The ADA is under attack. Next week, the House will be voting on a bill, H.R. 620 that would undermine the protections of the ADA and take away the rights of people with disabilities. Please call your Representative and ask them to #VoteNo and #ProtectTheADA
Here are talking points:
· HR 620 will take away the civil rights of people with disabilities
· It will make people with disabilities wait for up to 180 days for services that other people have immediate access to
· The wait may be even longer than 180 days because a business that is making “substantial progress” toward fixing a problem can take even longer than 180 days
· HR 620 will eliminate the need for businesses to be accessible until a complaint is received; there will be no need to make a business accessible until someone complains; that will mean many groups building new buildings, renovating buildings, opening new businesses will not make their services accessible
· HR 620 shifts the burden of accessibility from those who offer services to the person with a disability; no other group needs to prove their right to access to publically offered services
· We should not be gutting the rights of people with disabilities; if there is a problem, we should be limiting the actions of a small number of lawyers who are bad actors
· HR 620 will take away the civil rights of people with disabilities; would we ever think about eliminating the rights of any other group of Americans? This is disgraceful.
And here is a fact sheet from our colleagues at Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) about the myths and realities of this bill.
ABOUT: Stephen Kuusisto is the author of the memoirs Have Dog, Will Travel; Planet of the Blind (a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”); and Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening and of the poetry collections Only Bread, Only Light and Letters to Borges. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a Fulbright Scholar, he has taught at the University of Iowa, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and Ohio State University. He currently teaches at Syracuse University where he holds a University Professorship in Disability Studies. He is a frequent speaker in the US and abroad. His website is StephenKuusisto.com.
Planet of the Blind 