This year is the 20th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), so it’s a perfect opportunity to either learn about or remember where the legislation first came from, and what it has achieved over the twenty years of its existence. Accessibility is integral across all levels of our society, but it wasn’t always so…
The disability rights movement was around long before the ADA came into being in 1990; the act’s very existence is due to the thousands of people involved in protests, lobbying, administration, recruitment and awareness raising that took place for years before any legally enforced changes took place. In terms of legal advances, the most significant precursor to the ADA was probably Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, which made it illegal to discriminate on grounds of disability.
The first version of the ADA was introduced in 1988, and went through many rounds of changes and redrafts over the next two years. During those two years, those involved in the disability rights movement orchestrated a massive publicity campaign to raise awareness of the high levels of discrimination and to persuade the general public that these discriminations represented injustice on a massive scale. One of the ways this was achieved was by publicising some of the thousands of first-hand accounts of discrimination submitted by individuals around the country.
So what did the ADA actually achieve? Arlene Mayerson wrote an excellent history of the Act in 1992, and has this to say on the question: “The ADA 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.”
Presently, the ADA affects every facet of life in the US. Perhaps most significantly, in the marketplace, anything with the ADA compliance stamp can be bought in the highest confidence. This includes a lot of the products offered through our store; for example, our entire range of accessible shower chairs, products by virtue of which we join in celebrating two decades of the ADA and its positive impact on civil rights.