** Celebrating 32 Years with the ADA
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Former President George H.W. Bush signing the ADA in 1990 + DRA logo + "ADA 32: Celebrate. Learn. Share."
Image: Former President George H.W. Bush signing the ADA in 1990 + DRA logo + "ADA 32: Celebrate. Learn. Share."
Dear DRA Family,
Today marks the 32^nd anniversary of the ADA—a law that has shaped this country and my own life in monumental ways.
I was born in 1980—10 years before the passage of the ADA. My disability kicked in during high school in the 1990s, after the ADA’s passage, and I was lucky to join a band of disability rights activists who had already blazed early trails of disability inclusion that made a tremendous positive impact in my life. The ADA meant that as a wheelchair-user, I had the same rights to access as my non-disabled peers.
Early in my life as a person with a disability, I quickly learned that having rights under the law does not guarantee access. In college, I could not independently evacuate from my dorm during a fire alarm in the middle of a snowstorm because the door to the ramp was frozen shut. Surviving this terrifying experience prompted me to join a campus disability advisory committee and was the gateway to my rewarding career leveraging the ADA as a disability rights attorney.
After law school, I joined DRA as a legal fellow, and now, nearly a decade and a half later, I’ve experienced the power of this important law firsthand. The passage of the ADA provided an impetus for DRA’s visionary founders to create the organization in 1993, and it provides the backbone for most of our high-impact cases. Thanks to the ADA, DRA has brought cases that have transformed our country’s sidewalks, polling places, healthcare institutions, emergency evacuation plans, transportation systems, education systems, prisons, technology, and more.
As society has evolved, the ADA, combined with DRA’s cutting-edge legal advocacy, has made certain that people with disabilities are not left behind as we have transformed education, access to work, and healthcare during the pandemic. In that vein, and in keeping with DRA tradition, I’m happy to share that DRA filed a lawsuit today in the Western District of Washington against Providence St. Joseph Health and Western HealthConnect for their consistent failure to ensure effective communication for d/Deaf patients seeking medical care at Providence’s Seattle-area facilities. Read today's press release about this case ([link removed]) .
Portrait of Rebecca Williford
Happy 32^nd birthday to the ADA and thank you so much to all of you for fueling DRA’s engines year after year so that we can continue the important work that it takes to make the promise of the ADA a reality.
To Justice!
Rebecca Williford signature
Rebecca Williford,
Acting President & CEO
Image: Portrait of Rebecca Williford
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