United States: the impact of ADA on employment opportunities for people with disabilities
By Andy Imparato, President and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities (Andy Imparato is president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities, a cross-disability membership organization committed to total integration of people with disabilities into all aspects of society. This article was originally published in SCI Life)
On July 26 of this year, we in America celebrated the 10th anniversary of implementation of the employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act. After ten years of civil rights protections in the workplace, what impact has the ADA had?
Some scholars suggest the ADA's impact on the workplace should be measured by the extent of the increase in employment rates among working-age people with disabilities. By this standard, existing data would show that the ADA has had little impact on increased employment rates, at least among those with severe disabilities. Accordingly, they would argue that the employment provisions of the ADA have been a failure.
Another measure of the ADA's impact is the expectations for jobs and careers of young people with disabilities leaving school. Although I am unaware of any quantitative research in this area, I am convinced that the ADA's vision of full participation has had a profound impact on young people with disabilities. They have high expectations, and they are breaking down barriers. For example, I recently had the pleasure of meeting the first Yale Medical School student to complete medical school as a wheelchair user.
Much attention has been given to the line of U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have narrowed the scope of the protected class under ADA and generally made it more difficult for victims of disability discrimination in the workplace to prevail. Some in the disability rights movement have argued that the Supreme Court has "gutted" the employment provisions in the ADA and that what is left provides little protection. Although the Supreme Court has definitely undermined Congressional efforts to ban employment discrimination on the basis of disability, it is important to recognize that disabled workers and job applicants continue to enjoy important rights and continue to use the ADA successfully to challenge discrimination.
Some sub-populations within the disability community have been particularly hard hit by the Supreme Court rulings, including state workers, individuals who are able to function well with medications or other "mitigating measures," people with well-controlled epilepsy, diabetes, depression, and other physical and mental health conditions.
At some point, perhaps very soon, the diverse coalition that passed the ADA will need to reassemble and recruit new allies to fix some of the damage done by the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts. More important, from my perspective, disability advocates and leaders will need to reform the disability benefit and health care systems so that they consistently promote work and economic empowerment.
However, even if these reforms don't occur for years, the ADA has redefined the disability experience in the U.S., and most employers have come to accept the rightful place of disabled individuals within our society. In recent years, I have seen a growing recognition by business of the large disability market, and I believe this recognition is due in large part to the increased political visibility of disabled people and their families that accrued from the effort to pass and implement the ADA.
As Dr. Martin Luther King observed with regard to the civil rights movement, "the greatest victory of this period was... something internal.... The greatness of this period was that we armed ourselves with dignity and self-respect."
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