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The Americans With Disabilities Act Update

(Updated May 2006)

The Vermont Center for Independent Living (VCIL) serves as the Vermont Affiliate to the Boston-based ADA and Accessible Information Technology Center, a federally funded center in a great organization called Adaptive Environments. Our job is to help Vermont citizens, towns, businesses and service organizations get the information they need about the Americans with Disabilities Act and other disability rights laws. Sharing information about rights and technical assistance and how to honor them are at the heart of Adaptive Environment's ADA-IT services; yet, despite their success, funding was almost cut last year and future funding is uncertain.

Unfortunately, many of the programs and services that make equal opportunity possible are losing federal and state funding. When I first wrote this, a year ago, individuals with disabilities in Tennessee were holding a vigil in their Governor's office, protesting cuts to the Medicaid services that make community living and health care possible for many seniors and younger people with disabilities. Without Medicaid funding for the respirators and other community-based services that Medicaid had covered in the past, individuals with disabilities would go into institutions and be denied their right to services in more integrated setting. The fight continues. A few weeks ago VCIL staff joined others at a national ADAPT action protesting these cuts and the forced institutionalization of individuals with disabilities in nursing homes, mental health institutions, and developmental facilities. For those of us who have been isolated, denied choices and experienced disability discrimination, threats to disability rights, information and services carry a long shadow.

The premise of the ADA that individuals with disabilities have a right to full citizenship; and therefore to services in the most integrated setting, represents one of the major impacts of the ADA in the last five years. The Olmstead decision has confirmed what CILs and ADAPT have been saying for years, and long term funding mechanisms are shifting in response. In Vermont we used to have to wait for community based services but were told that we were entitled to a nursing home bed. Now Vermont leads the nation in having a long term care model where the money follows the person. Both the ADA and the voices of Vermonters helped shape a new and more equitable option.

Another shift that the ADA has helped engender in the last five years is a new partnership approach to accessibility and beyond in community development. Our community access initiatives have actually founded welcoming partners in local communities like Bennington, and in fitness centers, health care programs, and information technology initiatives. People are moving beyond compliance toward universal design and lifespan approaches in buildings, public spaces, communication and transportation systems and service design and information. It does not happen everywhere but the ground is shifting under our feet and sometimes the moves are positive ones. A community leader from Bennington is considering joining our Board because of the impact Judy Krum, a community member with disabilities who coordinated VCIL's accessibility and awareness activities there, has had on community attitudes and design. The skills and expertise of our access consultant Renee Wells, a Board member at Adaptive Environments, has helped local advocates like Judy build successful partnerships and create needed change. Renee is a long time partner of VCIL and knows the access requirements of the Rehabilitation Act and the ADA inside and out. She also understands the intended power of these laws as resources for partnership and tools for social transformation. This orientation to disability rights has helped us build partnerships that work for both individuals with disabilities and state and community partners. The vision and energy of disability rights and universal design have begun to inform public and community debate about the place of disability in our personal and professional lives. Communities are becoming more inclusive though progress sometimes feels too slow.

Finally, the cross disability approach embedded in the ADA is also helping to reframe the nature of disability partnerships. About five years ago, VCIL signed a memorandum of agreement with the Vermont Psychiatric Survivors and Green Mountain Self Advocates organizations affirming the principles and goals of the ADA and the rights of all Vermonters to integrated opportunities and services, civil rights and protection from forced treatment. The ADA has shifted the discussions on our diverse and shared disability experiences away from fragmented diagnosis and single disability priorities toward a shared right to opportunity. We are all the better for it.

Some Ancient History (!)

I am fifty-four and started my childhood in the medical system and was institutionalized for a few years in my early life. My childhood and early adult experiences with disability rights, or lack of them, predated both the ADA and many state disability rights laws. I am looking back at what these changes have meant in Vermont.

Employment Rights:

In the radical 60's, I wrote to the institution for the disabled in New Hampshire where I spent several years in my early childhood and asked for a summer job providing peer support to children there. They wrote back to say, "Thank you for applying but we do not hire the handicapped." Denying me a job because I am disabled was legal then. Job discrimination still happens but the ADA and Vermont state law protects qualified individuals with disabilities from this discrimination. A job candidate or employee cannot be denied work solely on the basis of their having a disability and qualified workers can request reasonable accommodations (aids and services that make effective communication and equal opportunity available to individuals with disabilities in the workplace).

When a Deaf individual called VCIL in the 1990s to say his employer was not providing him interpreter support during required meetings and trainings, we were able to direct him and his employer to the effective communication and reasonable accommodation requirements of the ADA. Today the business is well known for their commitment to recruiting and accommodating employees with disabilities.

The institution in New Hampshire that once wrote me to say that they did not hire the handicapped recently joined with the Flynn Theater and VCIL in planning the New England Tour of the Axis Dance Troupe, a company of dancers with and without disabilities. The staff was very embarrassed when I told them my story from pre ADA days. It was good to be able to celebrate the change and to talk about why all of us must continue to move forward for equal opportunities in the arts, housing and community living, health care and employment.

Public Accommodations:

In the mid 80's, a young man with physical disabilities called a Vermont hotel to ask for a room that was wheelchair accessible. The motel said they had such a room and would reserve it; but when he got there the person at the front desk said, "We do not want you to stay here because you are disabled." That is when members of the Vermont Coalition for Disability Rights realized we had a problem: individuals with disabilities were not protected from discrimination in public accommodations. We advocated for civil rights protections and the Vermont legislature passed a state law that makes discrimination in public accommodations illegal. In the 1990 the ADA gave all Americans with disabilities the same protection from discrimination in public accommodations that earlier civil rights legislation provided to women and Black Americans.

About five years ago VCIL received a call from a Vermonter with a disability living in an important tourist destination in Vermont. The resident was very concerned because the town was about to make changes to the downtown area that would make town services less accessible to individuals with physical disabilities. The town manager thought we were calling to threaten a lawsuit. We explained the concern of residents and were able to inform them that many of the complaints the ADA received had come from tourists who were not able find accessible lodging or make use of other public accommodations. We told the town manager about some of the technical resources available through VCIL and the ADA Technical Assistance Center in Boston and he agreed to go back to the drawing board and to work out an alternative design for the public area.

Vermonters who have a disability find it hard to find accessible places to go to leave an abusive situation or get help dealing with abuse and domestic violence. For the last few years Vermont's domestic violence programs have been working with Deaf and disability advocates to improve the accessibility of domestic violence services. The resources and staff of the ADA and Accessible IT Center were key partners and resources for VCIL in this project. A new Deaf Victims Advocacy Service (www.dvas.org) is now available, local programs are working on accessibility and disability awareness and the Governor has prioritized funds to make local programs accessible. The vision and values of the ADA, the force of law, and a growing awareness of the affect of "discrimination by design" on Vermonters with disabilities living with abuse are helping local domestic violence programs and their state partners become more accessible to individuals with both visible and invisible disabilities.

Education:

We have a lot to be proud of in Vermont and a lot to be proud we've left behind. In the 1980s a bright high school student with significant disabilities dreaming of college told me that the principal of her high school said she should not be thinking of college; instead, he said, she should be going to a "special" institution for "people like her." In the last few years a young man with similar disabilities helped Castleton, one of Vermont's state colleges, use the guidelines in the ADA to make the campus more accessible to students with disabilities. Times have changed because laws have changed and that brought a change in social values to a small rural campus. As a result, the campus is the place of choice for summer camps and the Governor's Youth Leadership Forum for students with disabilities. All because of the ADA and some shared vision on the part of a student and the administration.

Each of these stories explains why services like the New England ADA and Accessible IT Center are so important and what the ADA has already done for Americans. The ADA has it's challenges; but without this legislation, and good information about how to use it, America's promise of equal rights to citizens with disabilities would still be an empty promise rather than a commitment to equality and justice.

VCIL and The Independent salute the people who still fight for disability rights in education, work and public places and services. We hope that Vermont and America will have the wisdom to protect the rights, resources and services that make independence and opportunity possible and we hope more Americans will join this battle for democracy. It is one that many injured soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will appreciate and be forced to join as they learn what citizenship with a disability means.

July 2005, Updated Spring 2006

Deborah Lisi-Baker is the Director of the Vermont Center for Independent Living and the Editor of The Independent.