Sunday is the 25th anniversary of the ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, which made the country a lot more accessible than it was in 1990 when President George H.W. Bush signed the legislation.
Wheelchair ramps, now common on businesses, public buildings and street corners in America today, were relatively rare a quarter century ago.
The ADA also gave civil rights protections to people with disabilities to ensure they can fully take part in government, public and community life.
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The law resulted in a new world of opportunities, including closed captions for the hearing impaired on television, audio descriptions for the blind at movie theaters, wider doors on buildings, and buses with low floors that can reach the sidewalk for easy wheelchair entry.
Robert L. Burgdorf, Jr., a disability rights scholar and advocate, wrote the bill that would become the ADA.
“In a variety of ways,” he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed column, “The ADA has lived up to the hopeful expectations that accompanied its passage.”
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The ADA helped people with disabilities find and keep jobs, and 25 years later, the U.S. Labor Department is collecting personal stories from grateful workers.
(READ more at Bloomberg) – Photo by Steve A Johnson, CC