

I mean, that is a massive impact when you pass legislation that affects that group. You know, people with disabilities are the largest minority group in our country and in the world. And this legislation is the most sweeping civil rights legislation in American history not just because of the size of that group, but because of the depth of its impact in the areas of our everyday life that it touched.

Beth Silvers: [00:02:04] So the first thing that we want you to know about the Americans with Disabilities Act is that it took decades of thousands of people working in really local grassroots ways to get us to the eventual passage of the ADA. And there are some very dramatic stories along the path here. 

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:02:21] So dramatic, so dramatic, and it was a long, long journey.

So some of the earliest disability laws you see in the United States relate to pension guarantees for wounded veterans, you see, that after the revolutionary war. Here's a fun fact. I have record of my, one of my ancestors, swearing a testimony so somebody, a disabled veteran, could get a pension. So we see that pattern. Veterans returned from war with disabilities and the country really has to confront this conflict that we have between valuing veterans and for decades of our country's history -for most of our country's history - excluding those citizens with disabilities from everyday life. 

Beth Silvers: [00:03:06] This conflict comes up again after World War II. And at that time we also have this surge in polio and the impact that it has on children who have suffered from polio. Many of these children and other adults with disabilities started attending summer camps and centers for independent living in the 1960s.

And those experiences started to transform them into an activist mindset. Before that you really only had local grassroots efforts to confront real present everyday issues. You know, it blows my mind to think about in the 1960s, public restrooms were not accessible if you were in a wheelchair that is not long ago in the 1960s. That was true. When we had public telephones, they did not have braille signage so that everyone could use them. And so people started advocating. In more of a social model, working with each other to focus on accommodations instead of on the individual's impairment. 

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:04:10] I think the stories from the summer camps are so touching, because it reminds me of the quote from John Lewis that I can't stop thinking about that you have to envision the future.

And I think what those camps were was like a vision of what it could be like, what if we weren't excluded? What if we weren't. Pushed aside. What if we realize we have more in common? I mean, I think what you see with these camps and some of these centers for independent living is an alignment between disability groups before, you know, it wasn't as if deaf people and blind people or paralyzed people felt like, Oh, well we have all these things in common.

And I think these. The camps and this shift to not only a vision of what's possible, but that we could work for that future together, that we have interests political interests that align, and that shift from just thinking about it as an impairment, to thinking about it as almost like an identity, you know, I'm reading far from the tree, Andrew Solomon's book, and it's that two areas.

He really excited. Is in depth, this shift between the spectrum of experience between illness and identity. And I think in these, with these camps, you see that push for identity and the belief that we deserve accommodations as American citizens. 

Beth Silvers: [00:05:30] So all of that activism gave us our, the first piece of federal legislation around accessibility, which is section five Oh four of the rehabilitation act.

This law was passed in 1973, and it banned discrimination against people with disabilities in federal employment. Nobody knows exactly. How this language got into section five Oh four. So fascinating. 

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:05:53] I need a podcast. I'm going to just put it out into the universe. Will someone create a podcast series trying to solve the mystery of how section 504 came to be like?

Cause that is amazing to me. 

Beth Silvers: [00:06:02] So here's what it says. No, otherwise qualified individual with a disability in the United States. States as defined in section seven Oh five, subsection 20 of this title, shell solely by reason of her or his disability be excluded the participation in be denied the ban. If it's of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance or under any program or activity conducted by any executive agency or by the United States postal service.

So that brought the language of the 1964 or civil rights act to the world of disability. And suddenly as Sarah was talking, we really have moved move beyond looking at individual issues to seeing being a person with a disability as an identity. Well, and here's the thing. 

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:06:51] So, because some staff are just.

Put section five Oh four in there. The federal government was not exactly prepared to deal with this. And as there always were, um, there were concerns within the business community and the education community about how are we going to deal with this? And the federal department of health education and welfare had been tasked with writing the regulations.

Okay, well we have section five Oh four. How are we going to implement it? And four years after the passage, they had still not written those regulations and the community that was calling for this was getting real, real frustrated. And so you start to see the intensity of the protestors and the intensity of the demonstrations themselves really dial up.

So on April 5th, 1977, demonstrators from across the country. We're holding protests outside local offices for the health, education and welfare. Agency across the country, but in San Francisco, the protestors occupied the health education and welfare office and stayed for weeks. They cut off the power lines, they cut off the water to them, to the protesters to try to get them out.

And there's this great story about how, when we talk about the intersectionality of so many identities, that there was a protester. Who had experienced with the black Panther party and the black Panther party brought them supplies into the offices, like water and other things they needed because they didn't expect to stay that long, but they had the sense, like if we give up all is lost, if we don't hold our ground on this thing, if we don't hold our ground on section five Oh four, then.

We're never going to be able to demand anything else. 

Beth Silvers: [00:08:38] So we have the RHA and one of the major things that came from that legislation was the architectural and transportation barriers, compliance board. That sounds real boring. Right. But that is a critical piece of ensuring that federal buildings are accessible.

And if you think about buildings as they existed in the 1960s and as many still exist today, It is very difficult to even find spaces, large enough for mobility assistance devices to make their way through. And so that the creation of that board was really important. The next step happened in 1975 when we saw the passage of the education for all handicapped children act.

And that was later amended. We have talked about this in depth in our episode about the IDE. So that's a really good companion to this conversation. But that legislation mandated inclusion of children with disabilities in public schools, according to the congressional research service, 1 million children with disabilities were excluded entirely from the public school system in the 1970s, a million kids.

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:09:41] I can't imagine that. And the stories, the activist from this time. Tell are just unbelievable. I listened to an interview with Lex Frieden on the Bush Institute's podcast. And he talked about applying to oral Roberts university after he was paralyzed in a car wreck. And they just said, Oh, I'm sorry, we don't accept handicapped students.

We don't just because, and he was like, but I'm a valedictorian. I have all these things. I can work through that because he had, they had just built the campus and he knew that the buildings were accessible and they're like, Oh no, we just, we don't accept. Anyone with a handicap, it was mind blowing to listen to this interview.

It was not that long ago. And that's college just think about the kids who couldn't even get started. 1 million children excluded from the public school system because of disabilities. And that limitation didn't just begin or end in the school system. I mean, it's, it was really. An issue of freedom of movement.

And that's why you see a tremendous amount of activism around the issue of transportation before the, before the passage of this letter, only two transit systems in the entire United States where accessible and activists on these issues. Some really. Dramatic protest on July 5th, 1978, a group of 19 people gathered at a really busy intersection in Denver, got out of their wheelchairs and lay down in traffic.

And that led to the formation of the Americans disabled for accessible public transit. They called them adapt and heard likes freedom, described them as basically like the hell's angels of disability, activists. Like they did some really intense demonstrations chaining themselves to the grills. Buses refusing to leave laying down at intersections, just bringing a massive amount of attention to this issue.

Beth Silvers: [00:11:24] The dates here really start to pull me into a different way of thinking about our society because I'm recognizing this is stuff that happened while I was alive. This is within my lifetime that we were having these issues. 1986, the national council on disability recommended an equal opportunity law to Congress.

And the goal of that law was to combine multiple disparate pieces of legislation into one civil rights act for people with disabilities. It just gives me chills to think about. The passage of a civil rights act within my lifetime. And it lets me know how much I have oriented myself into this belief that you see as a recurring theme in our politics that like we're done, we solved these facts and we, we are not even close to being done.

So a task force gets established around this idea. This 

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:12:20] is crazy. Okay. So the task force Lex Frieden was on this task force. And they were supposed to present their report to president Reagan. And then the day they were supposed to present the report, the challenger explosion happened. So they were like, well, you can go present it to vice president Bush.

And they're like, okay. They tell him you're gonna have like 10 minutes. But they get in there. And this look, this came from the Bush institutes podcast. So I'm not saying that they're biased, not biased, but it was like the most touching story they talked about, like the vice president, George Herbert Walker, Bush came in and said, I want to sit down.

I read that me and Barbara read the whole thing. Last night, we had a child that struggled with a learning disability, which I'm assuming they're talking about. W we had a child who had died of childhood cancer. This is important. We need to do this. And they he's like, you know, It's just a fluke of history because Ronald Reagan, you know, that was not the Reagan's priority, but it really became the Bush administration's priority.

And so they, he really worked with them. And then of course became president. The ADA was presented in 1988, passed the Senate in 1989 and passed the house and was signed into law by president Herbert Walker, Bush in 1990. And again, this was extraordinary effort, extraordinary effort. 

Beth Silvers: [00:13:37] This is another unbelievable story.

So on March 13th of 1990, I was nine years old. When this happened over a thousand people, marched from the white house to the Capitol to demand passage of the ADA. And more than 60 people got out of their wheelchairs or otherwise abandoned their mobility devices. To crawl up the 89 steps that lead to the us Capitol.

And if you have never seen pictures of this, I urge you to look at our show notes and follow those links and see them. It will change you. Hmm. This capital crawl was a physical demonstration. The people's buildings were inaccessible to so many people. So the Capitol crawl happens the next day, more than a hundred people were arrested during a protest in the rotunda of the Capitol.

These folks pretended that they were taking a tour and when they got to the rotunda, they just sat down or stood right where they were and demanded to see the speaker of the house. So through so many efforts, including some of those really dramatic displays that were very unkindly described by senators at the time as a real inconvenience, the ADA gets passed.

And what the ADA says is that is going to provide. Broad protection for people with disabilities, from crimination in certain spaces. And those spaces are state and local government services, places of public accommodation employment for employers with 15 or more employees, communications and transportation.

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:15:23] so let's move on to the second thing you need to know. Defining disability under the ADA is a very fact intensive. So what is a disability? The ADA defines it as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity. 

Beth Silvers: [00:15:40] And so people who have his abilities and are protected by this act include people with that physical or mental impairment.

Sarah just described people who have a record of having an impairment like that, or people who are regarded as having such an impairment, because we also don't want discrimination on the basis of someone's perception that a person has a disability, even if they do not. 

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:16:02] So the ADA. Does it provide an exhaustive list of what bounce as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities?

It's not like a diagnostic manual. Okay. That's not what this, that's not what they're trying to do. So because the main form of enforcement of the 80 days lawsuit, it's not like there's a Bureau that enforces the ADA, it's enforced through litigation. Some impairments that have been ruled as covered by the ADA AIDS, alcoholism, asthma blindness cancer, depression, epilepsy, migraines, paralysis, pregnancy complications, thyroid disorders, heart disease, or loss of body parts.

Beth Silvers: [00:16:40] And then conditions that have been considered not impairments. And these are just representative samples. We'd be here all day and night. If we were trying to give you every single thing that has been considered in litigation, but these are the courts have said are not impairments, a healthy pregnancy, old age, a lack of education.

Broken bones that are expected to heal completely compulsive gambling and sprained joints courts have also said that casual drug use is not a disability, but there are circumstances under which addiction is considered an impairment that counts as a disability under the ADA, not all impairments, physical or mental are constant.

Right. We have different experiences. I have fibromyalgia. I was diagnosed in 2007, the first few years of having fibromyalgia for me or awful, there were moments when I had to ask my husband for help washing my hair. There were moments when I could not sleep. My legs were in such pain. It was a really awful time for me.

And I learned over several years how to manage most of the symptoms of fibromyalgia. The ADA would ask, what is this look like at its worst about my condition to dif to decide if I have it or not, it would not measure my best day to determine whether I qualify for protection and under the Americans with disabilities act.

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:18:04] So as you can. Tell this is all very fast specific. And when these cases go to court is an invasive intensive inquiry determine whether a person qualifies for the ADA. And so you see a lot of landmark Supreme court decisions, either expanding that or restricting that you have. Olmsted VLC, where two women were diagnosed with schizophrenia, intellectual disability, and personality disorder.

And they were in a institutional setting and kept there, despite the experts agreeing that they could be moved to a community based setting. So this case is really seen as the Supreme court. Determining that mental illness is a form of disability. And that unjustified isolation of a person with a disability is a form of discrimination.

However, there are also decisions that really restrict the definition. And in 2008, the Americans with disabilities act amendments act was signed into law and amended the ADA of 1990. Yeah. Was to counteract the Supreme court interpretations that really were narrowing the interpretation of what a disability is.

The statute shifted the focus from whether the individuals. Seeking the laws protection fit within the meaning of the statute to whether or not that individual had experienced discrimination. So instead of saying, Oh, are we defining you as disabled? It's are you experiencing discrimination? And in doing so, it increased the number and types of persons protected by the ADA 

Beth Silvers: [00:19:23] and think about this.

So you have to be able to hire a lawyer and go to court to enforce the ADA. And once you get there, there are so many pieces that you have to demonstrate. You have to get into what is the nature of the impairment you have to get into how substantial is it's interference in what you do every day. And you have to show that it is interfering substantially with a major life activity.

And there is litigation about what constitutes a major life activity. So we know from courts that it includes. Major bodily functions and basic daily functions like eating, sleeping, standing, walking, preparing a meal, getting dressed into cognition, learning, thinking, reading, and working. But there are things that I would consider a major life activity like grocery shopping or taking care of another human being.

Or driving or the ability to be in a relationship that are not considered major life activities by courts. And I just want to emphasize not to get too much in the weeds on the litigation, but I know from having worked in human resources, that many people view this legislation as an incomprehensible pain in their butts.

Mm. And I think it's really important. To remember that the burden on employers in complying with the ADA is nothing compared to the challenge to a person who already has substantial barriers in front of them to get in court, move a lawsuit forward out of just the pleading stage. And when that lawsuit, it is hugely difficult to win a lawsuit under the ADA.

Even as this language sounds exceptionally broad, there are so many pitfalls in trying to enforce. Is it 

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:21:18] also important to know religious organization and entities controlled by religious organizations have no obligations under the ADA churches fought hard for this exemption and they got it. Even religious organizations carrying out activities that would otherwise be a public accommodation are exempt from the ADA coverage.

And. I have lots of thoughts on that. 

Beth Silvers: [00:21:40] I am trying to embarrass as me as a person of faith 

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:21:43] is embarrassing. Like it's just, it feels like we got to the, we got to the precipice and we decided buildings were more important than people as people of faith. Like the. The ridiculousness of that, the hypocrisy of that, it's just heartbreaking.

And I can't imagine how many people, how many people with disabilities, families of those with people disabilities had their heart broken and were pushed out of the church because we decided buildings were more important. 

Beth Silvers: [00:22:13] So the third thing we want you to know about the ADA is that it really brought about massive changes that we often take for granted.

Now, the ADA really invited the largest minority in America to participate in civic life. Where before there had only been stories of exclusion and discrimination, 

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:22:32] the stories you read about institutions or education. Or abuse. I mean, an Andrew Solomon's book, I'm reading about the deaf community and how much deaf children were so susceptible to abuse because in so many communities, because of their exclusion from educational systems, for a lot of reasons, they literally had no voice, no voice, if they were being abused and just the.

Ability to move to leave your home the most basic act to leave your home. Um, and you couldn't do it, or you couldn't participate in television or media or phone calls. I just, it takes your breath away. The challenges that people were facing and the exclusion. The bravery and the resilience and the grit to keep moving forward in the face of that and to fight for something better.

Like it really is. I know that the ADA is not perfect and I know that our culture has so much farther to go. You know, I have a child with disability. We have a lot further to go. It's true. It is. It is. Encouraging. And it is an example of how we can take steps forward and that it can impact millions and millions of people.

Beth Silvers: [00:24:02] A lot of changes is that were brought about by the ADA are now referenced in tons of conversations about inclusion, because you can see the benefit of thinking about a specific person. A person that you might not normally think about in a planning process and how making sure that that person is included benefits.

So many other people, curb cuts are a major illustration of this because when you design curb cuts, you not only benefited people in wheelchairs, but you benefited bikers and people with strollers when you made. Automatic doors. You were benefiting people who just had a bunch of stuff in their hands. In addition to the people who needed those doors, entryways designed for wheelchairs benefit.

So many people. So thinking about accessibility always has ripple effects sometimes that you don't foresee, but that show you how connected we all are. And I even struggle with thinking about people with disabilities as a minority, because the truth is yeah. Our bodies. It's just amazing that they work at all ever in any way.

Right. But at some point each of us is going to encounter something that makes accessibility a challenge for us. And that puts barriers in front of us. And I think if we thought about it more that way, and we'll talk more about this at the end, it would help us through this. So we got these requirements from ADA that employers provide reasonable account.

Accommodations to qualified workers so that they could work and participate in commerce. They created equal rights for service in restaurants, for people with disabilities and equal pay for workers with disabilities. Although that is not perfect. And we will return to that in just a moment not 

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:25:47] to mention it didn't have just an impact in America.

It had an impact around the world. If you are looking. For a moment to take a breath and be proud of America. This was the first major piece of national legislation in the world to address systematically the discrimination, barriers, and challenge faced by people with disabilities and other countries quickly followed suit between 1991.

There were disability rights laws passed in Luxembourg, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Sweden. And it culminated in the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, which is sort of known as the disability treaty at the UN this convention wasn't fired by the ADA and the U S provided important assistance.

The United nations international convention on the protection and promotion of the rights and dignities of persons with disabilities entered into force in 2008, when the treaty was open for signature in 2007. It was signed by 82 countries in ratified by one, currently 151 countries have ratified fight it except for the United States, which was presented.

It was presented to the Senate in 2012, but it was not ratified because of concerns about us sovereignty and lame-duck congresses, which were not that important, but we still haven't ratified it. Hopefully that will be something we remedy soon. 

Beth Silvers: [00:27:12] And that really leads us into the fourth thing. We want you to know that as important.

And sweeping as the Americans with disabilities act was it is not enough. We have a long way to go. And one area that has changed dramatically since 1990 is technology. Technology is a huge component of infrastructure in all of our lives now. And a study last year revealed that 98%. Of the 1 million most popular web pages have accessibility barriers for individuals with disabilities.

And the trajectory here is that the problem is getting worse. Not better. 

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:27:51] Well, like it's just stuff you don't think about. Like, I was listening to an interview with one of the reports from the New York times. And they were talking about, okay, well when Twitter or Instagram, and you think I would have thought about this because I add captions to my own videos on Instagram, but like when they add the option for people to just roll up and do video, there's no captions.

So all of a sudden, like higher part of the platforms, content is off limits. So in 2016, the national Federation of the blind fall to cap. Class action lawsuit against target, alleging that their website violated the ADA and arguing that places of accommodation applied to website, it was settled. And now the national Federation of the blind and target are partners and they're really working on assessability, but this problem.

Still exist, even if target has joined forces and realized the error of their ways, there are still millions of websites that don't have accessibility. 

Beth Silvers: [00:28:46] Well, think about it with the major social media platforms. It is hard to add those captions. It takes a lot of work and a lot of time. Yeah. And doesn't work well every time it is just not something that's built into the DNA of how this stuff is running and it really should be.

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:29:01] So in 2010, we did get the 21st century communications and video accessibility act, which was signed by then president Barack Obama and an amended the communications act of 1934 to update the requirements for accessibility of modern telecommunications for people with disabilities. But it's still really focused on top television networks and non broadcast channels.

Like. That's really playing catch up as far as TV. And doesn't really get to all the problems with technology, particularly with social media platforms. 

Beth Silvers: [00:29:29] In addition to tech accessibility, physical accessibility is still a huge problem. In many buildings, some buildings are exempt from ADA requirements because of the age of the buildings.

Some of them are exempt. As Sarah said, because they are affiliated with religious institutions. I thought this list of questions I found in an article that we'll put in the show notes was really helpful. If you're looking at a building, you need to ask yourself, is there a place to park here? Once I park in that place, is there an accessible route to the door?

Is the door wide enough for anyone to come in? And once you're in, is there a route all throughout the space where someone can go where they need to go and. I think this is a really hard reality, especially as many of us have fallen in love with really chic updates of very old buildings and maintaining the old character of those buildings.

It is resulting in a lot of stairs, a lot of difficult stairs. So not just if you have a mobility device, but also if you have something like arthritis, like there, the stairs are hard in many of these spaces. Extremely narrow paths, extremely low or very high ceilings, depending on where you are. Right. But preserving that character of those old spaces is an accessibility problem in many instances.

And there's a real architectural discussion to be had about how to best do that. 

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:30:57] We also have huge issues with regards to employment. I had an 88 amendment act. We were talking about earlier congressional hearing Naomi Ark, chair of the equal employment opportunity commission testified that the employment of persons with disabilities has presented the greatest ADA challenge.

Because we wanted to increase the employment of people with disabilities, but low employment really isn't sufficient. You have seen a drop. There has been a drop in the unemployment rate among people with disabilities. But the problem is, is that their rate is still too high. Only 40% of adults with disabilities in their prime working age, have a job compared to 79% of all prime age adults.

And even if there is employment, they. Make much less money. They're not paid as much and as fairly as people without disabilities. 

Beth Silvers: [00:31:49] And there are lots of issues there, but two of them. Are things that we can do something about in pretty short order. The first is that there's a loophole in federal law, allowing employers to get a waiver, a special certificate to pay workers with disabilities, less than the federal minimum wage.

These workers can get paid on their productivity or at a rate per piece, like in kind of old manufacturing environments. And the rules around this waiver program do not apply to people who do not have disabilities. This is. Federally sanctioned discrimination against people. Well, disability around pay more than 300,000 workers with disabilities are being paid below the federal minimum wage in the United States.

Right now. The other issue in employment for people with disabilities is that we still rely on so many unwritten social norms in evaluating people's fit for a position, their capacity for leadership and their overall job performance. We just have baked in prejudices and antiquated ideas about what it means for somebody to have the right fit with our company culture.

And that is very harmful to people with disabilities.

So in addition, then we have social security rules that trigger reductions or complete losses of benefits for people with disabilities. If they get married, that's another thing that we could fix pretty easily. We have all of these issues around education. And again, I want to recommend our episodes on the Ida to get into those in much more detail.

And we talk a lot on the nuance life about the obstacles that parents have to go through the time, the money, the education, they need to advocate for their children with disabilities inside the school 

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:33:43] system. Yeah. It's like an entire language that you need to learn. It's an entire form of advocacy that you have to build a skillset around.

I've had such a minor interaction with this and it's still exhausting. Just the same. So we mean, we really, really have. A lot further to go. What we want you to know for the fifth thing is there are many ways that we can work towards disability justice. And the first thing we need to think differently about is disabilities.

Dorian Taylor, a disability justice advocate says we need to stop talking about special needs. They are not privileges. We are talking about access and everyone's wants and needs access. Everyone wants and needs access. This is from an article on the ADA anniversary by Naomi is Hasakah. What if every job asked every person, if they had access needs and help to meet them, what if every school asked every student?

And what if. It were just a normal part of our daily processes. And you know, this is something I think about a lot because I have a child with a disability and I don't want him to be seen as something. I don't want him to think of himself or his disability is a problem that needs to be solved. Um, I don't want to talk about him or treat him like he's something I'm trying to fix or that I'm trying to.

Just make different. It's really, really hard. And I just don't want to think about him like that. And I don't think anybody deserves to be thought about like that by their family, by their community or by their government, because we all have a right to exist and none of us are burdens. And, you know, we talked about this in our education system.

I feel like everybody needs, every student needs their own IEP because we're not, there is no normal, there is no normal. There is only us. There is only. You know, a group of human beings doing the best they can. And I wish you know, that we could follow the lead of disability advocates and just people who are showing us a different way to live in a different way to think about our fellow human beings.

Beth Silvers: [00:35:43] I wish I could go back and give to them version of myself that worked in HR, some of this language, because I think a lot of times what happens when you're in HR and you get a request for an accommodation from an employee, you get in this tight spot between wanting to meet the needs of that employee.

And also knowing that folks in management are not going to want to spend the money to do that. And I wish I could go back and give myself this language about access because I entertained while an HR whole many requests, some of them quite expensive that were about people's comfort, everything from. The temperature of the building to their preference on the ripeness of fruit, to their favorite pens, to chairs, you know, being more ergonomic, like things that were, that mattered to me, it all mattered to me because you want your workforce to be happy and comfortable.

But if you want your workforce to be happy and comfortable, how can you not invest? Whatever it is you need to invest in making sure that it's available to everybody. So that's another thing that we can do to work toward disability. Justice is get out of that scarcity mindset, especially in education, fighting that tendency to think of needs of students with disabilities.

As in competition for resources, with the needs of students without disabilities. It is not an X stra to provide service to every student. So all of us as parents need to support inclusive classrooms. We also need to recognize the impact. Of overlapping barriers. So people who have disabilities and are black and are LGBTQ and are poor face compounding marginalization and are going to have different needs to achieve real equity for them.

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:37:30] And I think that that intersectionality is what is so difficult. It's so difficult in every space, but particularly this one, because I think it's really. Hard in issues of identity, because we treat everything in this very binary way. If you are this, you are not this, but sometimes if you are this, you are so this and this and this, and, you know, We might check boxes on some forms, but in our lives, like we don't live inside boxes.

Right. And when are our identities, especially when there's intersection in our identities, it's just gonna, it's gonna. Shift and change and we'll have to adapt. And our priorities will be different depending on different situations. And we just have to give each other the space for that and to, to let people be the experts in their own lives and in their own identities and the ways in which they intersect.

Beth Silvers: [00:38:29] So we talked about the need for accessibility in digital spaces. We also need to care about voting accessibility. There is about a five point gap between people with and without disabilities. In terms of voting greats, polling places are still not as accessible as they should be. And every layer of registration and ID requirements impose additional barriers.

There is a writer. Forbes who does so much work in the disability space that I find so helpful. His name is Andrew Pulrang. And one of the things that he said that really struck me is that it simply requires a higher level of commitment work and perseverance for disabled people to vote than for most non-disabled voters, a higher level of commitment work and perseverance that that should not be. 

Sarah Stewart Holland: [00:39:13] I think that higher level of perseverance is a great overarching theme of all five things, the higher level of perseverance from the activism, the higher level of perseverance, it takes to enforce the ADA, the higher level of perseverance we still need and continuing the work of the ADA. And those are things that we're all going to talk about and share perspectives on in Tuesday's episode. 

Beth Silvers: [00:39:39] We'll be back with you then in between now and then you can read our newsletter sync up with us on social media, and we hope that you have a great weekend. Keep it nuanced, ya'll.

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