I’m talking about things like handicap ramps, automatic doors, special restrooms, buses, crosswalks, parking spaces, etc. There must be considerable expense in retrofitting much of the country to serve this relatively small portion of the population (is that correct?) and this can’t be profitable for any but niche businesses that cater to the disabled.
What’s the rationale behind this act of apparent… I don’t know, compassion?
What do you think about it, personally?
ETA: The thread title should read “public buildings and services”.
Maybe I should’ve phrased it better: Why was the ADA itself passed? The point is that these are rather elaborate, expensive things that serve a rather small portion of the population. Is it worth it?
Well, let’s see - the public includes disabled people, and many of them need to visit public buildings to conduct business. Should they be denied because they can’t climb a flight of stairs?
I don’t think it’s a matter of compassion so much as permitting people to live as “normal” a life as possible (for want of a better word.) Personally, I think it’s a great idea. Who knows - I may be confined to a wheelchair some day.
Why should the general public subsidize their needs? The handicapped can get help from their family, pay for technological solutions, hire caretakers, or simply be left to their devices (or lack thereof) like the homeless and uninsured are. What makes the handicapped more worthy of subsidized services compared to the rest of the underprivileged?
Flight of stairs, for example: Have somebody else do their business for them, or carry them up the stairs, or do it over the phone, or have someone from the office come down – as opposed to redesigning the whole building and surrounding facilities to make it easier for the one or two handicapped people.
How were things here before the ADA? How do other modern cultures and countries deal with accessibility?
As has been said, just because one’s not in a wheelchair today doesn’t mean they won’t be tomorrow. Also maybe the able-bodied have friends or family that could benefit from such adaptations.
My mom was in a wheelchair from 1957 on due to polio. It was damn near impossible to do anything if the entrance was not at ground level, many buildings had several steps. Imagine a 10 year old kid trying to pull a full grown woman and chair up steps. Even today, being in a chair can be a royal PITA. Handicap parking in front, entry ramp in back and the only way to get there is a badly buckled sidewalk.
Try spending a week in a chair and see how you like it.
That’s not particularly convincing. Just because somebody isn’t homeless/unemployed/uninsured/gay/obese/quadriplegic today doesn’t mean they won’t be tomorrow, but you don’t see the same extent of subsidization offered to those people.
Or at the other end: How come we provide handicap ramps (or elevators) but stop there? Why isn’t there a full-time attendant next to every disabled parking space? Why doesn’t the state pay for a full-time caretaker-driver with every new car sold to a disabled person? Why don’t all TV sets come with electronic braille capabilities in additional to closed captioning?
Somebody (Congress?) sometime (1990?) decided to enact a certain bunch of provisions to make the lives of a select group of individuals (the moderately physically disabled) easier. What was the decision-making process in that? Why did they go as far as they did, but not any less or more?
I think I wasn’t clear in my original question (sorry). Think of it as more of a philosophical question: Why do we, as a culture, treat physical handicaps as something we all help fix collectively, instead of leaving it up to the individual to deal with?
Or: Could you convince a modern-day Sparta that services to the disabled are worth it?
Even if no one in a wheelchair ever visits a building, people still need to transport things like furniture or cases of copier paper up and down the building. An elevator makes these chores much easier. Automatic doors and ramps are also helpful when one has a hand truck loaded with six cases of copier paper (each weighing fifty pounds).
And ideally, you’d design a new building so it doesn’t need ramps to enter. Instead you’d design it so that the entrance is at ground level, making things easier for everyone.
I’d be interested to see who you consider the “rest of the underprivileged” to be that aren’t being accommodated.
Also, it isn’t just “one ore two handicapped people” who use these things. Many items that are implemented are to assist with people who have difficulty with range of motion. There are a lot of people who are not disabled as far as the eye (especially an ignorant eye) can see. Not everyone who needs those items are going to be in a wheelchair.
I often see elderly people using the ramps instead of climbing stairs, for example. The elderly are a big group especially now that the baby boomers are getting there. There’s also people who have MS, fibromyalgia, are obese, may have recently had surgery, may need a knee replacement they can’t afford, etc etc.
To be honest, the OP is being so ridiculous in this thread that I’m starting to wonder if this is a big whoosh
Are you too young to remember what it was like before the ADA?
Most places were completely inaccessible to people with disabilities. What this meant was that they were for all practical purposes prisoners in their homes for the remainder of their lives.
ETA: Sure, maybe they could install ramps in their own homes so they could get out to the street, but what then? No ramps at the sidewalks, no ramps on public buildings or in stores meant that they couldn’t actually GO anywhere.
I understand that being physically disabled is no walk in the park. Life is difficult even as it is, and would be all but impossible if not for acts like the ADA. My grandma was confined to a wheelchair and I’ve had to push her around. I’ve been in one (for short durations) myself. This isn’t an attack on the laziness of the handicapped or anything like that, but more a question on how such a small group ever managed to convince the rest of us to help them out so much.
In a socialist country with universal healthcare, for example, I’d take handicapped services for granted… but given the limited amount of resources, why does a barely-socialist America emphasize services for the handicapped over services for any other disadvantaged group?
It’s not about “worth” in the sense of profitability. Our society has made a decision that–to an extent reasonably practicable–we will not allow physical disabilities to exclude some of our people from participation in public life.
It’s not just a matter of their needs. The underlying assumption, at least from my point of view, is that society benefits from maximal participation.
I support this intention, although I’d really like to see the same principle extended to cover, for example, children and elderly and people without cars. Why should it be illegal to build a library that can’t accommodate wheelchairs, but perfectly acceptable to build it in a place that’s only accessible by driving?
The problem with the ADA is its application to private buildings which have no particular need to be accessible to a general population. For example, many older buildings could and should have apartments or offices on the upper floors, but are blocked from these uses because the buildings don’t have elevators and it’s not “worth it” to add them. So the result is that the spaces are under-utilized, serving as storage or something for the street-level business rather than being available for separate rentals.
Can you provide a cite that older apartment buildings can’t rent upper floor units because there’s no elevator? As far as I know, walk-up apartments are still available in older parts of cities like New York. But they’re inconvenient even for the abled, such as when you’ve got a lot of groceries.
Personally, I think it’s great. The things you describe don’t help only “the disabled”. They’re good for anyone with mobility issues. That includes the guy on crutches, the lady who just had a knee replacement, etc.
To the best of my knowledge, businesses were only required to implement certain of the things you mention, such as grab bars by toilets and toilet stalls with wider doors. These are, frankly, inexpensive to install and they go a long, long way to making life easier for disabled people. Major infrastructure changes can often be deferred until the relevant architectural feature needs work (e.g., you don’t need to build a ramp until you’re fixing the stairs anyway).
Why do this? Well, the ADA is part of it. But why wouldn’t a business want to make it as easy as possible, for as many people as possible, to shop there? Sure, disabled people may need products and services that the rest of us don’t. But they still need to buy food, housewares, clothing, furniture, office supplies, sex toys, and all that other crap. How did you think they bought those things? Special disabled-only stores? Mail order?
Why the ADA at all? Because we realized that “the disabled” includes a lot of people (and will include most of us at some time or other), because we have a general sense that it’s fair and reasonable that people should have equal opportunity to use goods and services, and because many architectural features that we don’t notice when we’re able-bodied (such as stairs) are absolute deal-breakers for people with mobility issues.
True, but a separate argument. Minus the ADA, I think only businesses that regularly need to this would go through the expense of having such things (think freight elevators). Plenty of apartments and small businesses have no elevators and can get by fine with more manual labor.
I had already mentioned them: The homeless, the uninsured, etc. Maybe the mentally ill, the colorblind, whatever. We could also choose to tax businesses (as opposed to making them pay for construction) to help these people receive equal access to services and businesses, but we don’t (as much).
This I can believe. Are there any statistics that can roughly estimate how often this is the case? I understand they will be imperfect, especially if many disabilities are non-visible, but I still wonder.
and
@ Butterflies: I’m not trolling, just genuinely curious. You may call me out for being ignorant, but please don’t insult my intentions.
@ both Butterflies and suranyi: I actually grew up in a different country, one with very minimal accessibility laws. My grandma there was wheelchair-bound the last years of her life and weak from diabetes. That country didn’t have ramps until very recently, nevermind things like automatic doors and wheelchair lifters. When we took her outside, we had to physically lift her wheelchair from the sidewalk, off the curb, onto the street, and back again at the other side. I’ve had to walk her up and down stairs a lot, sometimes with the help of one or two other able-bodied adults. When we went out to eat, we would have to deliberately seek out restaurants that could physically accommodate her, either by virtue of being all on the ground floor or else willing to use staff time to move tables and (sometimes) even serving us in our own special section, outside on ground level. She could only live in buildings that had elevators, so we had to specially seek that out for her when she needed to move.
The government wasn’t involved in any of that. It never occurred to me that tax dollars or private businesses should be required to provide the things that my grandma’s caretakers had been doing. I just took it for granted that if someone was disabled, it was up to them and their family (if they were lucky enough to have a caring and capable family) to adapt to the outside world. And if they couldn’t… tough luck. Life ain’t fair and all that.
Needless to say, when I first visited America (this was the late 90s, I think), I was surprised at the accessibility everywhere. Every sidewalk had a ramp entrance and exit, the street lights beeped (for the blind, I assume), there were these little bumps in the road (for canes, perhaps)… I was blown away. The thing is: Nobody was using them. How was the general population convinced to pay for all that?
Please note that I am NOT against services for the disabled. If the ADA came to a vote, I would vote for it. But these services weren’t always there, and still aren’t there in some countries, so my question is what caused the shift in mentality? How were people (suddenly or finally – your choice) convinced to provide them?
How are the mentally ill, the colorblind and the homeless at a disadvantage when it comes to going to public buildings? And please do not give examples of people being run off for loitering. I’m talking about needing to do business at a public building and being mentally ill, homeless or colorblind keeps them from doing so without reasonable accommodation.
I have no idea. There might be statistics and google is your friend.
You do not want your intentions questioned but yet you say ignorant things like “if many disabilities are non-visible” and expect to be taken as a non-troll? IF they are non-visible? Do you honestly believe that all disabilities are things that you can see with your own eyes? If so, I’m not sure anyone here can help you.