[Ohio-talk] FW: My ADA Article
richard
rchpay7 at gmail.com
Tue Jul 28 09:36:48 UTC 2015
echo echo
-----Original Message-----
From: Ohio-talk [mailto:ohio-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Nicole Poston via Ohio-talk
Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2015 12:36 AM
To: ohio-talk at nfbnet.org
Cc: NMPBRAT at aol.com
Subject: Re: [Ohio-talk] FW: My ADA Article
Deborah, James, and all,
I don't often comment but I would like to echo what James has written.
Deborah......you wrote a fantastic and eloquent article. It is wonderful to know that we have great people like you advocating and speaking about topics that are so important to the disabled community. The ADA has brought us so far.
Like James has expressed, I hope as we embark on the next 25 years of the ADA, that much focus is put on the issues the disabled community faces in the area of employment. I recently read a blog written by retired Senator Tom Harkin, who sponsored the ADA, in which he stated that the one disappointment he had about the law was in the area of employment. I believe there are actually two areas that need addressed within the area of employment though...one being getting people employed and the other being keeping people employed, including enforcement of the ADA. I think James shared a perfect and personal example of first issue. I'd like to touch on the second.
I've been employed for the past 13 years by the same employer. For the first decade or so, I had no issues and was provided any accommodations necessary. For the last couple of years, I have found myself in the fight of my life....a fight to keep the job I had worked so hard to get and had
dedicated myself to for many years. I have found that although there is some
protection that exists with the ADA, its implementation and enforcement is severely lacking at best. I feel like the law is only as good as the implementation and enforcement of it. I feel like it has fallen short in the area of employment and that the very system that is there to protect me, is right now failing me. I am close to 2 years of having to deal with discriminatory practices by my employer. As a result of the exercising my rights under the law, I have a huge target on my back while they secretly try to come up with any way to justify drop kicking me to the side of the road....and yet, I don't even have an investigator assigned to my case yet. Who knows when that will happen....and whether I will be able to "hold on" long enough.
I know legal things can be messy and lengthy in nature.....but it is disheartening that process has really not even yet begun. There has to be a better way and I hope in the next 25 years, we find those better ways. Ways to get people employed....which I believe involves better education and training of employers.....and better ways to keep people employed, just like me. I look forward to celebrating those achievements at the 50th
anniversary of the ADA.
Respectfully,
Nicole
In a message dated 7/27/2015 12:33:03 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, ohio-talk at nfbnet.org writes:
Dear Deborah and all,
Thank you for sharing this article with us, and I found it to be very well-written and on point. I hesitate to raise any criticisms, and I know that space limitations play a major role and how much any article can cover. I would only like to mention that a discussion of the still very low rate of employment of working age adults with disabilities--according to Department of Labor statistics, two-thirds of working age adults with disabilities remain outside of the workforce--may have been helpful here. The ADA has barely moved the needle on employment, and I think it is worth asking whether an anti-discrimination law by itself is sufficient to achieve that goal.
Even now, it seems that many employers consider job candidates with disabilities to be more expensive to hire and accommodate than is often the case, and rather than ensuring that all software and workplace equipment is accessible out of the box, they wait until a disabled employee faces an inaccessible environment and then plead poverty rather than implementing the necessary changes. Perhaps people with disabilities are still widely considered to be a resource drain rather than a resource in their own right, and the ADA is viewed as a series of onerous mandates imposed for their own sake by a regulation-happy federal government, regulations with which compliance is at times grudging and very uneven. My own search for employment is a good example of this problem. I have a Ph.D. in Political Science, have published articles in several peer-reviewed publications, and nevertheless have not been able to secure full-time employment in my field; I happen to be totally blind and have generally provided most of my own accommodations at little or no cost to my employers. I am now about to start law school at Ohio State with the intent of working in some area of disability advocacy and policy, and I hope to contribute to solving this serious underemployment problem for people with disabilities. I hope that this is taken not as an attack on your piece, which I like very much, but simply as a point that needs to be incorporated into the conversation about the ADA's effectiveness and limitations.
With all best wishes,
James
On 7/27/2015 6:04 AM, Deborah Kendrick via Ohio-talk wrote:
>
>
> I think most of you know that I write a regular column on disability
rights for the Columbus Dispatch.
>
> Thought you might like to see what I wrote for ADA day, July 26.
>
>
>
> This is my column from Sunday’s Dispatch, my happy ADA day tribute.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> Date: July 26, 2015 at 11:13:55 AM EDT
> To: Deborah Kendrick <dkkendrick at earthlink.net>
> Subject: ADA Article
>
> Deborah Kendrick commentary: Disabilities Act was drafted with
> uncanny
foresight
>
> 07/26/2015 5:00 AM
>
> From coast to coast, in cities large and small, in state capitols
> and
campus conference centers, Americans are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act today.
>
> I’m celebrating, too, (although tangible plans made long ago have me
> in
a remote location with a few friends, who either don’t know much about this birthday or celebrate another one because they are from the United Kingdom).
>
> Like any “elder” reflecting on a given commemorative date, I’ve been
thinking about this day for a long time, and my reflections are fragmented, at best.
>
> First, there’s the sparkling memory of the signing ceremony itself.
>
> I received two invitations, actually. I made the “advocates” list by
virtue of involvement with a number of grass-roots disability-rights organizations. More thrilling by far, however, was that I made the journalists list.
>
> For four years already by July 1990, I had been writing a weekly
> column
on disability rights. Far from being deemed a respectable beat, disability didn’t even make the daily papers much in those days, aside from the sugary heart-wrenching tales of inspiration that, regrettably, are still alive and well in our media.
>
> I was trying to do something else, something a bit more substantive
> and
tough-minded, and I believe that every once in a while I succeeded.
>
> Convincing my editor at the time that the event was sufficiently
newsworthy to warrant my covering it was no small feat. The publisher, however, thought I should go. And so I did. And sent back a Page 1 story.
>
> The images vie for centerstage in my brain. The gorgeous weather, the
palpable energy, the deliciously merged swarm of people with their crutches and canes and wheelchairs, hands flying through the air with American Sign Language, guide dogs sneaking a sniff from a canine colleague under one of the folding chairs.
>
> As President George H.W. Bush spoke of that wall that needed to
> tumble
down, the joy in that crowd on the White House South Lawn was such that it would have surprised none of us had someone begun to fly. The air was redolent with hope and promise and a future shining with true equality for everyone.
>
> As euphoric as the occasion was, however, I think now that I really
> saw
it as a gift to my friends who used wheelchairs and scooters.
>
> Other than the occasional miscreant who thought my lack of physical
eyesight translated as an inability to enjoy or have a right to enjoy the simplest of pleasures, my own life seemed pretty standard issue.
>
> I had a job, a young family, a niche in my church and neighborhood.
>
> Laws in every state already allowed my guide dog entrance to public
transport and facilities.
>
> We didn’t have the Internet yet, and my then state-of-the-art
> technology
gave me access to various information databases and facilitated transmission of email messages and other data via phone lines.
>
> There were a few audible traffic signals being installed here and
> there,
and if movies were too visually complex to follow audibly, we were used to poking our friends or family in the ribs with incessant variations of “ Hey! What’s happening?”
>
> Of course, there was no Braille signage on hotel rooms, offices, or
elevators and, yes, that led to more than one “funny” story involving entering the wrong restroom or sleeping space. But the issues seemed less insurmountable than being excluded from a building altogether due to imposing stairways.
>
> What was most thrilling that day was the spirit of the ADA — the
president of the United States saying that none of us should be excluded from what it means to be an American, that attitudes needed to change.
>
> Discrimination from my perspective came in the form of a ticket
attendant at the Cherokee museum who wouldn’t accept my admission money because I couldn’t see the exhibits, or the server who thought my 4-year-old should pour my coffee. And it took a delicious turn that July 26 afternoon when a fellow journalist tried to hide his astonishment that I was queued up to get the same quotes he was, rather than as a grateful supplicant.
>
> Of course, the foresight written into the law, which made it apply to
technological components not yet conceived, is what renders the ADA to people of all mental and physical differences an essential passport to equality in America.
>
> Today, accessing a website with needed information is as critical as
entering any brick-and-mortar building, and without laws, many of us would have no hope of traveling those paths.
>
> Today, movies are so complex that, without captioning and audio
description, those of us with vision or hearing disabilities would be completely left out of this component of our culture.
>
> The ADA, hailed then as the most comprehensive piece of civil-rights
legislation since 1964, was no panacea, but its promise was dazzling.
>
> We have a long way to go. I still encounter doubt and disbelief in
> the
company of strangers, people who see me as less-than because I have a disability. I still encounter web sites, touch kiosks and intersections I can’t navigate.
>
> But the promise of the law is still alive and well.
>
> I celebrate the passage of the ADA and I celebrate its 25th birthday.
With greater anticipation, however, I celebrate the promise of inclusion yet to come.
>
> Deborah Kendrick is a Cincinnati writer and advocate for people with
disabilities.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ohio-talk mailing list
> Ohio-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/ohio-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Ohio-talk:
>
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/ohio-talk_nfbnet.org/jtfetter%40yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
Ohio-talk mailing list
Ohio-talk at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/ohio-talk_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Ohio-talk:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/ohio-talk_nfbnet.org/nmpbrat%40aol.com
_______________________________________________
Ohio-talk mailing list
Ohio-talk at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/ohio-talk_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for Ohio-talk:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/ohio-talk_nfbnet.org/rchpay7%40gmail.com
More information about the Ohio-Talk
mailing list