Disabilities Act History

The history of the American Disabilities Act did not begin on July 26, 1990 at the signing ceremony at the White House. It did not begin in 1988 when the first American Disabilities Act was introduced in Congress. The American Disabilities Act story began a long time ago in cities and towns throughout the United States when people with disabilities began to challenge societal barriers that excluded them from their communities, and when parents of children with disabilities began to fight against the exclusion and segregation of their children. It began with the establishment of local groups to advocate for the rights of people with disabilities. It began with the establishment of the independent living movement which challenged the notion
that people with disabilities needed to be institutionalized, and which fought for and provided services for people with disabilities to live in the community. The American Disabilities Act owes its birthright not to any one person, or any few, but to the many thousands of people who make up the disability rights movement people who have worked for years organizing and attending protests, licking envelopes, sending out alerts, drafting legislation, speaking, testifying, negotiating, lobbying, filing lawsuits, being arrested doing whatever they could for a cause they believed in. There are far too many people whose commitment and hard work contributed to the passage of this historic piece of disability civil rights legislation to be able to give appropriate credit by name. Without the work of so many without the disability rights movement there would be no American Disabilities Act. The American Disabilities Act as we know it today went through numerous drafts, revisions, negotiations, and amendments since the first version was introduced in 1988. Spurred by a draft bill prepared by the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency whose members were appointed by President Reagan, Senator Weicker and Representative Coelho introduced the first version of the American Disabilities Act in April 1988 in the 100th Congress. The disability community began to educate people with disabilities about the American Disability Act and to gather evidence to support the need for broad anti discrimination protections. A national campaign was initiated to write discrimination diaries. People with disabilities were asked to document daily instances of inaccessibility and discrimination. The diaries served not only as testimonials of discrimination, but also to raise consciousness about the barriers to daily living which were simply tolerated as a part of life. Justin Dart, Chair of the Congressional Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of People with Disabilities, traversed the country holding public hearings which were attended by thousands of people with disabilities, friends, and families documenting the injustice of discrimination in the lives of people with disabilities. A team of lawyers and advocates worked on drafting and on the various and complex legal issues that were continually arising top level negotiators and policy analysts strategized with members of congress and their staffs disability organizations informed and rallied their members a lobbying system was developed using members of the disability community from around the country witnesses came from all over the country to testify before congressional committees lawyers and others prepared written answers to the hundreds of questions posed by members of congress and by businesses task forces were formed networks were established to recall responses from the community by telephone or mail protests were planned the disability rights movement came together around this goal passage of the American Disabilities Act From the beginning the class concept prevailed groups representing specific disabilities and specialized issues vowed to work on all of the problems affecting all persons with disabilities.
This commitment was always put to the test. The disability community as a whole resisted any proposals made by various members of Congress to keep away people with AIDS or mental illness or to otherwise narrow the class of people covered. Even at the eleventh hour, after two years of endless working and a Senate and House vote in favor of the Act, the disability community held fast with the AIDS community to eliminate the amendment which would have kept food handlers with AIDS away,
running the risk of not postponing the passage or even losing the bill. Like all of the groups whether it was an issue affecting their constituencies or not held fast against amendments to water down the transportation being provided. The underlying principle of the American Disabilities Act was to extend the basic civil rights protections extended to minorities and women to people with disabilities. The 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited employment discrimination by the private sector against women and racial and ethnic minorities, and banned discrimination against minorities in public accommodations. Before the American Disabilities Act, no federal law prohibited private sector discrimination against people with disabilities, without a federal grant or contract. For the first time in the history of our country, or the history of the world, businesses had to stop and think about access to people with disabilities.
If the American Disabilities Act means anything it means that people with disabilities will no longer be out of mind. The American Disabilities Act is based on a basic presumption that people with disabilities want to work and are capable of working, want to be members of their communities and are capable of being members of their communities and that exclusion and segregation cannot be tolerated. Accommodating a person with a disability is not a matter of charity but instead an issue of civil rights. While some in the media portray this new era as falling from the sky unannounced, thousands of men and women in the disability rights movement know that these rights were hard fought for and are long overdue. The american disabilities act is radical only in comparison to a shameful history of outright exclusion and segregation of people with disabilities. From a civil rights perspective the Americans with Disabilities Act is a codification of simple justice. The American disabilities act helped disabled individuals live their lives. The disabled individual can now live without any more disadvantages, we are now equal as we should've been from the
start.