ADA’s Legacy? A Generation of Problem-Solvers

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Twenty years is significant, not because it’s a round number, but rather, because it represents a generation of experience gained since the law was enacted. Many of us who lobbied for the ADA believed at the time that it could take a generation or more, as it had with the Civil Rights Act before it, to fulfill the ADA’s promise of equal opportunity for Americans with disabilities.

I thought about the ADA several days ago when I passed through U.S. Border Control at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. It’s a journey I make every few weeks, so it should be routine. I have to admit that I still feel a sense of trepidation at crossing the border, proving my citizenship, and explaining my disability to suspicious officials who decide to ask about it. No, I am not a terrorist. I’m just a guy with a white cane who can find his own way through the airport, thank-you. No “special services” are required. After I clear customs, I always sigh with relief and think, “Well, they let me in again”

That civic ritual at the border is a kind of negotiation. It involves my identity as a person with a disability in a give-and-take dialogue with the disability attitudes of others. It reminds me of the day 20 years ago when I was invited to the White House for the ADA signing ceremony.  The event was held outside on the South Lawn, between the White House and the Ellipse. Everyone had to pass through metal detectors to enter. The Secret Service must have had a crash course in disability awareness, because it was the smoothest security check I ever passed. As I walked through the wrought-iron gate, I looked around and marveled, “Wow, they let me in here!” They let me and a thousand other people. We had every kind of disability in the human condition, and we used every kind of assistive device available at the time. I like to think we were the most diverse group of citizens ever gathered together at the White House.

The ADA signing ceremony was held outside, not because it was a beautiful summer day, but because the White House itself was not fully accessible. Many in our diverse group of citizens could not have entered the building. Long gone were the wooden ramps installed five decades earlier to accommodate President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wheelchair.

On its anniversary, pundits will debate what the ADA has accomplished since then. I am no pundit, but I still believe what I said in a TV interview after the ceremony. “The ADA will not end disability discrimination overnight. But in a nation governed by the rule of law, getting it in writing is how you begin.”

That’s the crux of what I want to say to you today. The Americans with Disabilities Act was an unfinished project at the moment it was signed into law, and it remains an unfinished project today. It depends on us, and the work we will do, to carry it to completion.

My own work in the field of disability studies has been greatly influenced by Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator and philosopher of liberation. He taught non-literate poor people how to read by first convincing them that, through the daily work they did with their hands, they had culture and made culture. He believed culture to be an unfinished project that he called “the struggle for human completion.”

Listen to that expansive phrase again: the struggle for human completion. That is a worldview large enough to include all of us, whether we have disabilities or not. That is a project in which all of us are engaged. That struggle makes us human.

In the years since the ADA became law, we’ve begun to talk about something called “the culture of disability.” My thinking about it has changed over time, and I am not prepared to say that disability is a fully evolved culture in the same sense that we speak of Aztec and Mayan culture or even Deaf Culture. But I do believe that the work of disability is a significant form of cultural production. By “work of disability” I mean the daily problem-solving involved in living with a disability — making adaptations and negotiating accommodations along the lines of principles set forth in the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The work of disability is creative work. It’s work that addresses the impairments of individuals, to be sure, but it’s also work that makes society more flexible and tolerant. Each of you, disabled and non-disabled, has significant experience with this work, although you may not get enough credit for it. The recognition you received today is a step in that direction, and I congratulate you.

As you venture forth in the world, you will have to negotiate with people who see the disability, not the person. Some will look at you and see one more hassle, one more problem added to their plate. I want you to remember this: when I look at you, I don’t see problems. I see problem-solvers.

So go out there and get it done, this unfinished project called the struggle for human completion. Claim your rightful place in the public sphere, because the Americans with Disabilities Act has got your back. Good luck and good work to you.

[This talk was given to graduating students and scholarship winners at the Office of Disability Services reception at Wright State University. Thanks to ODS director Jeff Vernooy for the opportunity to share my thoughts with the next generation of leaders in the struggle.]