My ADA Story: A Deafblind Lawyer Dismantling Digital Barriers
The President shared a moving story of how, in the years before Congress passed the ADA, his father-in-law — who had multiple sclerosis — would sometimes hold himself back because he didn’t want his disability to inconvenience others. With that story, President Obama reminded Americans that “We’ve got to tear down barriers externally, but we also have to tear down barriers internally.”
As someone who has struggled against attitudinal barriers, I loved hearing our President encourage the world to view access for people with disabilities as a civil and human right.
As a deafblind student, I witnessed advocates using the ADA to change social attitudes. The National Federation of the Blind regularly referenced the ADA when explaining to technology developers why designing access for people with disabilities is a necessity and not some optional cherry atop the Silicon Valley sundaes. I heard how the National Association of the Deaf used the ADA to increase closed-captioning online, and how Disability Rights Advocates used the ADA to compel Target’s tech team to make their website accessible to blind Americans…