The ADA at 20 – Are We There Yet?

"Are we there yet?"

A 20th anniversary is a big deal. Twenty years in a personal relationship. Twenty years with the same employer. Twenty years of service to a great cause.  All can be reason for celebration, reflection and, unfortunately, in the case of the Americans with Disabilities Act,  at least some concern. I will be in Washington, D.C. at a celebratory reception for the ADA 20th Anniversary to be held in Statuary Hall when I publish this piece. I have the great comfort of being able to drive my personal vehicle to the airport and catch my flight for this important and historic moment. Unfortunately many others living with disability are held captive to the sparse transportation resources available to them in their region for the day-to-day or more strategic opportunities that life presents.

ADA in Your Community Midwest Poll

I received the 2010 Great Lakes Region ADA Report Card  late last week in my in box. Robin Jones, the Great Lakes ADA Center Executive Director, is a colleague and friend, and I frequently review the links and stories that her staff forward associated with ADA, disability and our nation. The Report Card was of interest to me. It was succinct and clear.  I had hoped to take some pride in our regional grades surrounding the ADA and its implementation in the Midwest. Unfortunately it was very disappointing.

Of the eleven core subject areas that were graded, ranging from opportunties in the workplace to accessibility of transportation to physical accessibility to website accessibility, not one was graded above a “C”. How disheartening! I would welcome writing a post from a half-full perspective, and had even one of the eleven core subjects received at least a ”B” I might have pulled it off.  Sadly, it’s tough to brag about a combination of C’s and D’s.

The top five priorities for action as noted by the 3500 respondents to the “ADA in Your Community Poll” over the 6-state region were:

These are some very important areas of concern. As the director of a business focused on strengthening employment among qualified candidates with disabilities into the technology sector, I was immediately concerned that three of the top five priorities were very directly related to improving the overall employment picture for people with disabilities, two of them being obvious in more opportunities and reasonable accommodation in the workplace. It’s the third, perhaps less obvious, that I’d like to focus on.

Get me to the Job on Time!

Specifically, the perception – and, I am confident, reality – that accessible transportation is still a cause for concern 20 years following the passage of the ADA is very discouraging. No matter how much we may address opportunity and accommodation in the workplace, if we continue to ignore the very real challenge that so many candidates have in just getting to the job ,  we are burying our heads in the proverbial sand. I am always concerned with logistics when I consider one of our candidates for a position, knowing that whether they can get to the job often trumps their ability to do the job well. The latter is irrelevant if they don’t have access to accessible transportation at a reasonable cost. Unfortunately this is often a challenge for candidates with disabilities. I’ve seen it when trying to place many of our candidates. Many don’t drive for any of a number of reasons; they don’t have the upper extremity strength or movement to drive safely, they have upper or lower extremity spasticity or contractions that make it challenging to drive, they lack acute enough vision to drive, or their disability or condition otherwise prevents them from driving.

An all too Common Story of a Man and his Commute

Several years ago I was working with one of our consultants on landing his first professional opportunity. It was to support a group of developers for a very large, multinational client in the energy industry. He was very excited about the role. My consultant didn’t drive as his diagnosis of severe spastic cerebral palsy precluded his safe operation of a vehicle. The two of us, along with my recruiter at the time, researched the possibility of patching together accessible bus or accessible van routes that would get him to the client site reliably and on time. It was amazing to me how complicated and challenging it became to provide a reasonable approach for him to be able to get to work in a suburb that was fairly close to his home. Not to mention how ill-informed the staff of the regional transit authorities were regarding the availability, timing and routes of lift-equipped buses or other accessible transport vehicles. Ultimately he settled on two buses with a lapse between getting off one and on the other, and it took nearly 90 minutes in good weather to travel a route that would have been a 20 minute car drive!

A Call to Action for Urban Planners

In January of this year the “Innovation in Accessible Transport for All” conference was conducted in Washington, DC. It included global leaders in planning, transportation, policy and governance, and banking. The results from this one-day conference – clearly a compressed agenda – were to feed a follow- up meeting in Germany this past spring. The January meeting’s agenda points included direct language like “practical outcomes, rhetoric to reality, applying innovative approaches to accessibility for all”. At least this was heartening to see. While this was a global initiative, there was representation from several high-ranking members of  key U.S.-based agencies and academic partners engaged in this challenge – the Access Board, Federal Transit Administration and State University of New York among them.

No, We’re not There Yet!

Positioning our students and professionals with disabilities for success, encouraging their passion to learn, work and contribute to the greater good, and yes – even passing the ADA 20 years ago - will continue to be hollow victories if they must continue to fight just to get to the job. For my consultants, and so many tens of thousands of other qualified candidates with disabilities like them, let’s quit treating them like the kids in the back of the station wagon imploring their parents, “Are we there yet”?