EVERYONE BENEFITS FROM INCLUSION
THE ADA MAKES US STRONGER AS A PEOPLE AND AS A NATION
By Steve Wright
I read with great interest the Miami Herald’s local coverage of perceived abuses of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The ADA is the only civil rights legislation on the books for people with disabilities. People with disabilities had to wait a quarter century after the great civil rights legislation of the 1960s to get their rights protected by federal law.
For better or worse, those who framed and adopted the ADA forced people with disabilities to litigate to uphold their rights. There is no ADA police, no ADA code compliance unit.
As a writer/planner/educator/activist involved in the disability community since before the ADA was enacted in 1990, the headline of the main story concerned me.
I wonder if a story about people suing to uphold their basic civil rights — were it based on gender or race — would have the word extortion in the headline. I think not.
Certainly, there may be some very aggressive lawyers and like anything on earth, the ADA and its enforcement is imperfect.
Government in these parts often is poorly executed and a good many public officials come up on corruption charges. But I don’t see anyone calling for disbanding government.
So why even hint at eroding the fragile rights that people with disabilities enjoy via the ADA?
It would be a colossal throw the baby out with the bathwater bad move.
In reading the sidebar, I am aghast that a city would use taxpayer dollars to fight ADA compliance.
This smacks of the southern states that used every resource thinkable to deny African Americans access to integrated schools.
Exclusion and segregation is NEVER a good move.
But when people with disabilities cannot travel barrier-free sidewalks, when they cannot cross the street safely, when they cannot enter a pool accessibly — they are being segregated.
Ableism is devaluing a person with a disability because they are disabled. It is exactly like racism, which devalues on skin color and culture. Both are indefensible and sometimes lethal.
Resisting making a shop, restaurant, or corner store accessible to all is not only ableism, but also a horrible business decision.
The CDC has documented that one in four adults has some form of disability.
Larger corporations spend millions of dollars to increase market share by one percent. What business, even a small one, wouldn’t want to get more customers?
Accessibility often costs far less than the horror stories that falsely portray it as cost prohibitive. The tiniest corner store, over time, spends tens of thousands to keep its plumbing, HVAC, roof and floor space safe and up to code. If it can afford that cost of doing business, it can afford ADA compliant access.
To make access even easier, I challenge our local county and city mayors to create an accessibility program similar to Ygrene PACE Clean & Green Energy Home Improvements. That program allows the expense of upgrades to be amortized over 20 years and paid with one’s property tax bill.
An accessibility program would create jobs for certified contractors who remove barriers and make commercial spaces accessible to all. It would increase revenue for businesses that get new customers that can now access their products and services.
Federal HUD money could possibly be introduced to supply some matching funds for qualifying small businesses.
For more than half a century, Miami has proudly been a beacon for people leaving dictatorships and disasters — to make a better life for their families. With this program, it could be a model of inclusion for people with disabilities.
Wright is a writer/planner/educator/activist who created a groundbreaking universal design course at the University of Miami School of Architecture. He lectures globally on creating a better built environment for people with disabilities and writes about ADA issues for the largest trade association in America. Wright blogs daily on the inclusive city at http://urbantravelandaccessibility.blogspot.com
He tweets on disability issues at @stevewright64
