Month: January 2021

Categories
Accessibility

ADA Compliance Challenge Continues

Cleveland Clinic Counter

January 26, 1992 is an often overlooked date in the 30-year life of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Although July 26, 1990 deservedly receives most of the fanfare for this disability civil rights law, January 26th is the date when the ADA went into effect. In other words, no-one was held accountable for ADA violations for 18 months after the law was passed. This delay was designed to allow for public education on ADA’s nondiscrimination mandate in private employment practices, state and local governments, public accommodations, and telecommunications. So how successful was that initial public education period? Let’s take a look at public accommodations for this assessment.

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For the most part, ADA compliance in public accommodations has been a contentious process of people with disabilities giving notice of a public access violation and the owner or lessee complaining that they didn’t know there was a problem. Believe it or not, this is still happening 28.5 years after the ADA went into effect! Ignorance of the law is never a good excuse and, in these cases, deserves no extension of time to put things right. If this sounds harsh, remember disability access is only required in new construction, if alterations are made, and when readily achievable in existing facilities.    

People with dwarfism and disabilities have a long way to go before achieving equal access in public buildings and facilities. There are so many reminders of how much work remains to be done:

  • A medical facility, opened in 2020, installed a patient reception service desk that impedes communication between the patient and customer service representative. My attempt to walk behind the desk for eye-to-eye contact was blocked as a security violation
  • A restaurant service counter installed at an accessible height is loaded up with equipment and service is delivered at a counter so high the server and a customer of short stature or wheelchair user can’t see one another. When confronted, management denied any ADA violation 
  • A once accessible entrance door into an office building was made inaccessible when the glass door was replaced with hurricane glass making it too heavy to open
  • Bathrooms in a newly renovated building have inaccessible faucets and a door knob instead of a handle
  • Staircases have useless or missing handrails
  • Trains, taxis and ride share services often cannot be boarded
  • Poor elevator maintenance or no elevator at all
  • Inability to move around in a store due to blocked aisles or inaccessible paths of travel
  • Car rental establishments refusing to allow use of pedal extensions
  • Service animals are refused admission  
  • And so much more

As discouraging as this list appears, it’s important to remember how far we have come in the last 30 years. Equal access in public places is more prevalent and, where absent, is enforceable. The challenge is for people with dwarfism and other disabilities to claim our rightful place in society and be ready to monitor and demand enforcement of the ADA when it is denied.

Are you ready to challenge ADA public access violations?

For more of my writings, go to https://angelamuirvanetten.com where you can subscribe to my weekly blog, find several retail links to my book—“Pass Me Your Shoes”—and anticipate the summer 2021 publication of book III—Always An Advocate—in my dwarfism trilogy.

Categories
Dignity Disability Rights

“Death with Dignity” Laws Deadly to Disabled

National Sanctity of Human Life Day—on January 22—celebrates the value of every human life from the pre-born to the grave. We are familiar with threats to the unborn, but what about the seniors and people with disabilities at risk of dying from physician assisted suicide?

“Death with dignity,” as physician assisted suicide is euphemistically called, is legal in Washington, D.C. and eight states—California, Colorado, Hawai’i, Maine, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont and Washington—by statute and in Montana by a court ruling. And the momentum is building. Indiana, New Mexico, New York, and Virginia all have bills pending in 2021.

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The coalition of groups opposing physician assisted suicide span the political spectrum from right to left: pro-life groups, faith-based organizations, national disability groups, and medical organizations. I’m represented in multiple places on this spectrum, and support the reasons disability groups and leaders give for opposing laws designed to cut our lives short.

1. It’s a financial not a medical decision
“The legalization of assisted suicide is a deadly mix with our broken, profit-driven health care system, where financial pressures already play far too great a role. Direct coercion is not even necessary. If insurers deny, or even merely delay, approval of expensive, life-giving treatments, patients will, in effect, be steered toward assisted suicide, if it is legal.”
Marilyn Golden, Senior Policy Analyst, Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund

2. Abuse of elders and people with disabilities is a growing, but often undetected problem, making coercion virtually impossible to identify or prevent.

3. Doctors are fallible and wrongly predict how long a terminal patient might live. This causes people to give up on treatment and accept a premature death.

4. People who ask to die could be treated for depression or given better palliative care instead of lethal drugs.

5. Some see physician assisted suicide as a duty and the only way to stop being a burden to loved ones.

6. Intractable pain is often used as the main reason for physician assisted suicide laws. Yet, Oregon death doctors haven’t reported pain as being in their patient’s top five list.

7. For anyone dying in discomfort, palliative sedation is legal in all 50 states.

8. The requirement that physician assisted suicide be limited to people who are terminal and give voluntary consent is not enforced or investigated.

9. Disability advocates have long known that ‘quality of life’ is code for ‘Better Dead Than Disabled.’ Thankfully, on March 28, 2020, the federal Health and Human Services, Office of Civil Rights, warned that policies that deny treatment based on quality of life judgments are discriminatory and unlawful.

10. Seniors and people with disabilities don’t need to die to have dignity. We reject society’s view that people who deal with incontinence and other losses in bodily function lack dignity.

I can attest that disability is not a fate worse than death. What do you think?

In preparing this post, I acknowledge the resources provided by the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund at https://dredf.org/public-policy/assisted%20suicide/ and Not Dead Yet at https://notdeadyet.org/disability-rights-toolkit-for-advocacy-against-legalization-of-assisted-suicide.

For more of my writings, go to https://angelamuirvanetten.com where you can subscribe to my weekly blog and find several retail links to my book, “Pass Me Your Shoes: A Couple with Dwarfism Navigates Life’s Detours with Love and Faith.”

Categories
Transportation

Which Animals Fly for Free?

Service Dog
Image by Paul Brennan from Pixabay

Ever traveled on a plane seated next to a passenger with a yappy dog? Maybe even a miniature horse. Chances are you’ve been on board with one of the 319,000 service animals that airlines transport annually given the Air Carrier Access Act mandate that foreign and domestic air carriers not discriminate on the basis of disability.

Well, as of today (January 11, 2021), you can expect to see a change in which animals fly for free and which ones pay their way as pets. Under a revised U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) rule, dogs of all breeds and types are exclusively recognized as service animals—and fly for free—

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if they are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of a qualified individual with a disability. Miniature horses and emotional support animals no longer qualify as service animals, in the context of air travel, and will be treated as pets subject to more restrictions and fees.

The DOT made the rule change fully aware that removing emotional support animals from the service animal class was a contentious issue with no perfect solution likely to satisfy all stakeholders. Here’s why they made the rule change anyway:

(1) the increase in service animal complaints from passengers with disabilities;

(2) the inconsistent definitions among Federal agencies of what constitutes a “service animal;”

(3) the erosion of public trust in legitimate service animals due to requests to transport unusual species of animals onboard aircraft;

(4) the increasing frequency of travelers fraudulently representing their pets as service animals; and

(5) the increase in misbehavior by emotional support animals—including urinating, defecating, growling, and in some instances, harming people and other animals at the airport or on the aircraft.

Of the approximately 15,000 comments in response to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, more than 10,000 concerned the transport of emotional support animals. About one-third of the comments favored excluding emotional support animals from the service animal definition and treating them as pets. The two-thirds who opposed emotional support animals being treated as pets instead of service animals highlighted the needs of those with a wide range of serious mental and emotional disabilities for whom medication is ineffective in relieving stress, anxiety, and depression. The low income of many in this class of disability would also make flying unaffordable given what airlines charge for pets.

Among other things, the new rule allows airlines to require—

—passengers to submit forms related to the service dogs Health, Behavior and Training and, for flight segments of eight hours or more, to attest that the dog has the ability either not to relieve itself on a long flight or to relieve itself in a sanitary manner.

—a service animal to fit on their handler’s lap or in their foot space on the aircraft.

—a service animal to be harnessed, leashed, or otherwise tethered in areas of the airport that they own, lease, or control, and on the aircraft.

There is so much more in this final rule published on December 10, 2020. You can find it in the Federal Register at 85 FR 79742, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/12/10/2020-26679/traveling-by-air-with-service-animals.

Your comments on this controversial rulemaking are welcome.

For more of my writings, go to https://angelamuirvanetten.com where you can subscribe to my weekly blog and find several retail links to my book, “Pass Me Your Shoes: A Couple with Dwarfism Navigates Life’s Detours with Love and Faith.”

Categories
Disability pride Medical

Viewing History Through Prism of Current Events

March of Dimes Poster Boy

When checking out of the grocery store recently, I was asked if I’d like to add another $5 to my bill for the March of Dimes. I politely declined. I could afford it, but the organization offends my pro-life views.  Even my recollection of an archival picture of a very cute March of Dimes poster boy—my husband Robert at age 11—did not change my mind.

Indeed I almost skipped reading the “This Day In History” entry for January 3, 1938 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) founded the March of Dimes. I’m so glad I went beyond the headline.

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I learned that FDR’s charitable concern came from his contracting poliomyelitis that paralyzed his legs 11 years before he became President. The March of Dimes began as an association of health scientists and volunteers funding physical rehabilitation and research for a polio vaccine. Paralysis disabled one out of 200 people infected and death was the end result for two to 10 of those who were paralyzed. Given the rapid pace of polio’s spread among children, the foundation could not raise money fast enough to keep pace with the contagion tagged as “the most feared disease of the 20th century.”

When the donations from wealthy benefactors did not meet the need, FDR appealed to the general public for funds. Despite a celebrity’s suggestion to send dimes to the President being said in jest, the public flooded the White House with 2,680,000 dimes and thousands of dollars in donations.

FDR died before Dr. Jonas Salk produced the first successful polio vaccine in 1955, but this March of Dimes funded research is an amazing accomplishment for FDR, Salk, and the organization. If I had only viewed the March of Dimes through the prism of their current pro-choice practices, I would have missed this historical nugget when the world is focused on COVID-19 vaccines. I would also have missed the changed perspective on how to publicly portray disability.

The presidential memorial commission won the debate on how to recognize FDR’s dependence on leg braces and a wheelchair for mobility. The 1997 Memorial opened with three FDR statues none of which revealed his disability. It deferred to FDR’s directive, and media acquiescence, to never photograph him in a wheelchair, walking, or being transferred from his car. As the President who led America out of the Depression and through World War II, he believed it was important to show strength.

This hiding of FDR’s disability was corrected on January 11, 2001 when a fourth statue was added. A life-sized statue shows FDR in his wheelchair at the Memorial entrance. It’s an accurate view of the man whose strength was in his leadership not his legs. One visitor teared when he saw a busload of children in wheelchairs entering the exhibit. They would see that disability doesn’t limit what people can accomplish and should not be hidden.  

What would you miss if you viewed history through the prism of current events?

For more of my writings, go to https://angelamuirvanetten.com where you can subscribe to my weekly blog and find several retail links to my book, “Pass Me Your Shoes: A Couple with Dwarfism Navigates Life’s Detours with Love and Faith.”

TRIVIA
Polio plagued America for 39 years from 1916 to 1955.
At age 39. FDR contracted the virus.
Salk tested the first successful polio vaccine at age 39.