07/23/2025
What the ADA has meant to me
Donna Sorkin
July 26th marks the 35th anniversary of passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This landmark civil rights legislation broadly affirmed the premise that people with disabilities should be judged on the basis of their abilities, not their disabilities. The law transformed our society by articulating our belief that reasonable accommodations should be provided to individuals with disabilities, allowing them to fully participate in key aspects of life—employment; government services; public offerings such as theater, sporting events, and healthcare; and telecommunications. Since its passage in 1990, the ADA has led to enactment of similar legislation in over 180 countries around the world.
My Father’s Life Pre-ADA
As someone with hearing loss, I am grateful for what the law has meant for me and for millions of others. I am also cognizant of the opportunities that I have had that were not available to my father, who was deaf (though he called himself “hard of hearing”). My father retired with a medical disability from a job he loved at age 52. He could no longer hear well enough to answer questions at the Congressional hearings he was responsible for staffing. Nor could he complete telephone calls at work. Were he alive today, my father could have remained in the workforce with needed accommodations as provided for by the ADA. He would also have been a candidate for a cochlear implant.
My Life—Pre and Post ADA
My hearing declined before the Internet was widely available--before email (and texting) became the preferred ways for most of us to quickly communicate. Telecommunications relay services for people with hearing loss (what we now call captioned telephone) were staffed by volunteers. There were no standards. It was a terrible way to connect with others—especially for someone who was trying to run a small business. The inability to use the telephone impacted every aspect of my life—talking to family members and friends, completing work related calls, making medical appointments, arranging for travel, and in the countless other ways we arrange for our life activities.
I recall one horrific airline trip when my connecting flight was cancelled. I was stranded in an airport in another city unable to call my husband to alert him that I would not be arriving that evening. I asked airline personnel to make a call for me, which they did. Afterwards the airline representative noted: “You should never travel alone.” How extraordinary that she would judge my ability to travel based upon my hearing loss and my inability to make a phone call because of the lack of the technology I needed in the airport.
Without assistive listening devices or captioning, movies and theater were frustrating and certainly not entertaining. My husband and I stopped attending such events.
Passage of the ADA was life-changing for me in myriad ways. The law transformed the way our country viewed inclusiveness for people with disabilities. The ADA’s passage also began a process of expanding accommodations beyond those covered in the ADA to other legislation such as the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Telecom Act addressed wireless phone access for people who use hearing technology such as cochlear implants and hearing aids and required captioning of TV programming—a feature now used by many people—those with and without hearing loss.
One specific example of how the ADA benefitted me that had contributed to my father’s early retirement related to my provision of testimony as part of a 1995 Senate hearing on hearing aid dispensing practices convened by Senator William Cohen (R-ME). I knew that I might have difficulty understanding questions in the reverberant Congressional spaces and asked for an assistive listening device—an ADA accommodation. I told my mother that I would be testifying, and she asked if she might attend so that she could watch me carry out a function that my father had been unable to do given his hearing loss.
ADA Changed Lives for People with Disabilities and Benefitted Society
The ADA eliminated barriers that kept Americans with disabilities from fully participating and in so doing, it improved their lives and set a precedent for inclusiveness. The outcome has been shown to not only improve the quality of life for people with disabilities but also to be cost effective and beneficial for society given its impact on greater employment, increased income, and economic contributions by including people who previously would have been left outside the mainstream of our country.
https://www.acialliance.org/news/706578/Donna-Sorkin-shares-What-the-ADA-has-meant-to-me.htm
