25 years later, Americans with Disabilities Act means progress

CASSIE JAMES' husband is getting antsy. He tells her that it's getting late, that they need to get home to their 15-year-old daughter, Danielle.

"Go ahead without me," she says. "I'll just take the bus."

"You can't do that, it'll take way too long," he replies. From Center City, the couple is about an hour and some change from their Bala Cynwyd home.

James, 60, who was born with spina bifida, doesn't mind the trip. To her, it's a relatively new freedom like so many other things in her life - her marriage, her child, her job, her home.

A longtime activist, she holds onto all of those things as tightly as she can, because she remembers a time when they didn't exist. A time when riding the bus or the train would require crawling up the steps, hoisting her wheelchair into the SEPTA train car. She remembers the humiliation.

Then, 25 years ago Sunday, everything changed. After passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, people with disabilities gained a host of civil rights. Those who manage public transportation, businesses, streets and housing could be pressured into becoming accessible. Employers no longer could discriminate against a blind person or someone who used a cane.

Tomorrow at Dilworth Park outside City Hall, James will be among speakers at a Disability Pride commemoration marking the historic moment. A series of events sponsored by the city will begin at 10:30 a.m. and will last into the afternoon.

Although the lives of people with disabilities have improved significantly since the ADA, community members and advocates say there is still much to be done to improve resources, support and access to things that people without disabilities often take for granted.

Just as disability advocates fought for better rights before the ADA, they have to continue doing so today, said Charles Horton, executive director of the Mayor's Commission on People with Disabilities, who has been in a wheelchair for more than 25 years.

"I learned a long time ago that it's important to be your own advocate," Horton said. "No one can advocate for me better than me."

When James started working as an activist at age 19, it was for a selfish cause. "I just wanted to get to college," she said.

If you could physically get to college and afford to stay there, more and better-paying job opportunities would open up, she said. Inaccessible taxis, trains and buses were one thing, but being unable to get a wheelchair on and off the sidewalk was an added issue, James said.

In the 1980s - before they were required by the ADA - curb cuts, or sidewalk ramps at intersections, were almost nonexistent. To put them in place, James said, activists from Disabled in Action, a national civil-rights organization, began to hit the streets - literally.

"They would go out with sledgehammers, whatever tools they had," said James, a former employee of Liberty Resources, a disability-support center on Market Street below 8th.

That was one of many acts of protest that Disabled in Action and ADAPT, another disabled-rights group, organized as early as the 1940s.

Some activists went to jail for the curb cuts, said Nancy Salandra, director of independent-living services at Liberty Resources. Nothing in the ADA was created without being fought for, she said.

While others were fighting for equal rights, Daniel Gottlieb was just fighting to be seen. A 1979 car accident deprived him of all function from the chest down. If he was noticed, he said, it was only for his disability.

"People wouldn't talk to me in the beginning. They thought I was some unusual life form," said Gottlieb, host of "Voices in the Family," a weekly radio program on WHYY-FM. "And back then, I was."

Now, he's looked at a little more differently. "We're a part of the community," Gottlieb said.

"People say this is our constitution, because we weren't protected by the first one," said James, the activist from Bala Cynwyd.

Former U.S. Rep. Tony Coelho, D-Calif., also has a personal connection to the ADA - beyond the fact that he wrote it.

A car accident at age 16 left him with epilepsy, a condition that his Catholic parents refused to believe, he said. After college, he was turned away from becoming a priest due to an old canon law that barred epileptics from priesthood. Depressed and suicidal, Coelho said, he turned to alcohol.

An epiphany and a job offer later, he began working in politics. While he was a congressman from California in the mid-1980s, he began to work on securing basic civil rights for people with disabilities.

"I realized how many people with disabilities were having trouble with Social Security and everyday life," said Coelho, now 73 and living in Rehoboth Beach, Del. "I was determined to take those experiences and make a difference."

After a few speed bumps in the Senate, the bill made it to President George H.W. Bush, who signed it into law.

"What a great day," Coelho said. "We felt that the doors had been opened."

The ADA is considered by many disabled people and their advocates to be their version of the constitution, their ticket to independence.

"It's the law of the land and it's applied in 52 different countries," Coelho said.

But as with any law, it requires enforcement. And that's where things sometimes can turn sour.

The current climate for Philadelphia's 100,000-plus people with disabilities is one of mixed reviews.

Salandra, who connects people with disabilities to financial, health-care and other support services, said that just like any other low-income community, people with disabilities face setbacks: 75 percent are unemployed, hundreds struggle to obtain public housing and many are choked by medical expenses.

Those challenges never stop, James said. "When other people are moving up, buying homes, you're paying co-pays," she said. "You don't get a break."

Accessible, integrated housing is the key to people with disabilities' success, said City Councilman Dennis O'Brien. Although people with disabilities only represent a fraction of the Philadelphia Housing Authority's 100,000-person waiting list, O'Brien said they need to be seen as a priority for the city.

"It shouldn't be a cost factor," O'Brien said. "We think we've done enough, but unless you're in that wheelchair, how are we to know?"