The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibited discrimination against people with disabilities in programs employing federal employees or receiving federal assistance and contracts (Tucker, 1997). The private sector, however, were still allowed to openly discriminate when it came to hiring practices or accommodations. Finally, in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed. The ADA is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against people with any physical or mental disabilities in all private and public spaces open to the general public, such as employment, schools, transportation etc. (ADA.org, n.d.).
Following the passage of ADA, some issues have drastically improved for the Deaf community while some issues continue to linger. One of the biggest improvements under ADA, have been seen in the case of access to the public-school system. Deaf students now have access to interpreters, audiologists, speech-to-text and text-to-speech technologies etc. under enhanced communication models adopted under the ADA. This means, attending public schools, is a much more realistic option for Deaf students today, that it has ever been in the history. Such improvement in accessibility and accommodations has led to the creation of a “deaf-middle class” that consists of increasing number of Deaf people with higher education degrees such as: doctors, lawyers etc (Buckley, 2020). In spite of increasing access to education, the employment gap continues to be substantial. In 2017, only 53.3% Deaf people aged 25-64 were employed, as compared to the 75.8% hearing people. It would be interesting to see how this statistic breaks down if we further break down the age bracket to 20-40 and 40-60 because I assume the 20-40 age group should have been the ones who should have gotten better access to education following the passage of ADA. It is also important to note that Deaf students who go to schools for K-12 education, may not necessarily follow through on their education with a higher education degree. Or there might still be continuing discrimination against Deaf people when it comes to employment. So, their degrees or their qualification may not be necessarily translating into jobs.
In addition to education, the ADA also improved access to entertainment for the Deaf community. Under ADA’s law regarding access to effective communication, Deaf people now have access to 24*7 video relay service programs that allow them to talk to people over the phone. Since January 2017, ADA has expanded its “Movie Captioning and Audio Description Rule” to require movie theatres to provide closed captioning and audio description to all Deaf people. Public places like hospitals, museums, grocery stores etc. are all required to provide interpreter services or reasonable communication accommodation to Deaf people. Looking at these ADA mandates, it’s important to celebrate how far we have come in terms of disability rights and access. However, it is also important to acknowledge that these rules are just 30 years old. Generations and generations of Deaf people went without access to these fundamental rights which impeded their quality of life and access to other opportunities. While these laws are in effect, we cannot tell for sure if they are being enforced thoroughly all around the US. Changes take time and often there is a lot of reluctance in the US when it comes to accommodating minorities and people with special needs. So, the next decade should be focused on ensuring that these ADA laws are actually being enforced in our own communities and identifying ways to further refine and strengthen ADA.
Resources consulted for this post:
https://vitac.com/now-showing-rule-in-place-requiring-movie-theaters-to-be-more-accessible/
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2010/07/22/ada-stories
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1048084?seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents
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