Posts Tagged ‘disability’

Most of the media coverage I heard on the ADA 20th anniversary represented the civil rights law as a landmark in American public life. There were dissenting views, of course. Someone hiding behind the name “fortressdayton” wasted little time in adding this comment to my op-ed piece on the Dayton Daily News Matter of Opinion blog. Disability discrimination is often hard to put your finger on, so I give “fortressdayton” credit for being unfiltered, if mean-spirited.

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 passed. 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.

The U. S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division’s celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act will be held Friday, July 23, 2010 from 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (eastern daylight time).
Shown live from The Great Hall in the Robert F. Kennedy Justice Building, the event will be shown in accessible [...]

I’ve been musing about 40 years of experience with two careers that necessarily intertwine and overlap. The first is my career as a media professional. The second is my career as a person with a disability. You could think of one as the day job and the other as my second gig, but the experiences cannot be separated into such neatly distinct categories. If anything unifies my work in both areas, it is the concept of public sphere. Here is how Wikipedia currently defines it.

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.