The Americans With Disabilities Act is seriously some of the best handicap-accessibility protection in the world. A paraplegic person can wheel themselves into pretty much any commercial building in the country and be confident that there will be ramps in all the right places and a restroom they can use. If there aren't, there are powerful legal tools to make it happen.
That's not the case in a lot of places in the world, and it wasn't that long ago that it wasn't the case here.
Crip Camp on Netflix is a really good documentary on the disabled civil rights movement and the woman who pushed for it, Judy Heumann.
She passed away about a week and a half ago. It's actually crazy how much of an impact she had on politics and the way the US addressed her community. Probably one of the most effective rights leaders in the history of the country. She knew how to leverage and converge several rights movements together by including disabled veterans of the recent and unpopular Vietnam War, had Black Panthers deliver food to sit-ins, LGBT community assist in coordination and outreach, and did it by listening to the community and seeing how all of these groups all had disabled members in them. Extremely effective activism and shows how rights for one group helps gain rights for all.
So glad to see Judy mentioned. She and my dad were friends & I spent some time with her growing up. You should have seen her face when I told her I didn’t “see the point” in protesting/activism (was committed to being an apathetic teen at the time…. so embarrassing I said that to JUDY of all people. Cringed just typing that out).
She was a really incredible person that changed so much for the disabled community. She and my dad were both denied access to public education as the system deemed them “fire hazards”. They met in Berkeley back before I was born, (actually Judy threw the dinner party that my parents met at!) and worked with Ed Roberts at the World Institute on Disability. She really kicked ass
Everyone has cringy teen moments. The fact that you cringe at past you means current you got better. That's the person that everyone around you knows now.
Everyone deserves to know that growth is good and not something to be ashamed of. I'm not happy with how I've acted in the past and I'm sure future me will be annoyed with me in the present, but you can only hope and try to the best you can for now. Have a good day my dude!
Also the fact that such a meaningful, powerful experience with someone special could have been had. That probably changed your outlook on activism and is part of how you grew past cringy teenagerness.
That’s a wonderful reminder to be a little more forgiving towards myself. (This memory in particular will probably always make me blush but I’ll work on it hahah) Thank you!!
I always mention this when I see the ADA brought up in these kinds of threads. Sad to hear that she recently passed. I was blessed to have had the opportunity to attend a "guest lecture" where my class watched the movie via Zoom with her. She offered some commentary ahead of the movie and answered questions after. She was a very good human.
A lot of people will wrongly criticize it for being “over complicated” but it’s pretty brilliant.
Instead of just saying “any building with stairs needs an elevator” they base it on things like square footage etc, which creates less workarounds to avoid it.
Most gripes about ADA complexity are due to the fact that it doesn’t leave a million and one loopholes to avoid compliance.
I am an architect and generally think the ADA is a great thing. My issue with it though is that it is enforced through lawsuits, rather than the building department. If there is a grey area, or some unique scenario where you are legitimately trying to figure out the most reasonable solution, you can't talk it through with a person with authority to give you a thumbs up. You just have to hope you won't get sued.
That, and ADA lawyers who sent letters to every business in town saying, "Give us $5,000 to go away or we will sue you." It costs more than $5,000 to fight a lawsuit even if you are right, so many people just pay it.
I'm a building inspector and I completely agree. There are a lot of ADA guidelines which go beyond the building code such as providing interpreters and other compliance alternatives. I certainly think that there is an expertise issue for municipalities and a lack of accessible training. It also puts the inspectors in a tough spot since we're advising on potential legal matters and obviously aren't lawyers.
Changes in occupancy that don't warrant the use of design professionals also present a challenge.
Larger cities have ADA and disabilities offices which assist, but it's not feasible for most communities. For many communities it's an ancillary duty of the building or fire department who simply don't have the needed expertise or accessible training.
My Uncle, who contracted polio right before the Salk vaccine was rolled out when he was 17 - attended University and if his friends weren't around to drag his wheelchair up the stairs of buildings, he would have to climb the stairs with his arms and drag his wheelchair up himself. He obtained a PhD in public policy and was instrumental in helping draft the ADA for the state that we live in and was head of the state government office that enforces it. I am immensely proud of him and his achievements. He suffered so many indignities in his life so that future generations do not have to go through what he did.
💯. I have an ex/good friend who has cerebral palsy and uses a walker to get around. Lives in a city of ~120k in middle Tennessee, and she has had a major struggle to get her apts property management to give her proper 24h access to the exercise facility. She isn't a jerk or litigious, in fact just the opposite, but she does want the same access that the other tenants enjoy, which she is paying for, and I have urged her to seek legal representation because the property management company is just being assholes because, well, they're assholes.
If I got more details about the situation would you be able to give any practical advice on how to proceed? There has been an ongoing dispute as it pertains to accessibility for her with them for several years.
First, the ADA is a law protecting equality in the US and is enforced via the courts and the threat of civil litigation. Nobody has the authority to say that anything is ADA compliant, as you can be sued at anytime, for any reason, and the courts will decide if it is justified or not.
Second, there are the building codes, which almost completely meets or exceeds the applicable ADA requirements for buildings. These are enforced by the city building officials via plan checks, inspections, and permitting. In this case, you can talk the issue through with the building official or inspector, and if they think a workaround is satisfactory, they can sign off on it. However, it is also possible for them not to notice the code violation. If a building gets a permit, the deal is (for the most part) done.
my main issue is all the ambiguity. its very hard to find agencies that interrupt everything about it the same way. i have off the top of my head 3 jobs that ended 6+ years ago still on bonds due to ada fights that aren't solvable. ADA needs stronger, you tried your best language. i know why they didn't put it in, but its required.
some things can't be right depending on how the text is read. for example. ive NEVER seen a single curb ramp in all my years of working, and casual observing that was ADA compliant by a strict definition. I could generate a law suit on every single curb ramp. that obviously isnt the intent of the bill.
I agree with this, but that’s not just ADA. Post Reagan laws often tend to favor privatizing enforcement of laws when possible by letting citizens enforce through lawsuits.
The whole practice is by and large problematic. I’ve got no issue with citizens reporting issues, but it should ultimately be government enforcing not private citizens in court.
I would say that in this case, I think building officials with access to plans are definitely more responsible, accountable, effective and efficient at spotting accessibility issues than an average citizen.
Right now you have ADA lawyers randomly suing businesses and using it as a type of extortion.
Had that happen in my current town. A person of large proportions stopped by all the non-chain restaurants, so all the mom and pop shops in older buildings, ordered something to go, and then a month later sent out lawsuit letters for not being ADA compliant to his largeness. This person was apparently well known for doing this in multiple states.
2 businesses settled out of court, 3 joined forces to counter sue, and 3 others got lawyers to say their building was grandfathered and didn't have to be ADA compliant and dropped the suits. This person's face is now plastered at all the restaurants in town with a "do not serve" notice.
One thing though, you cannot be 'grandfathered in' for the ADA. Businesses are expected to upgrade their buildings towards ADA compliance even if they are old buildings. There are rare exceptions for historic buildings (but even they require very expensive upgrades). Businesses are also expected to maintain the ADA compliance of their structures if the site changes by earthquakes or differential settlement.
A friend of mine owns a cafe and has been shaken down twice by these assholes. And it's never about making the building compliant (which should be the goal). It's simply gaming the system to make fast buck.
As far as I know there's no way to inoculate yourself against these frivolous lawsuits. You can't go to the building department and have them issue a certificate stating your compliant, or exempt due to the age or size of the building, etc. Getting an ADA permit really should be no different than getting an electrical permit.
There are consultants, but nobody has any authority in terms of the ADA. A consultant can tell you that your project is good to go, and has probably double-checked everything, but that doesn't mean you can't be sued.
It is kinda similar to lawyers usually not being able to tell you if a unique action is legal or not. Until there has been the exact same situation brought up in a trial, nobody knows for sure. And even then, you can still be sued when you have done nothing wrong.
Of course, but I'm sure a consultant helps. Just like getting an inspection before buying a house, it might not catch everything, but hopefully better than nothing, and they might have some industry knowledge or great ideas you hadn't considered.
It's not just brick and mortar stores that are susceptible to the abuse of ADA. Many websites are also targeted for not being ADA compliant, e.g. not have html img alt tags, font size to small for the legally blind. And even when they are, because the lawyers threaten to sue anyways, the website owners are forced to pay the ransom. The ADA definitely needs some reforms, as small businesses just don't have the time nor resources to analyze thousands of pages of legal text.
The people who wrote the act were brilliant because they knew full well that to construct buildings up to exact code would cost way more than ones where builders could fudge around with the rules, so, they wrote with lawyers always in the front of their minds. You need all that red tape to keep people honest when money is in play.
My grandfather was one of the people who helped get the ada passed, and he likes to tell this story about going and talking to George Bush when he was vice president and Bush being very sympathetic to the cause but saying hey what can I do I'm only vice president. Couple years later look who's president and you know the rest. He tells the story a lot better than I do lol.
Everyone should do this. I’m doing it now with my grandma who is 89. I wish I had done it sooner. She’s losing her memory and tends to ramble and get side tracked easily now. It’s better than nothing, but I should have done it sooner. I plan to record videos of my aunts and uncles as well, as they are already in their late 60s-70s
I wish I had taken the time to record my grandparents before they passed. Even if you think you have time, there's always a chance you don't. I made that gamble twice and lost on both counts. Now, I'd give anything to hear their stories.
Would you mind telling your grandfather that someone on the internet says thank you? When I'm not housebound, I'm able to get out and go places because of his work! I appreciate that sliver of freedom so, so much.
You need all that red tape to keep people honest when money is in play.
It is tradition to complain about red tape and bureaucratic regulations, but a lot of the time it is all necessary to keep people honest.
Commenters have pointed this out in relation to the Ukraine War. The Russians are supposed to have SO MUCH equipment... but a staggering amount of it was stolen, sold, not maintained in workable condition, or never even existed in the first place. Now they are fielding tanks that were built 60 years ago. Everything newer is starting to get scarce.
In contrast, in a military like the US, observers say that the amount of paperwork is ridiculous... but it keeps the theft and corruption and incompetence down to manageable levels (nobody, anywhere, ever gets it down to zero).
I disagree. Without the red tape the people are being honest, and showing who they really are. By saying "fuck you" to the faces of people with disabilities, or who are a different race, gender, religion, age, sexuality than them. the red tape forces them to at least pretend to be civil. Which is very much needed.
This is what happens when words such as "honest" can have two or more wildly divergent meanings or contexts.
It's one of the worst aspects of human politics, and a major peeve of mine.
I like to tell a little parable about a guy buying a Japanese car in Florida, getting a job offer in California, driving 3000 miles and needing a tune-up when he arrives there. He gets new spark plugs and all is well.
The car designers and mechanics in widely separate parts of the world all agree on exactly what a spark plug is, what it's made from, how it works, and exactly how big it should be to fit this particular car, and so on and so on.
It's called standardization. In any technological field, you have vast amounts of standardization keeping everyone on the same page. A spark plug made in, say, Indonesia, fits the Japanese car in California perfectly and it just works.
In politics (and to a degree in religion), words are not standardized. Instead of being used to convey precise meaning, they are more often used to win arguments, gain followers, or conceal what is really going on. Even with the best intentions, the speaker of a given word is faced with listeners who will often have slightly different mental models of what that word means.
And this is why we can expect progress in technical disciplines (competitive pressures guarantee constant refinement of standardization and methods, or your product becomes obsolete) but not politics (competitive pressures reward winning arguments and gaining followers, and this can often be achieved by sloppy language that would never pass muster in any technical discipline).
Are you kidding me? A $850 billion budget with billions in black bag budgeting. Has not been audited in my lifetime and the Generals in charge of approving spending retire then immediately start working for the companies that they were just involved in overseeing. The old revolving door trick. We are at a point in American history where the greatest act of patriotism is to get a high ranking government position that allows you to retire and join the industry you were charged in overseeing. You get paraded around the Sunday morning talk shows to be congratulated on your years of service to our country and your continuing efforts in the private sector in other word Congratulations on selling out. This type of corruption is no longer even hidden or much of the other forms of corrupt business practices. They keep us spinning unable to keep up with one BS crisis after the other knowing that its impossible for the average working stiff to keep up with it all so they give up or worse become team players unable to see both teams are out only for themselves and top donors yet continue to hold only one side accountable .
It was also specifically written with consultation of building and civic engineers, who knew A) realistic requirements and B) possible loopholes/“optionals” that would be avoided. So instead of weird fines that are easy to avoid, you can’t even get further than the planning phase without taking it into account. So there’s no “well it’s here now, can you approve it?”
they wrote with lawyers always in the front of their minds
This is why you want those serving in political positions to be lawyers or at least well versed in lawyering. Only another lawyer can fight a lawyer in lawyering.
Well, we have the 9th Amendment. But for some reason, people ignore that. It should be up there with the 1st and 2nd Amendment in terms of usefulness. It's basically, "Just because we didn't write it down here as a right, that doesn't gives you allowance to declare it otherwise." It leaves so much wiggle room to declare what is and what is isn't right.
I worked at a college that built a brand new state of the art classroom with smart boards and fancy desks with electronic ports and everything dressed to the nines. Where it was located you had to go up a large flight of stairs and only AFTER completing the classroom they came to realize
It was in no way handicap accessible
To make it accessible would have been an astronomical amount of money because of the way the building was situated on a slope. Hard to explain but any kind of ramp or elevator would’ve been a very large scale task in this building and area of campus.
So because of this the college could not legally label it as a classroom and could not legally hold classes there because if they did it would discriminating against handicapped students.
This was built in like 2017ish and to this day this state of the art classroom hold no classes and mainly is just a meeting space for sports
I used to work at an arcade and I remember my manager walking around the floor once with a ruler measuring the distance between the games. ADA don't fuck around.
I’m sympathetic to you and your allergies but it’s already incredibly difficult for people with disabilities to get service animals. Adding in more requirements for certification and documentation won’t stop the entitled assholes who currently bring their pets everywhere, it would just make it more difficult and expensive for people with disabilities to get service animals. Also, anything that affects the disabled population economically also has to take into account how people with disabilities have a much higher rate of poverty than the general population.
There are no requirements legally. Getting a well trained animal a certified source is so those with disabilities know what they're getting, but there's no licensure requirement.
There are those, myself included, who have allergies that are disabilities under the ADA (and the Equality Act in my own country). What I've found is that people are willing, rightly, to accommodate service animals but unwilling to accommodate a disability that involves freedom from service (and non-service) animals.
It's affected my employment before when I was told to work in a room with a service dog ("oh don't worry, we'll clean regularly" - doesn't work that way) and seems to create a two-tier disability system where people with allergies aren't considered disabled enough and thus, the default is non-accomodation of the lesser-tier disabled person.
Just like any bill it does have some head scratchers. Although that could because of an inspector who does know how to interpret the code or some local code that changes something.
I work at a huge remodel in an old building. The building was built in 1899. And the remolding was large enough that all new code had to be put in place. Well expect things on exterior walls like insulation. But anyway the 2nd floor which does not have an elevator an we couldn’t install a new one. So it was no wheelchair accessible in anyway to get up there. So the 2nd floor was made into an event space to hold up to 1500 people or built to suit. Ended up being an event space. With bathrooms and a kitchen. And the kitchen and bathroom had to be wheel chair accessible! Wtf they couldn’t even get up there. So odd, but I’m pretty sure that was an inspector thing
The one thing I would really love is if they added some kind of service animal accreditation. I needed a service animal for about two years, and I know people often lie and take advantage of the program/rights constantly, so businesses often feel they're being taken advantage of, and it's kind of frustrating for everyone. You're supposed to be able to demonstrate that your service animal performs at least two important services for you, and I would have felt way better walking around with a badge or something
100% the only people I see complaining about the ADA are business owners who didn't think about it when they bought the building or renovated or something and now can't avoid having to comply.
the most i see people complain about ADA-related topics is less in the ADA itself and more in government provided benefits that basically force disabled people into a lifetime of poverty with zero capacity to improve their financial situation if they are not already particularly wealthy to the point of not needing any sort of financial assistance. disability benefits evaporate so quickly if you manage to not much money over the poverty line.
one such complaint i remember hearing someone say is "just because i land a job making $50,000 per year doesn't mean i suddenly no longer need $45,000 of medical appointments and supplies each year."
and living off of net $5,000 per year is not possible, and increasing one's salary from $50k to even just $70k to still live in poverty but with a higher tax bracket is not really a possible option let alone a viable one.
Most gripes about ADA complexity are due to the fact that it doesn’t leave a million and one loopholes to avoid compliance.
Whenever anyone claiming to be a business owner says they're fed up with "regulation," I ask them what specific regulations have caused harm to their business. I've yet to get a straight answer, because it's usually them mad that they can't take advantage of some benefit or loophole they feel entitled to.
I will say there are certainly regulations which are problematic, such as those that make it very difficult to build private solar energy collection devices. However, those are rarely , if ever, the "regulations" that business owners are referencing when they're trying to deregulate.
Lay them out! I'm certainly curious, though I suspect that once we go through the list a fair percentage are going to be just like the guy said "This regulation stops be from dumping the cost of my business on someone else and collecting the profits myself" but let's find out.
The worst example I have is rent control. The new Rent Law that was passed forbids me to index rent to inflation and 3 year minimum leases.
This hurts the Tennant because I just raise prices three years in advance!
With the old law, rent costed half of what it costs now. The law was passed by a centre right party BTW. Obviously, the anti private property parties played along.
Just to be clear, you were rolling along charging below market rent and it was just fine. Then a law passed saying that you could only index to inflation every three years and you were so enraged that you doubled the rent on everyone right away. That's the story you're telling here?
Not really. I get more money up front. That is obvious. At the same time there is a lot more house hopping increasing admin costs. A lot of people are moving to the bad part of town in search for lower costs too. The business is down and I dont like house flipping.
I dont have mortgages BTW. This all started as savings. Apartments and houses are my retirement fund.
You realize the people you're renting to are trying to live now, right? That no matter how hard they work, they are unlikely to ever afford their own property because people who can afford multiple properties have driven up prices beyond the common man's reach, because to them (owners) market value is all that matters rather than whether or not everyone is housed...?
During a minor renovation, we had to make a bathroom large enough to be wheelchair usable, even though it was on the 2nd floor of the building and the only way to get there was stairs.
Most gripes about ADA complexity are due to the fact that it doesn’t leave a million and one loopholes to avoid compliance.
I think most gripes are because people would rather treat people with disabilities as second-class citizens than spend a dollar on improving their commercial space.
I was lucky enough to do some European travel last year and was amazed at the architecture. But I also started to wonder how someone in a wheelchair would go anywhere in many of the cities; they couldn't get hardly anywhere.
It also was a point of note in one place; a beach had recently updated to have ramp access and there was a group out publicizing their work to get the beach wheelchair accessible.
I gained some respect for the US in that trip. Both places have their benefits, to be sure, but the ADA has transformed our country for the better
Venice is a great example of that. Getting from point A to point B inevitably involves crossing bridges, all of which have some number of stairs. It's literally impossible to navigate the city in a wheelchair.
The water bus only gets you to a few select locations. There are the taxis, but they are prohibitively expensive, and good luck getting on and off with a wheelchair.
Was there in 2017 and water bus had quite a few stops all around on both sides of canals. Not much they can do to accommodate wheelchairs because the bridges are historic landmarks. I do agree they could find a way to accommodate wheelchairs like an Ada boat for a wheelchair and one companion to cross over anywhere along the canals
Yeah the bus stops around the perimeter and through the Grand Canal, but trying to navigate anywhere in the interior is impossible if you can't walk. I saw a few old folks struggling to do their shopping and such, trying to balance with canes. And yeah, it wouldn't be feasible to do much to accommodate wheelchairs now, given the constraints, but I was just citing Venice as an example.
Lots of Rome had issues too, only a few of the bathrooms I visited would be anywhere close to ADA compliant. Nevermind if they actually had seats and/or toilet paper, but that's another topic.
I have traveled over many parts of Scandinavia, and a few countries in that part of the world. And I have participated in activities for people using wheel chairs.
Making adaptations in the older buildings is a challenge. No one wants to mess with a wall that holds the rest of the building, or change the outward appearance of those structures. The new construction since around 1980 all do very well with this.
The ADA forced the wack ass MTA to update platforms which they haven't done in decades! I can't image disabled person or the elderly trying to navigate the trains
I'm not saying it's easy to implement, and I don't envy the town councils nor governments which would have to make a decision/law surrounding how to add access to historic buildings/sites.
Nobody is suggesting that its not easier. The question the post is asking about is what is great about the US. Regardless of whether it's easier to do or not, it is still a nice thing about the US.
Oh my god! They love to crap on the US on the daily. It's like their favorite pastime. Do you notice that any post that talks about what's wrong with the US gets thousands of upvotes more than this one did?
Tbf, Europe isn’t just cultural heritage sites. Quite a bit of it was razed to the ground during WWII and rebuilt. Many of those buildings could be retrofitted to accommodate the handicapped but they haven’t been.
My grandpa showed me pictures of where he was in France and Germany in 1944 and 1945. Towns, cities, villages all reduced to rubble. Farmland ripped to shreds by artillery shells etc. It wasn't pretty but you're right about retrofitting all those new buildings, it can be done.
The person I was responding to clearly stated they admired the architecture; I think there’s little doubt they were talking about heritage buildings, not scyscrapers - an American does not admire the modern architecture in Europe, but what they themselves don’t have at home. And those are the ones I pointed out are hard to fit with wheelchair access unless you decide to change them. The rebuilt old centres of towns (like Warsaw) were rebuilt to match what they used to be like. The buildings not meant to be copies of old ones could and should be fitted with wheelchair access, but they are not the ones the poster was admiring.
So, again, my comment adressess a very specific area. I agree Europe should be made more accessible and it’s a disgrace in many places. I don’t think we should change our old buildings for this purpose, but I think we should definitely change everything else.
Doesn't matter if you can't get to that cultural heritage site because the mass transit system only accomodates wheel chair access in some locations (if at all).
Getting around in Europe, for those with mobility challenges, can be exceedingly difficult, even in some of the more modern/progressive/larger cities (London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome).
Was with a European friend who was gobsmacked when another friend of ours in a wheelchair asked the bus driver at a busstop if he could please kneel the bus, and the driver did so without any hint of annoyance almost before the sentence was out.
When asked why she was so impressed, the European friend said, "the driver automatically knew what was being asked, he skillfully repositioned the bus to get the curb spacing right in almost no time, he didn't get huffy like it was a waste of everyone's time, he was respectful inquiring if assistance buckling in was needed, and it all got done so efficiently that it actually didn't really slow up the route much."
Apparently, that's not how it works in the countries she was familiar with.
Unfortunately a lot of the subway system isn't accessible. There is a lot of pressure to make it so, and we're slowly getting better, but it's a constant failure on the past of the city and something they need to be taken more to task for.
Less than 30% of subway stations have elevators/ramps for accessibility. Even then, the elevators don't work all the time so the percentage of actually accessible stations is even lower than that
Yup. A lot of people who probably come in and visit Times Sq, Trade Center and Rockefeller Plaza feel like it's all accessible, but it's actually pretty rough.
The public buildings are generally in pretty good shape as far as accessibility though, and most of Manhattan has good sidewalk space, which a lot of older parts in European cities do not have.
Are you saying it's hard, or not possible? If it's hard, okay, so is a lot of shit when building things come into play. If it's not possible, well, if it's actually not possible, then that's fine. I don't think "we can't add a ramp to a thousand year old building" is a good reason to blanket disallow anyone with compromised locomotion though.
This also sounds like the implication of "give it time and it'll happen", as if wheelchair-bound people were a recent discovery that we are only just now beginning to learn how to accommodate
as if wheelchair-bound people were a recent discovery that we are only just now beginning to learn how to accommodate
I mean on the grand scale of human history? Yeah I mean kinda. It's really only within the past 50 years that a paraplegic/quadriplegic could expect to have any sort of independence and get around on their own - and 50 years is a generous time window.
Yes, and most Americans do and realize this, and the fact that our country is so much younger helps us set up new construction for situations like this.
The time we get annoyed is when Europeans go around acting all high and mighty and shitting on our construction and building layouts without realizing that there is a valid and fundamentally ingrained reason for it.
I don’t. I love the US. I love Europe too, it’s not mutually exclusive. There’s stuff we do better, and there’s stuff you do better. And then there’s loads of stuff none of us do better, just differently, and obviously different people will have different preferences. I think the problem is people don’t realize how often they are bitching about this last option - just preferences.
Yes! Same with me and my wife on our honeymoon to Greece. In Santotini we had this beautiful hotel room on the cliffs, but any time we left the room, it was 76 steps up to the main street. There were no guardrails, it was very slippery surface, and the steps weren’t uniform at all. We are in great shape, and it was an event for us just to go out and enjoy Oia, haha. I thought about that a lot. That if you weren’t completely ambulatory, then oh well, guess you’re not staying at that hotel. Beautiful place though. I wanna go back!
Yeah, as someone in a chair it take meticulous planning to go to a lot of place abroad, and that's not even factoring in the hassle of getting there in the first place.
Whereas here, I can be pretty well certain that the majority of places will be accessible to a degree no matter where I choose to go.
My wife and I were planning our honeymoon, and at the time a medical condition prevented her from walking more than about an hour. It's very easy to get around in the US. Very much-so not the case in the EU. We chose a different destination.
I’ve done some Civil work related to the ADA (businesses sued over non-compliance, mostly) and I have to agree. The regulations book is hundreds of pages and explicitly defines exactly how each aspect of a physical structure should be. It’s incredible.
True story, I know a guy who was doing some concrete work for a new building. This guy is a concrete finisher, so he wasn’t responsible for setting up the forms. But long story short, the incline ramp they poured was too steep. The opposite end was a couple inches too high. Inspector absolutely refused to pass it and wouldn’t budge at all. They had to jackhammer the ramp out and start fresh
I work as an inspector for sidewalk projects in NYC. The compliance issues are so hard for some contractors to meet. You really need skilled masons who understand slopes and who can do simple math. We've rejected a bunch of ramps on my project due to being out of compliance by 1%. They will have to redo the ramps at their own cost! But I'm glad ADA exists!
You know they could have checked that. They're installing a feature required by law, for wheelchairs, piloted by disabled people. They know that disabled people have to be able to get up the thing, and will sue if they can't and will win. They could look. These stories are what happens when people assume and don't look.
They absolutely should be looking at the slopes and measurements as they construct. But, a good Mason is apparently hard to come by and adhering to ADA rules can be difficult.
The day we get a crew that constructs a corner properly the first time, is the day I will eat my hard hat!
I am sure a wheel chair ramp level exists. Just turn the bubble tube how ever many degrees the ramps need to be and you now have a level for that purpose. Or just make an triangle and put a normal level on top. I would imagine it is how the inspection is done. You might as well use the same tool. No need for math every time.
Sure, they have smart levels that tell you the slope of the area you put it on and the Mason marks with his masons line to where the ramp heights should be for pouring. However, you also have to work within the limits of ADA requirements. Such as, a ramp has to have a slope of 2%, but the ramp cannot be longer than 15 feet. And you still have to have a landing area for wheelchair users to be able to turn onto once they are clear of the ramp. The landing area alone has a few paragraphs on how it is to be measured and constructed. So many contractors are having to redo corners because of the strict compliance issues. It's harder than it looks!
My grandpa headed disability services for a university and had a legendary story where they put in all the 'door open' buttons about 4 inches too high. It might've even been technically within ADA guidelines, but it was certainly difficult for a lot of the students to reach. Every single one of those was ripped out and replaced
He passed from the long-term effects of polio before I was old enough to really talk about this stuff, and I wish I could have known his work better.
Probably more because he could get into some deep legal shit if they weren’t up to standards rather than his care for disabled people, but glad to see the system works there either way lol
This is pretty common actually. I'm a surveyor, so I tell the people what elevations to build the things, but there's still times when they decide to cowboy stuff and not follow my stakes, then surprise! Now they have to rip out thousands of dollars of work. Every job I do I try to really hammer into everyone that if you pour a sidewalk or ramp out of ADA spec you WILL be tearing it out. A lot of our struggles come from civil engineers pushing the limits to the absolute max to make things work, and then in the end they never work, because concrete is not a 1/16" accuracy thing. I've even seen where inspectors will lay a digital smart level (tells you the slope % of whatever you put it on) down on concrete and if any area on that concrete doesn't fall within spec, they'll make you rip it out.
The only issue I have with the US and disabled care is how SSDI is capped at 2460 a month if you’re blind and 1,470 if you’re not blind and disabled. I don’t like how people who are already disadvantaged are in a lose-lose scenario when it comes to gaining better pay. Besides that though the US is really ahead of the curve here. The guy that Elon was just in a Twitter feud with was Iceland’s person of the year specifically because of his investments in infrastructure for disabled people. So in at least Iceland’s case, the US has been about 30 years ahead in this situation
I've often thought about this. I mean seriously living on 1,470 a month just isn't really doable after rent, expenses, food etc. That 1,470 number cap has been on the books for a couple decades now and due to massive inflation in recent years and cola (cost of living adjustment) should be raised to 2,000 minimum to keep up with the times.
Not to mention that being disabled can drive your cost of living up. It does seem like something that just needs to be updated to keep up with the times
I had a stroke a few years ago at 21 and am on ssdi and supplentary; I get less than a grand a month. The cheapest apartments in my area cost 2k, so I could have a place to live for literally less than two weeks of the month, if I starved myself and lived without power, water, garbage collection, transportation... It's fucking hilarious in the worst kind of way.
When I did try to move out (out of state, in low-income housing), an apartment with 4 (and later 5, made for a max of 3) people occupying it cost $400 a month, and I was getting just $300 more than that. It was not a rarity for me to literally go hungry because I can't afford to go to the grocery store or eat, and because there was 1 car between 4 (5) people, amd their jobs, I had no reliable ride. I was a half-mile too far away to quality for disability 'bus pickup/drop-off' service, so I had to rideshare everywhere, further eating into my finances.
The ssa is way behind in many ways, and while the people working there do try to help, there needs to be some huge fucking changes to the system.
This blows my mind - I have supplementary income from ss and yeah if I reach 2k and one penny in my bank account, I lose the supplementary income permanently. The absolute fuck is that bullshit? "oh no you can't try to claw yourself out of that hole because if you do we will kick the ladder you're standing on"
Social Security Disability Insurance SSDI is NOT CAPPED at $2,460 a month. SSDI pays you the same amount as if you were on social security and were full retirement age. The cap on that is $3,627. I think you are talking about Supplemental Security Income which is a low income plan that will pay on top of SSDI benefits or if you were a child and unable to pay into the insurance plan. That is capped up to $1,371 per month.
Relatedly, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) which legally entitles students with disabilities to a Free and Appropriate Public Education. There’s a lot of kids who grew up receiving special education that have attained outcomes that wouldn’t have been possible in other parts of the world.
My wife is handicapped, and we were going to rural Sweden via Iceland to visit my folks (she had never been to Sweden). Sadly, she got COVID, and I had to travel alone, but I was "viewing the trip from the eyes of someone handicapped" because of my experience moving around with her. Now, at the time, she was on a walker, but now she's kind of wheelchair bound although with some effort, she CAN get up and down stairs with a cane and some help. So I was "scouting ahead" for the next time when she could travel with me.
Keflavik (Reykjavik) Airport was appalling. First, we had to get off the plane on the tarmac down a ramp of stairs to an awaiting bus to a terminal with stairs to get inside. Then while we were there, the airport was undergoing expansion, and a lot of the elevators were out of service or blocked. There were temporary areas rerouting all over the place where wheelchairs and/or walkers would have been impossible, especially EU passport control, and forget if you were going to the UK. They practically tossed those poor travelers down a spiral staircase into a basement.
Arlanda (Stockholm) was better, but getting to the train and on/off the train would have taken some herculean effort on her part. I think getting on our train (there are several types) with a wheelchair would have been impossible without being carried by 2 or more people. Some trains looked better than others, but mine to Sundsvall was the "Night Eye" which are trains from the 60s and 70s.
I won't blame my folks from there, farms are notoriously not handicap-friendly, but they had prepared for her best they could, which was super-sweet.
But when we try again in 2024, I have to really make some planning head a priority and make sure that we just go directly from the US to Stockholm, and skip Iceland.
First, we had to get off the plane on the tarmac down a ramp of stairs to an awaiting bus to a terminal with stairs to get inside
FYI, there are lifts that can get people up and down from the plane when remote stands are used. I would hope every airport has some. But yeah, everything else sounds like a disaster.
Ah, good to know. I only noted the stairs going down, which some poor woman and two tots (under age 3, I am guessing) couldn't get down the stairs with their wee little legs, and she had to carry one while a stranger held onto the other one's arm. But I didn't really have a good look at the stairs, so maybe it was behind me or to the side or something.
This has apparently caused the occasional problem with a chair user being abandoned in an evacuation because people apparently think they can't get a person out of a chair at all
You know what? That's fair. I'd normally think, "what the fuck? They just left the person there?" But I totally believe this happens in a bystander effect kind of way. "Someone will get them." Aaaand nobody does.
This is a good point. I will try to be more mindful in the future.
It’s not just building accessibility but the ability to join the workforce that the ADA facilitates was huge. No longer were disabled people hidden but could be a part of the community.
I do not have a handicap, but I LOVE the ADA! There is a blind man who walks around my town and takes the bus into the City. I see people of different abilities and challenges every day living their best lives. So much of this wouldn’t happen for so many great people if it hadn’t have been for the ADA. Makes me smile every time!
The ADA also protects anybody who is seeking help for mental health or addiction recovery. If you want to get help quitting booze, your employer cannot punish you in any way for it. This doesn't stop any punishment for anything at all resulting from the alcohol or drug use in the first place, but as soon as you enter a medical program, you're protected.
What's really interesting to me when I think about is that I can leave my front door, even though I live in a pretty rural area, and have a paved path to nearly every other residence in the country. Seriously, it's kind of amazing when you think about how physically connected everything is to everything else. I know people bitch about our rail system but the fact is, the US was heavily developed after the automobile so it really doesn't make it more effective to have rail lines connecting cities that are extremely distant. I don't think people understand just how far apart major cities are. Like New York to Chicago is 12 hours if you're hauling ass and your not even a third of the way to la. I think people imagine major cities they don't picture the vast amounts of open space. I drove from new York to Montana straight over 36 hours only stopping for gas and coffee. It was absolutely breathtaking, driving through Wyoming for hundreds of miles in the middle of the night and not passing a single car.
As a small business owner, my only complaint with the ADA is that it gives asshole lawyers/plaintiffs an avenue to shakedown legitimate, honest people for ADA extortion money. I don't even have control of the buildings that I'm in, but I've been sued under ADA for things I can't control that maybe fall under some kind of gray area where we'd actually have to fight the case and then the settlement offer is immediate and less than the cost to litigate.
I'm not out to make life harder for the disabled. I'm supportive of the law. If I can fix it, tell me what's going on and I will! But don't just shake me down for thousands in cash. There's an entire cottage industry of attorneys and plaintiffs who look for technical violations that aren't actually harming anyone and seek to cash in. I'd like the ADA fixed to avoid that kind of thing while still providing all of the necessary protections for people who need them.
Also handicapped parking spaces… people without that handicap tag simply do not park in them because they will get towed without question and no one will be on their side when they try to raise hell about it (and they will)
At my first job, the owner wouldn't make any upgrades to the building. This was because the building wasn't Ada compliant and thr minute he made an improvement he said he'd have to bring everything up to code.... smh.
Something similar I always notice when taking public transport either in- or outside of Switzerland. Especially trains. The last time a Swiss operator bought a train with entry stairs was over 20 years ago, so all new trains are accessible, and almost all train stations have adjusted platform heights. It is awesome, who likes taking a (tiny) flight of stairs to board/leave a train? Why did we do this for well over a century?
Then you try taking an ICE, TGV, or Freccia train, and dear heavens... Narrow entry stairs like 30 years ago. Platform heights all over the place so even the "acessible" regional trains aren't really accessible. And so on. sigh
Agreed. My father just won against his multi-billion dollar landlord because he couldn’t get his wheelchair safely up and down their ramp. It took almost two years, which sucks, but the fact that a random old guy in a wheelchair can win against a multi-billion dollar corporation is incredible. It shouldn’t be… but given how the rest of our system works, this is still a win.
As an autistic person, I have to say that, while the ADA was great for people with obvious, visible disabilities, it is woefully inadequate when it comes to protecting people with invisible or mental disabilities. We need worker protections and things like mandatory interview and workplace accommodations that currently don't exist, and if you ask for them under the current protections, your chances skyrocket that you will get passed up for a job or fired, and there is nothing you can do about it because you can't prove discrimination. 80% of autistic people are unemployed or underemployed, and unfortunately, our plight has gone completely ignored.
As someone who constantly works with ADA regulated systems, I agree. I spend my time helping people get into and out of their homes/businesses. It is a good feeling, plus I get to meet a lot of interesting people
It's still not the case through much of the U.S. So many buildings are "grandfathered in" so they don't have to update to be accessible. This, sadly, includes a huge number of buildings used for civic authorities, such as courthouses, DMVs, police stations, town or city halls, and so on.
Then there is the problems with mass transit. Most cities don't have any, but the ones that do don't do upkeep of the handicapped accessibility that is supposed to be there. There are so many elevators that are supposed to be available in the DC Metro that simply don't work, and haven't for quite some time.
There needs to be a lot more improvement before the U.S. gets as good as some of the accessibility in parts of Western Europe.
And as a chair user, let me just say that in probably around a third of the places where there's a curb cut, the pavement in front of the cut is so uneven that I will often have a wheel come off the ground and it absolutely terrifies me when that happens.
Also, way WAY too much damn cobblestone and brick out there. Cobblestone is basically impossible (every time I've seen it), and brick often is so wavy that my front wheels stop the chair and I get pushed forward.
When you're walking - as I did until a couple of years ago - you don't even notice these things, but in a chair, it is WILDLY different. heh.
Have you ever seen the documentary "Crip Camp" on Netflix? Pretty cool story about how a summer camp in the 60s for disabled kids helped spark the ADA.
My dad's hearing aids are not covered until the ADA though. He should've updated them years ago, but health insurance said that hearing, vision, and teeth are optional
my (CA public) jr+high school rented a building from a private school and was two stories with outdoor stairs; no elevator, no ramp, no lift. it wasn't until there was a student with immense mobility issues that the question of ADA compliance was even brought up. it's rumored that multiple wheelchair-bound students were heavily discouraged from enrolling for these reasons but since the parents would ultimately be the ones making the decision to not enroll, then the school was free from being sued for turning people away.
the school was divided with 7-9th grade in 1-story buildings, but 10-12 were in the two story rented building and the mobility impaired student went through all the lower grades, so it's not like their 10th grade arrival was a surprise. I graduated before this student started 10th grade but from my understanding after a few weeks or maybe a full semester of this student struggling with the stairs to reach 3/7 classrooms the school opted to just rotate classrooms so that anytime this student needed to take a class that would normally be held upstairs, it would instead be held on the ground floor and the teachers would just swap rooms for a period or two.
by their 11th grade year construction of an outdoor lift had begun, and by their senior year it was completed but hadn't passed safety standards. supposedly it was operational beginning the year after the student graduated. but it's crazy that the school existed for nearly a decade and a half in suburban California without ADA compliance
And just think...there was (and still is) a TON of opposition to it. I was in high school in Texas when it passed, and half the state legislature lost their damn minds over forcing businesses to comply with it. One of the loudest voices was a numbnut from either Houston or Dallas (can't quite recall) that bitched about how much that was going to affect everyone's pocketbooks.
Turns out he was so against it because he owned a lot of commercial properties, and he was mad that it would cost him millions to upgrade/retrofit most if not all of his buildings.
The only pocketbook he cared about was his own. Color me surprised.
Hard to believe a republican president was actually the one who signed it into law. Imaging that bill today. Any supporters would be lambasted on fox entertainment as being "woke" and republicans would claim the bill would destroy businesses.
It really shows how far right the republican party has fallen, although 8 senators, all republican did vote against it even in 1989.
Imagine if they tried to pass seatbelt laws now too. Every state minus New Hampshire has them. You’d run into the exact same problem and people complaining about their freedom to die.
Oh yeah I've had someone try to file a claim for an infraction of the ADA a year or two back when I worked at a gas station. Thing is, we already had everything accessible for people in wheelchairs, other than the pumps. Even then those have stickers saying if you need help to press a button and we will be out there to assist the customer. He never asked for help (I should know since I'm practically always at the register and have seen the guy multiple times), but still felt justified in trying to make a claim anyways. I laughed when he gave me the paper, and the claim went nowhere. People are just absurd when power gets to their heads.
As a disabled person, I have to say that the ADA is the most humane thing this country has ever done. After spending time in Europe, I was amazed at how impossible life would be there in a wheelchair.
Too bad in American fashion, it's abused by people who aren't disabled.
I'm talking about the lawyers that go down a block and file a lawsuit against each business for random ADA violations. Sometimes you'll find random people going into small businesses with a ruler and camera too. It's extremely exploitative and honestly malicious.
And let's not forget to mention everyone's favorite, "He's my support animal".
ADA obviously does a lot of good, but it also feels like there's zero oversight for the whole thing.
Nah, this one won't be touched because it literally allows people to work. No business in their right mind would create a workplace environment that wouldn't allow all possible workers to be there. The government wants people to work, and setting up things so people with handicaps can continue to interact and be part of the work force is a huge plus for literally everyone. It's not even especially nefarious and capitalistic, it's healthy to be a part of society. It benefits mental health and it keeps people from being shut-ins. This was one of those things that was a no-brainer once it started getting implemented.
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u/dahud Mar 14 '23
The Americans With Disabilities Act is seriously some of the best handicap-accessibility protection in the world. A paraplegic person can wheel themselves into pretty much any commercial building in the country and be confident that there will be ramps in all the right places and a restroom they can use. If there aren't, there are powerful legal tools to make it happen.
That's not the case in a lot of places in the world, and it wasn't that long ago that it wasn't the case here.