4:38am July 29, 2014

“
Disability Rights activists were working their asses off for my rights long before I was born. They fought hard to get me curb cuts and accessible bathrooms. They protested so my friends could get sign language interpreters in hospitals and braille menus at restaurants. They stood united when Congress wanted to exclude people with HIV from protection under the ADA. But in working so hard to ensure that my generation of crips would grow up on a better playing field, they had to make some concessions.

So what didn’t we get in the ADA?

Well, we didn’t get a lot of things. We didn’t get the right to services and supports in our own home, we didn’t get punitive damages, and we certainly didn’t get enforcement.
”

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The ADA Is Not Enough by Stephanie Woodward

It’s very important to recognize the disability activists that brought the ADA into existence, as well as the ways our lives would be different without the ADA - including you, parents or guardians or babysitters with strollers, travelers with suitcases, athletes with temporary injuries, and countless other temporarily able-bodied groups.

It’s also absolutely crucial to recognize how much work we have left to do on this, the 24th anniversary of the ADA. The whole article linked above is fantastic and includes lots of details about those three areas - home support, punitive damages, and enforcement.

(via disabilityhistory)

So I don’t have the book near me (packed up ready for the move unfortunately) but Ruth Colker found in 2003ish that somewhere around 85-90 percent of federal appeals court employment cases under the ADA were decided against the plaintiff.

That is, not only do trial courts consistently refuse to enforce the ADA - people who get their case through trial and to an appeal are losing 9 out of 10 times.

The ADA could be so wonderful if judges would enforce it.

(via charlesdingusesquire)

Notes: