In 1957, The Civil Rights of the Department of Justice was born, and about 33 years later, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was signed into legislature.
The ADA has four main parts that is covers to ensure that Americans with disabilities have the means to function within our society. It covers employment, state and local government, public accomodations, and telecommunications. All of these ensure that people with disabilities are offered the same chance as their fellow Americans in life and aren't discriminated against due to their disabilities
Because it's a nation wide platform, it has to cover a lot of things for a lot of different types of people. On their webiste, they have a keyword search of all the things their site encompasses. There's also a glossary to explain all of their big words and acroynyms. All Americans with any type of disabilites are able to ask for assistance from their office, so they need to have info an all the various types of disability. We know that disability is a very diverse thing, so they have a lot of different things on their website to accompany that diversity.
It's a bit overwhelming when you just start looking at it, but it is very helpful. Not everyone was born disabled. Some people age into it. Some people get into accidents. Some people develop it later in life. And some people become disabled due to treatments they recieved. That's how my father and I ended up disabled, (different disabilities, however).
They also have the federal regulations posted clear as day, and federal agencies that can offere assistance to disabled folks on there! If you feel like your boss isn't accomodating you or the bus system in your town isn't accessible to you, but you need the bus to get around, it's a great place to start. If you have issues with housing, as a lot of people with disabilities do, you can go there and see what your rights are as a disabled person in terms of housing, and these are nondisputable because they are protected at the federal level.
A lot of people use ADA as an all encompassing term when talking about people with disabilities, but it's not the only law that protects disabled people. There's even a whole tab on the National Network website just about other laws that protect us, however, the ADA is the main one and more things get added to that one as we grow forward together as a society.
So much change for good has happened since 1990, but by talking about disability and bringing up what works and what doesn't work, we can go from good to great. It not necessarily an easy task, but it's most definently one of the most important ones.
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