15 Years Later, Disabilities Law Praised for Transforming Lives
July 26, 2005 — -- Nancy Starnes was 30, working for a brokerage firm and was almost done earning her stockbroker's license when a horrible accident changed the course of her life.
Starnes sustained a spinal cord injury in a small plane crash in 1973, and she has used a wheelchair ever since. Because the testing site for her stockbroker's license was not wheelchair accessible, she was unable to complete her license requirements and was forced to change careers.
Had the accident occurred after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the testing site would have been required to accommodate her or provide an alternate location. "I'd be in the financial business right now," Starnes said.
Today marks 15 years since President George H.W. Bush signed the ADA into law, guaranteeing equal opportunity for people with disabilities in public accommodations, commercial facilities, employment, transportation, state and local government services and telecommunications.
"It is the most significant civil rights statute since the Civil Rights Act was passed," said Michael Deland, chairman and president of the National Organization on Disability in Washington, D.C.
While the ADA did not pass without controversy -- particularly from small business owners concerned about the cost of implementing the law's requirements -- it is clear 15 years later that the law changed the lives of many people with disabilities, some of whom are too young to remember life without its provisions.
New Options for Millions of Americans
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are more than 37.5 million Americans with at least one disability. This includes 23.6 million with a condition limiting basic physical activities, such as walking, climbing stairs, reaching, lifting or carrying.
Without the ADA, they might not be able to work, visit friends and family, go to the movies or participate in their community activities.
"Before, [many believed] people with disabilities need to be cared for, and they probably were not expected to be productive members of society," Starnes said. "Many of the stereotypes about people with disabilities have been struck down. But with every convert that we gain in this country, it seems like there's a new person who needs to be educated about it."
Some of the more public changes provided by the ADA include things like ramps and curb cuts in sidewalks and by stores, which some businesses had worried would be too expensive, Deland said.
"What they very quickly found was that ramps not only enabled people such as myself in a wheelchair to get in and out," he said. "It's also enormously helpful for mothers with young babies in strollers, for the elderly. The benefit spread far beyond the disability community itself."
'Marked and Much-Appreciated Opportunities'
Starnes knows firsthand what life was like before such accommodations. "When I first joined the community of people with disabilities and wanted to go back to work, there wasn't a single handicapped spot in my entire county in northern New Jersey," she said.
"There were no curb cuts, so I had to find driveways that might take me out into the street. I might have to, in my wheelchair, try to find my way alongside a shoulder of a road with lots of inclines that simply were too steep for me to negotiate in a wheelchair. There were innumerable buildings with stairs and no elevators."
Starnes was a part of making changes even before the ADA and her current job as vice president and chief of staff at the National Organization on Disability. She was the first woman elected to the town council in Sparta, N.J., and she went on to serve as mayor in 1984.
"They got tired of carrying me up and down the stairs after a couple years and finally built a ramp, before the ADA, before Title II required a ramp to be built."
A frequent traveler, Starnes now can count on rental cars with hand controls that she can drive, as well as accessible airport bathrooms.
"The ADA is not perfect," she said, "but I sustained a disability before the ADA, and I noticed some marked and much-appreciated opportunities."
Deland actually benefited from accommodations for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used a wheelchair throughout his presidency. As former chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality under the first President Bush, Deland said, "I was able to get around the complex, residence, family rooms, all thanks to ramps and elevators installed for Franklin Roosevelt, so that made that particular job feasible for me.
"The irony is, after his death, ramps built all over Washington were ripped out," he said.
Complaints and Debate Over Proposed Changes
Under the ADA, businesses are required to make their facilities accessible to people with disabilities, and when they are unable to do so they must provide alternatives, such as curb-side service at dry cleaners and pharmacies.
"I think that's why the law was successful," Starnes added. "I think people's hearts are in the right place. They don't know about the law to know what they are required to do, what the options are if they can't meet the letter of the law."
But the law's complexities have opened up businesses to "drive-by lawsuits," said Elizabeth Gaudio, senior attorney for the National Federation of Independent Business Legal Foundation.
"Small business owners want to do the right thing, certainly, and they want to comply with the ADA -- it is the law," Gaudio said, adding, "While our members certainly want to comply and offer accessible establishments, there has been some frustration with the complexity of the regulations of the law."
One area is what can be considered a "readily achievable" standard. "That's a real gray area. What is readily achievable for your business may not be readily achievable for my business."
She noted that one NFIB member renovated his restaurant and thought he'd complied with all of the pertinent laws, only to be sued two months later because his bathroom measurements were off by a few inches.
"So while he was in compliance with the local building code, he was not necessarily in compliance with the federal ADA regulations," Gaudio said. "I think there's sometimes not even an awareness from small business owners, from contractors, who think they're doing what the law requires."
But Jim Ward, founder and president of ADA Watch and the National Coalition for Disability Rights, said business owners should make sure they're in compliance with the ADA, just as they are with other laws.
"I think it needs to be viewed as another requirement to opening up a business -- the health code, tax code, other government regulation, we don't feel that this is any different than the other obligations a business has to run in our country."
Looking Toward the Future
Gaudio and the NFIB are monitoring proposed changes that the Department of Justice might make to regulations in Title III of the ADA, and they are hoping to see if there are "less burdensome ways to go about making changes, making revisions, without undermining what the law intends."
And ADA Watch is paying close attention to Congress as it considers the ADA Notification Act, which would require a 90-day waiting period before businesses are held liable to ADA standards. "Our feeling about that is, this is a 15-year-old law, and it can only hurt voluntary compliance," Ward said.
In addition, Ward's group is opposing the Supreme Court nomination of Judge John Roberts, who the group believes narrowly interprets the ADA. Roberts won a case before the high court, representing Toyota against an employee who sought accommodations for carpal tunnel syndrome -- a ruling that advocates say created a strict test for disability for people with other illnesses like epilepsy, diabetes and mental illness.
"Many cases were decided on a 5-4 basis, with Justice O'Connor in some cases being on our side, so there's a real concern that Roberts could change that slim majority," Ward said, adding, "People have recognized disability as an important diversity issue, businesses included. But there is still this tendency … to portray it as an unfunded mandate rather than civil rights law."
In terms of new opportunities for people with disabilities, Deland and the NOD are focused on narrowing the "employment gap." According to the Census Bureau, 42 percent of men with disabilities between 21 and 64 and 34 percent of women with disabilities in that age range are employed. There are 4 million men and 3.5 million women with disabilities who are employed.
But Deland believes that figure is not high enough, and NOD polling shows "there is still 50 percent fewer people with disabilities who are able to work and want to work in the work force than their non-disabled peers, and that is the huge remaining challenge."
"The irony is that while it's [the ADA's] made an enormous difference in accessibility for a population beyond just those with disabilities, it has had very little impact in increasing the percentage of people with disabilities in the work force," he said. "Those numbers have remained basically constant."
Gaps still exist in areas like access to recreation, participation in religious services, education, accessibility to health care and transportation, he said, "but overlaying it is the employment gap, because if you don't have a job, you don't have the money for education, for transportation, for recreation.
"I think that overlaying even the employment is still an attitudinal gap, and in some cases it is still blatant discrimination against people with disabilities. In others, it's a lack of understanding and a lack of sensitivity."
Starnes said she hopes that increased employment will open even more doors for people with disabilities. "It's far too expensive to keep people in financially dependent status when they could be out working in society," she said.
And that, she said, is what will change perceptions as well.
"I think what matters to everybody who leaves their home each day, either to go to work or shop or visit friends, is that they're going to be welcomed into society as part of the natural landscape and diversity of this country."