Today is the twentieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is the landmark legislation that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in regard to employment, housing, education, public services, and public accommodations. When it was signed into law by President George H. W. Bush on July 26, 1990, the ADA was the most comprehensive civil rights legislation passed by Congress since the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It was hailed by supporters and became a life changer for the nation’s estimated forty three million Americans with disabilities.
In his speech at the Democratic National Convention on August 26, 1996 Christopher Reeve said the following about the ADA: “First of all our nation cannot tolerate discrimination of any kind. That’s why the Americans with Disabilities Act is so important and must be honored everywhere. It is a civil rights law that is tearing down barriers both in architecture and in attitude. Its purpose is to give the disabled access not only to buildings but to every opportunity in society.”
Twenty years later those words still ring true. Since its inception, the ADA has been an invaluable asset to countless people with disabilities by providing for vast improvements in increased accessibility, the reduction of disability discrimination, and accommodations that help overcome daily challenges that many people often take for granted. Yet by the same token there is still plenty of room for improvement in all of those areas.
Staying within the spirit of what this day signifies, I thought that I would share an anecdote about the accommodation that I am most proud of obtaining: a reserved accessible parking spot at my law school. Being a wheelchair user, one of the aforementioned challenges I deal with almost daily is parking. I drive a wheelchair accessible mini-van with a ramp, so anywhere I park I need at least eight feet of clearance on my passenger side to have enough room to get in and out. The only parking spots that work are the handicapped accessible spaces with the striped zone next to them. (FYI the handicapped parking entitlement can be found in Title III of the ADA.)
When I started law school there was a lack of regular access to parking spots that worked for my van. At the time the parking lot only had about six accessible parking spots, but realistically only half of them were van accessible, and of those only one was a workable option in inclement weather. For most of my first semester I would guesstimate that I only parked in the main lot about half the time because the van accessible spots were often taken. Of course, the frustration was that the majority of my “competition” for those spots did not have the same absolute physical need to park there that I did. When I didn’t get to park in the main parking lot I was forced to park at the overflow lot two and a half blocks down the street. When weather was really bad and I couldn’t park close and/or all of the spots in both lots were taken I had no choice but to skip class and go home.
Ultimately, push came to shove and I wrote the administration an explanatory email letter asking for a mutually workable resolution. Unlike my undergraduate institution, which cited “unfair preferential treatment,” my law school was willing to work with me about reserving a parking space for the hours that I was on campus for classes. First, they put up a laminated print out that said ‘Reserved for Shawn Dean’ and listed the hours that I needed it. But the problem that quickly arose was that people were not taking the spot seriously as an accessible spot during the rest of the day because the school taped my reserved sign over the handicapped parking sign.
Starting my second year they moved my reserved sign below the blue accessible sign, which worked for a while. But a new girl in a wheelchair started school that semester and she routinely parked in that spot in ignorance of the reserved sign. I could sympathize with her since it was the best available spot for wheelchair users, but I did feel some frustrated entitlement since I had already paid my dues getting it reserved for myself.
So I contacted the administration again, only that time I proposed a plan that included specific parking lot alterations that they could make to properly accommodate all three of the wheelchair users who were attending the school at the time. They followed my suggestions and all of us got accessible spaces reserved while we were on campus. They also made us permanent signs that were both the same color as official school parking lot signs so students took them seriously, and had the international symbol of access on them so that everyone knew that they were still handicapped accessible parking spots outside the reserved hours.
As a result, I had few parking problems over my final two years of school. Successfully executing a plan that virtually guaranteed that I could park freely, gain seamless access to the building, and not miss vital law school classes was a big, big deal. When I graduated they let me keep my sign since it symbolized something important to me, and it’s been proudly hanging on my apartment wall ever since.
The other cool result was that the overall situation made a difference in three respects: First, it helped improve the overall accessibility of the school. Second, the Dean of Students reached out to me to personally thank me for dealing with my almost two year long parking battles with a great deal of candor and professionalism (i.e. no angry emails, etc. like many students). And third, when the school underwent major campus renovations they sought my insight on a handful of matters of physical access throughout the building (e.g. bathroom accessibility and functional locations for automatic door buttons).
I learned two valuable lessons about accommodations through that whole experience. First, was to speak up because if an accommodation can make your life easier it’s definitely worth exploring. In this case I initially bit my tongue because of a bad past experience and it ended up working out way better than expected. Second, be specific and/or propose a plan, because in most cases you are your own best advocate and know what accommodation will work best for you. Simply saying “I need an accommodation” might not get you what’s most effective.
But the ADA is responsible for making all of that possible. So happy twentieth anniversary to the ADA; hooray for the ADA!
What frustrations have you faced when it comes to accessibility or handicapped parking? How did you overcome them? What does the Americans with Disabilities Act mean to you?
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