The year 2010 marks the twentieth anniversary of the Americans with
Disabilities Act. The ADA
is many things. First and foremost, it’s a civil rights act designed to ensure
that the civil rights of Americans with disabilities are protected. In many
ways, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the ADA of 1990 are bookends in the struggle for
civil rights under the law for everyone.
Like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, however, the ADA is a beginning, not an end. It gives
people with disabilities a powerful tool to ensure that discrimination based on
disability can be challenged and overcome.
Finally, the ADA
is a significant statement about the goal of inclusion for people with
disabilities. Looking at disability from the perspective of the World Health
Organization, which views disability as the interaction between a person’s
capabilities and the physical and social environment of which he or she is a
part, the ADA focuses attention not on the person, but ways to change those
environments to ensure that access is seen not as a “special” need or request,
but as something that is universal.
APHA is a microcosm of American society, and as such,
wrestles with the same issues relative to accessibility as the rest of the
nation. In the last year, the Disability Section has worked with APHA
leadership on several issues that we expect will lead to greater inclusion and
continue to break down barriers based on disability. The first is access to
sign language interpreters for deaf and hard of hearing for conference
participants. For years, sign language interpreters were automatically assigned
to sessions sponsored by the Section, regardless of whether or not individuals
in need of interpreting services were present.
In order to free up these valuable resources so that they
could be used wherever they were needed, the Section Executive Committee voted
to do away with this system and release interpreters for use throughout the conference.
In addition, members of the Executive Committee offered their expertise to
assist APHA in making other changes to policies regarding use of sign language
interpreters at the Annual Meeting.
The Disability co-chairs of the Section also continued to work
with APHA on physical accessibility at the Annual Meeting, including changes
to the new section exhibition booths that will make their debut at the 2010
conference in Denver.
Finally, the Section’s Executive Committee has made a major commitment to
reaching out to other sections to find common ground around disability and
to integrate disability issues throughout presentations at the Annual Meeting.
At both the 2010 and upcoming 2011 conferences, the chair of the Disability Section invited members of the
Executive Committees of other Sections to meet with the Disability Section
Executive Committee to pursue this goal.
We hope to continue and expand this effort in upcoming years
beyond Denver.
If your section is interested in working with us to integrate disability topics
throughout the organization, please contact the Disability Section chair.
Anthony Cahill,
Accessibility Co-Chair acahill@salud.unm.edu
Catherine Graham Catherine.graham@uscmed.sc.edu