[Nfbmo] I hope you are writing and calling

[Gary Wunder]

At Saturday's board meeting we talked about HR 620, the ADA Education and
Reform Act of 2017. What it says is that if some public accommodation or
business discriminates against you, you have the responsibility not only to
tell them about the law, but you must give them sixty days in which to
respond to your concern. Below is the letter I sent to Representative Vicky
Hartzler. I hope you will write. We work too hard to get the legislation
that protects us enabled to silently sit by and watch as it is dismantled.
Getting a quality education and a good job is an uphill battle at best. We
don't need obstacles deliberately placed in our path. We don't exercise all
of the control in the situation, but we do have the opportunity to let our
views be known, to say to our representatives from Missouri that we are
constituents who demand the right to be heard, to be considered, and to be
understood. Please do your part. My letter is below:

 

 

Dear Representative Hartzler:

 

I strongly urge that you oppose HR 620. This bill proposes to eliminate
frivolous claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act, but it totally
misses the mark. Its remedy is to say that none of the provisions of the act
can be enforced unless a person with a disability who encounters
discrimination first explains that discrimination to the person or business
offering a service and then gives the business or public accommodation sixty
days to respond. When a blind person encounters a website that will not work
with screen reading software and attempts to apply for a job using that
site, what are the chances that that job will remain open? When a blind
person finds it necessary to sue a university because the professor says
there is no place for a blind person in the class, how will that person ever
participate if he or she must tell the professor and the University that
discrimination is occurring and then give them sixty days to respond? What
other law suggests that those it is meant to protect must be the educators?
I can think of none, and for me the message that gets sent over and over
again is that blind people must wait, wait, wait. If this were a new law, I
could understand a phase-in or maybe even some kind of a grandfathering
provision, but this law has been on the books since 1990. The ADA has
received all kinds of news coverage both in the general media and in
publications that are read by businessmen and women.

 

If you want to stop lawsuits filed by big law firms that do not truly
represent the interests of blind people and do not result in changes in the
behavior of public institutions and businesses, figure out a way that does
not put all the responsibility on the person or persons being discriminated
against. The challenges that face blind people in getting an education and
seeking employment are already substantial enough; let our laws encourage
not discourage. I think it is nothing less than reasonable for blind and
otherwise disabled people to expect this of you. Please do not support House
Bill 620-in fact, actively oppose it, and be an evangelist for seeing that
blind people get an education, a job, and a first-class place in our
first-class communities.

 

 

 

Gary Wunder