Paula Boyle remembers growing up with an uncle who had Down syndrome and rarely left the house. She was determined her son would have a better life after he was born with the same disability 44 years ago.
"We treat him just like we treat our other two sons," Boyle said of her middle child. "I did not experience what my grandparents did."
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Federal information on the ADA: www.ada.gov/ada_int…
In the 1930s and '40s, there were no programs for people with disabilities nor legal protections to prevent discrimination. School and work were almost out of the question.
Jody Scoggins said he likes to sing, play basketball and usher at church. He will never be able to live independently, but he goes to work each day at Open Avenues in Rogers. Open Avenues is a nonprofit organization providing adults with disability employment education, jobs and life skills.
The biggest change started 25 years ago when the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law on July 26, 1990. People with an array of disabilities were promised access to educational and employment opportunities. Public places would become more accessible with ramps, curb cuts and parking spots. The disabled could be more independent and engaged.
"Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down," declared President George H.W. Bush as he prepared to sign the legislation. Some 2,000 people with disabilities -- elated after years of activism -- gathered on the South Lawn of the White House.
The act is monumental in scope, intended to protect people with physical and developmental disabilities from discrimination and enable them to participate fully in the workforce and their communities. Its protections, which now cover an estimated 55 million Americans, extend to five key areas: employment, state and local government facilities and services, public accommodations, telecommunications, and transportation.
"I would say it is the most important piece of civil rights legislation since the 1964 Civil Rights Act," said Keith Vire, CEO of Arkansas Support Network. The organization has been helping disabled people with supported employment, social and work skills development since 1988.
Vire added the fight is not over.
"There have been some setbacks where some people say we are asking for too much," he said. "It's not asking too much to have the same access that everyone else has."
High unemployment rates persist for the disabled, and some attitudes and perceptions are slow to change, said Brenda Neal, executive director of Open Avenues.
"After all these years, there are still people who are uncomfortable and don't know how to interact with disabled people," she said.
Passing legislation
The ADA didn't come easily -- it took decades of work by people with disabilities and their allies. Among the most passionate was Justin Dart Jr., the vice chairman of the National Council on Disability, who traveled nationwide in the 1980s to hold public hearings and collect testimonials of disability-related discrimination.
In Congress, where the act was introduced in 1988, its champions included several lawmakers personally affected by disabilities, including Rep. Tony Coelho of California, who had epilepsy.
"We had to share the scar tissue of our lives," he said, "so Congress would understand how rampant discrimination was."
In the Senate, key supporters included Tom Harkin of Iowa, whose brother was deaf; Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, whose son had a leg amputated, and Robert Dole of Kansas, who suffered lasting injuries during combat in Italy in World War II.
Dole, who recently turned 92, recalled the staunch opposition to the bill among some of his fellow Republicans.
"Most of it was people concerned that the cost would be too great -- it would put small business out of business because of what they'd have to do to comply," Dole recalled in a recent telephone interview.
Among the leading foes was Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who nicknamed the ADA the "Lawyers' Relief Act" on the premise that it would trigger a flood of litigation. Dole and his allies argued the ADA requirements for business were reasonable.
In the end, Helms was among a small group of dissenters. The bill passed the Senate by a 76-8 vote on Sept. 7, 1989.
"If the ADA means anything, it means that people with disabilities will no longer be out of sight and out of mind," wrote disability-rights lawyer Arlene Mayerson in a history of how the act evolved. "Accommodating a person with a disability is no longer a matter of charity, but instead a basic issue of civil rights."
Vire said he has never been much of a hero worshiper, but meeting Dart in 1994 was like meeting Abraham Lincoln.
"He was quite an icon and a wonderful person as well," he said. "The ADA may not even exist and it certainly would not be what it is today without Dart."
An entire generation has grown up under the law's provisions. Colleges and universities must have departments that help disabled students remove access barriers.
Laura James, associate director of the Center for Educational Access at the University of Arkansas, said services her office provides range from helping someone with limited mobility or cognitive issues get more time to take a test to providing note taking assistance. The office served more than 2,000 student last year. The university had 26,237 undergraduate students enrolled for the fall 2014 semester.
"The majority of the students who are registered with us have an invisible disability, something that would not be apparent," she said.
There are ongoing efforts nationally to encourage more activism among people with so-called "nonvisible disabilities" -- conditions such as depression, anxiety, diabetes, epilepsy, dyslexia and attention deficit disorder that are covered by ADA protections.
Making changes
Wheelchair-accessible public transit, automated teller machines marked with Braille, widespread use of closed captioning, fire alarms that can be seen as well as heard -- many changes brought by the ADA are apparent.
Businesses and various levels of government have made ADA-related changes as a matter of routine, at a cumulative nationwide cost running into untold billions of dollars. Just one example: It's considered standard under ADA guidelines for accessibility compliance to add up to 20 percent to the cost of major architectural remodeling projects.
Disabled people have filed lawsuits alleging violations of the act. There have been some landmark courtroom victories, and also some complaints about overzealous lawyers shopping for disabled clients in order to file potentially lucrative lawsuits.
In California, concerns by the state Chamber of Commerce and other business interests about the volume of litigation led to a bill this year that would give small businesses 120 days to correct violations of ADA access requirements. The bill, pending in the state assembly after clearing the Senate, has been assailed by some disability-rights activists who say it will discourage business owners from making changes proactively.
Vire said some courts have taken a more conservative approach to the law in the last 15 years.
"One of the problems with the ADA is there is no enforcement section," he said. If someone can't get into a building, they can't call the police so the business gets a ticket. People have to actually take legal action to force change."
He added he believes most businesses want to comply, they often just don't know how.
The University of Arkansas is making some changes at the Clinton House Museum after a federal lawsuit filed last year claiming there are architectural barriers to access. The university owns the property and argued the house is on the national Register of Historic Places and was not required to meet every aspect of the law.
In the end they settled the lawsuit by agreeing to add a van accessible parking spot. Scott Varady, University of Arkansas general counsel, said experts determined it is not feasible to expand the back door. The law requires changes when technically and feasibly possible, he said, adding university engineers are looking at ways to maximize the opening.
Varady said they have two years from the April 3 settlement to complete the parking space.
In New York City, commercial litigation lawyer Daniel Brown has done extensive pro bono work on major ADA-related cases, inspired partly by his younger brother, who lost the use of his legs in a swimming accident. Brown played a key role in cases that enabled wheelchair racers to get their own division in the New York City Marathon and ensured that the city's disaster-response plans adequately accounted for people with disabilities. In another of his cases, the city agreed to require that half of the fleet of more than 13,000 taxis will be wheelchair-accessible by 2020. When the case started, less than 2 percent of cabs were accessible.
Brown called claims of unwarranted lawsuits "a bad rap," adding: "To me, the ADA is one of the most important civil rights acts in our history -- I couldn't be prouder to tell people I take on ADA cases."
Employment options
A quarter-century after the law's passage, joblessness among disabled Americans remains far higher than for other adults. Just 17.1 percent of people with a disability were employed in 2014, compared to 64.6 percent of those without a disability, according to the latest federal figures.
"As much as the ADA has helped, when you look at employment -- that's one area where the needle hasn't moved," said Helena Berger, acting president of the American Association of People with Disabilities.
The ADA stipulates that disabled job applicants should be considered on an equal basis with other applicants, but it has provided little deterrent if an employer opts not to hire a disabled person. While there have been many successful lawsuits by disabled people saying they were fired or demoted unfairly, it's been far harder to win lawsuits asserting they should have been hired in the first place.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforces ADA provisions dealing with employment. Charges alleging disability discrimination comprised more than 28 percent of its caseload in 2014, higher than any other category. The EEOC cases encompass dozens of categories of disability, ranging from alcoholism and dwarfism to tuberculosis and speech impairment.
The commission in recent years has been receiving about 25,000 ADA-related charges annually, with complainants alleging they'd been harassed, fired unfairly or denied accommodations that would enhance their performance. A majority of the charges are dismissed -- but some cases result in monetary settlements, including some $95 million in the 2014 fiscal year alone.
Neal said Open Avenues has placed about 400 people in jobs through its training program and has 120 clients involved at its work center. The center provides contract services for 22 local business, with workers performing tasks such as putting together fishing lures to packaging nuts and bolts.
Some clients have been at the center for decades and don't want to work elsewhere, she said. Others have tried conventional jobs and opted to return to the work center.
"This is what I call an intended community," Neal said, adding some people consider it segregation.
She said the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act passed by Congress last year is pushing supported employment services, which provides a job coach who helps the disabled person adapt to a job and is eventually phased out. Neal said Open Avenues would offer this service if it had the money.
Vire is supportive sheltered workshops serve more of a role in socialization than in job training.
"Ten years from now, we are going to look at the act and say it was the biggest change for people with disabilities, maybe since the ADA was implemented," he said. "Things are changing. and you have to decide is you want to be on the train or on the track."
Christie Swanson can be reached at cswanson@nwadg.com or on Twitter @NWAChristie.
NW News on 08/10/2015