A Reflection on 36 Years of the ADA: What Will We Do with Our Inheritance?

A Reflection on 36 Years of the ADA: What Will We Do with Our Inheritance?

Looking Beyond the Anniversary

As I reviewed my LinkedIn page, there were literally hundreds of posts celebrating the 36^th anniversary of the ADA.  Reviewing these posts led me to ask: What will we leave for those who come after us?

As we celebrate the 36^th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), I think we must begin to ask questions about the legacy of this movement and where we go from here.

I was listening to a podcast called Disability Matters with Joyce Bender as she interviewed Dr. Victor Santiago Pineda, the director of the Center for Independent Living at Berkeley, and he made a comment that really stuck with me. He talked about the need to build on the legacy of those who came before us. We “cannot look backward, we must be proud of where we are headed.”  He continued, “we need a new generation of disability rights champions.”

Part of the legacy of the ADA was that it was a bipartisan effort. Orrin Hatch, Bob Dole, Tom Harkin, Steny Hoyer, Tony Coehlo found a way to bring both sides together for common ground. These leaders listened and worked with the leadership of the disability community. The legacy we inherited is that disability rights could transcend political ideology.

Remembering the World Before the ADA

I have thought a lot about what has happened since. As an old-timer in vocational rehabilitation, I was around before the ADA was passed helping people go to work and live independently. I watched people with disabilities push for civil rights through demonstrations and testifying in Congress. I saw the law passed, signed, and the two-year waiting period it took to enact the law.

I have witnessed both the remarkable progress made possible by the ADA and the resistance that so often accompanies meaningful change. I saw the restrictions before and the improvements since. All of us are watching in real time the recent challenges that seem to be regressing from what was gained.

Every legacy is eventually challenged. Currently, long-standing understandings of disability rights are being reconsidered. Public debate surrounding Section 504 and differing legal interpretations of Olmstead must prompt us to understand progress is not automatic or permanent. Rights defined and earned by one generation require stewardship of the next.

What Changed – and What Didn’t

In my career, I have seen immense change from encouraging (sometimes begging) an employer to give a person with disabilities a chance to seeing integrated employment expand, accommodations becoming almost ordinary, technology revolutionizing accessibility, public expectations changing, employers becoming more knowledgeable, and disability becoming far more visible and gaining greater acceptance.

I remember trying to place individuals in jobs prior to the ADA. Employers were skeptical and often not willing to talk with me or with the person who had the disability. Accommodation or assistive technology was provided only if someone else paid for it, usually the state vocational rehabilitation agency. Most discussions included the employer perspective that they simply were unwilling to hire people with disabilities. They argued it was too expensive, it was awkward for other employees, or it would look bad to the public to have someone “like that” working for them.

Then the ADA was signed into law. We had a two-year period preparing employers, businesses, and communities to transition to meet what the law required. I spent those two years teaching businesses about what the ADA meant to them and how they could adapt and become more inclusive. I advised about the business sense it could make to hire people with disabilities. Most were unhappy about the ADA and implications for their business but wanted to follow the law.

I witnessed businesses challenge the ADA, often all the way to the Supreme Court. Employers and businesses won these cases overwhelmingly. Congress stepped up with the ADA Amendments to bring it back to what was intended.

Access has advanced more rapidly than employment equity. Buildings are more accessible. Transportation has become more accessible. Communication has become more accessible. Reasonable accommodation has become easier. Assistive technology has advanced and improved opportunities. None of these are complete, but dramatic progress has happened.

However, employment rates have not dramatically increased.

Attitudes of most employers have improved.

Yet, fear about disability disclosure to employers openly remains. Rehabilitation counselors continue to discuss if someone should disclose their disability, because fear remains about the impact. Many people with disabilities remain distrustful about the impact of disclosure on their employment opportunities or their ability to advance with employers. Employers still fear the cost of accommodation. Attitudes do not change overnight (or even in 36 years).

Laws can be changed. Rules can be established, but attitudes don’t change just because the law does.

A New Generation Inherits the ADA

We have generations of people with disabilities who were here before the ADA and remember the challenges. However, we also have an entire generation of people with disabilities who have never lived in a world without the ADA.

There are rehabilitation counselors who were quietly working in the field trying to help people with disabilities live and work independently before the passage of the ADA. We have those who transitioned as the ADA was passed, implemented, and even adapted with the Amendments to the ADA in 2008. However, we have an entire generation of vocational rehabilitation counselors who have never known a world without the ADA as a tool.

The Floor, Not the Ceiling

The challenge with this is that we need a new legacy pushing disability rights forward. The ADA is the floor of access, not the ceiling. We cannot rest on the past of the ADA, we must build upon the floor we have been given.

We inherited a civil-rights framework, a belief in integration and opportunity, an expectation of reasonable accommodation under the law and a disability rights movement led by people with disabilities. We have seen what can happen when people from different sides of the political spectrum move together toward common ground.

The Legacy We Choose

We can celebrate where we came from but must plan for where we are headed. We must understand current implications in the political environment and prepare for what is next. The legacy of the leaders who helped with the passage of ADA remains, the legacy of the leaders who helped implement the ADA remains, but now we must ask who will become the leaders who advance the foundation created by the ADA to move us to the next generation.

The ADA was an extraordinary civil-rights achievement. I remember the world before it, witnessed its implementation, and have seen what changed. I have lived long enough to understand what legislation cannot accomplish by itself. Now a generation that never knew the world before the ADA is inheriting responsibility for what comes next.

Who will become the next Justin Dart or Judy Heumann? Who will become the next Bob Dole or Tom Harkin in this movement? What would their expectation be of the next generation of leaders in the disability community to move forward with the path the ADA opened? As rehabilitation counselors, what will our role as partners in this movement be?

A legacy has been built over the last 36 years. What will the legacy of the next 36 years become? What will we do with our inheritance?

*This blog has been edited with the assistance of ChatGPT