Later today I will be speaking in downtown Iowa City at an ADA 20th Anniversary Celebration which will feature Senator Tom Harkin (who co-sponsored the ADA in the Senate) as well as Iowa Governor Chet Culver. Several others will also be speaking including my friend Georgina Dodge, the University of Iowa’s new Vice President for Diversity.
We all know that the ADA has made a great difference in the lives of people with disabilities. Whether the subject is the accessibility of public facilities, the availability of reasonable accommodations in school or the work place, or the remedies offered by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Justice, the past 20 years offer ample evidence that the lives of PWDs have been positively affected by the adoption of civil rights legislation. I intend to celebrate these two decades today even as I continue to remain aware that disability is still a cultural problem that threatens to grow much worse in these dark economic times. But today I will celebrate. I will tip my cap (a figurative cap) to the allies of people with disabilities–important friends who have never once forgotten the harsh social realities that those of us with physical or mental impairments inevitably face every day.
Thank you Senator Harkin. Now we must fight to ensure that critical public health programs and social services remain intact in the coming years.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 