Month: January 2023

Categories
Accessibility

Defendants Feign Ignorance When Hit With ADA Complaints

Access Counter

According to an attorney who defends businesses charged with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Title III violations, most defendants don’t know there’s a problem until served with a summons notifying them of the lawsuit. So 31 years after the ADA’s January 26, 1992 effective date, we’re expected to believe defendants don’t know wheelchairs can’t climb steps, people using walkers and canes have trouble opening heavy doors, and little people can’t reach high counters!” Incredulous. No, it’s way past time for defendants to cry foul when held accountable for access violations that exclude people with dwarfism and disabilities.

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Thankfully the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) ADA enforcement actions demonstrate ignorance is no excuse. For example, in 2017, the DOJ entered voluntary compliance agreements with two Iowa restaurants to resolve designated accessible parking space issues. At Cedar Grill, the spaces were not located on the shortest accessible route to the main entrance. At Birdsall Ice Cream Co., the stripes were worn and did not effectively define the van accessible parking space and adjacent access aisle. 

Doors are another bone of contention for people whose disability limits their ability to push or pull. Heavy doors can effectively block people from entering a building or getting out of a public bathroom. For example, when my husband Robert did not return from using the bathroom at a COVID-19 testing site, I asked a paramedic on duty to go and check if he was okay. Sure enough he was trapped by a heavy door. Likewise, the closer on the Cedar Grill restaurant bathroom door at 7 lbs force was heavier than the maximum allowable force of 5 lbs.

It may surprise you to know that many people with dwarfism choose a restaurant based on furniture. As Deb Hecht, a little person from Indiana, said:

“Look at ALL the bar stools instead of regular dining room chairs. I am now very selective in my restaurant choices because of the height of the chair, not the food choice!”

Although food is important, it’s irrelevant if you can’t sit comfortably while eating it.

As it turns out, inaccessible seating is not something little people have to accept. The DOJ called out the two Iowa restaurants, named above, on this very issue. Both were required to remove architectural barriers—like fixed bar stools—that failed to provide accessible dining surfaces. At least five percent of the seating or standing spaces at dining surfaces must provide a dining surface 28 inches minimum and 34 inches maximum above the finished floor. 

Counter heights can make the difference between being served or not. The accessible height is between 28 and 36 inches high. The 42 inch service counter where orders are taken and filled at Birdsall Ice Cream Co. caused the DOJ to require management to agree to transact business with disabled customers at the 30” high sales counter near the cash register when requested.

This is just a sampling of access issues the ADA addresses. What barriers are you ready to challenge?

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Categories
Transportation

Public Participation ADA Violation

Public Participation

In my role as an advocate for a Center for Independent Living, I monitored county compliance on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In January 2012, I spotted a public transit issue. Not only was it an ADA violation, but it also violated the principle “nothing about us without us.”

County staff was seeking Board of County Commission (BOCC) approval of an ADA Paratransit Plan—door-to-door service for those unable to ride fixed-route buses—without giving adequate notice or opportunity for the public participation required by the ADA.

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Specifically staff had failed to reach out to paratransit riders or people with disabilities and groups representing them in the community. The public notice of the proposed plan had been posted in a newspaper, but not the newspaper read by the Radio Reading Service for blind or visually-impaired listeners. And no notices were posted on buses or distributed to organizations whose clients used county transit services.

I recruited paratransit riders to join me in making public comments to ask the BOCC to postpone approval of the paratransit plan until public participation was provided. After five years advocating at the BOCC in support of public transit funding, the entire BOCC knew my name. The BOCC Chair declared me trustworthy and responded favorably to our comments.

Our advocacy achieved the desired result when the BOCC declined to adopt the ADA Paratransit Plan and directed staff to come back after working out the notice and public participation issues with me. Although county staff also knew me, they weren’t so appreciative. The staff member who had prepared and presented the ADA Paratransit Plan to the BOCC cried when the plan was not adopted. Still, she had no choice but to work with me.

After following my lead on giving adequate notice to riders and meaningful outreach to disabled organizations, public participation on the plan was scheduled in March 2012. Even so, county staff still saw this as “Angela’s” meeting that would only need a small conference room. When 30 people turned up, staff had to open the county commission chamber at the last minute.

County staff were astounded that 15 people and disability organizations made public comments—nine riders, five disability professionals, and one employer—giving meaningful input on the plan. Staff listened to the public input and responded with many improvements to the plan relating to eligibility recertification, the trip pick-up window, consideration of weather conditions that affect a person’s ability to get to a bus stop, and the appeal process. Finally, I was ready to support the revised ADA Paratransit Plan when staff resubmitted it to the BOCC four months later.

Another recurring issue was the county Metropolitan Planning Organization’s scheduling of public participation transit workshops on evening and weekend hours when there was no transit service. We dealt with this issue at a Florida Transportation Disadvantaged (TD) Local Coordinating Board (LCB) meeting. The motion to schedule public workshops at times when TD riders could get there either by providing after-hours transit or scheduling daytime meetings passed unanimously.

This post is a condensed excerpt from chapter 18 in book three of my dwarfism memoir trilogy, “ALWAYS AN ADVOCATE: Champions of Change for People with Dwarfism and Disabilities,” https://angelamuirvanetten.com/always-an-advocate/.

Categories
Character

Legalization of Infanticide Looms After Dobbs

Infanticide unsplash

Almost 50 years of fighting for pro-life values paid off when the United States (U.S.) Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with its June 24, 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Dobb’s decision eviscerated the former federal constitutionally protected right to abortion and upheld Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Yet Dobbs does not herald the end of abortion.  The polarizing positions of pro-life and pro-choice advocates are now duking it out in Congress, 50 state legislatures, and the ballot box. The fight is fast and furious.

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The Women’s Health Protection Act of 2022—prohibiting governmental restrictions on abortion services—passed the House of Representatives on July 15, 2022 (it was not approved in the U.S. Senate). In 2022, states enacted 50 pro-life laws and 77 pro-abortion laws. In the November 2022 election, California, Michigan and Vermont all passed referendums enshrining reproductive rights in their state constitutions.

In the past, pro-choice rationalizations for abortion claimed “life begins at birth, not conception” and “a fetus is not a baby until it can live outside the womb.”  Today’s ardent pro-choice advocates make an even more egregious attack on life by alleging that  babies born alive after a botched abortion should not be protected because they’re not “actual persons,” “morally relevant,” or fully human until they are “self-aware.” In so doing, they promote infanticide—euphemistically called after-birth or perinatal abortion. They hold that the well-being of parents outweighs the interests of a living child. Just as progressive is the idea that a newborn imposes no obligations on a parent because whether a child will exist as a person in the future is a parent’s choice.

Are these the reasons why—as of 2019—19 States allow infanticide and let abortionists leave babies to die if they survive an abortion?

Does this explain why California passed an infanticide law in September 2022 permitting perinatal (post-birth) abortions of babies due to a pregnancy-related cause without civil or criminal liability or penalty?

Will the California law be a forerunner of similar laws in other states, or will states back off because the Maryland bill sanctioning “perinatal” deaths up to the first 28 days after birth did not pass?

Will infanticide—a deliberate killing of a child that is under a year old—be decriminalized or denounced as murder subject to criminal penalties?

Will American society sacrifice the lives of innocent infants born to women who choose not to raise a child with a disability or illness and decline to take advantage of abortion alternatives like safe haven laws and adoption?

The answers to these questions lies squarely with the American people.

So let your voice be heard on January 22, 2023, Sanctity of Human Life Day, with a stand for prenatal and perinatal life. Celebrate the January 11, 2023 passage in the 118th Congress of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act in the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 26), and call your Senator to nail down a vote for the bill when it comes up for a vote.     

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Categories
Disability Rights Medical

COVID-19 AT THREE-YEAR MARKER

Mitigation measures

COVID-19 entered the dictionary after the first confirmed American case on January 21, 2020. Three years later, the virus has claimed the lives of well over one million Americans and 6.5 million worldwide.

Although pandemic isolation and lockdowns took its toll on everyone, people with disabilities were disproportionately impacted as shown in the following examples:

  • People with developmental disabilities lost home and community based services and adult day programs closed.

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  • Students receiving special education services regressed on their learning goals and missed out on speech, physical, occupational, and behavior therapies.
  • Disruption to healthcare services increased disability for patients, like stroke survivors, who were unable to access rehabilitation services.
  • Employment of working-age people with disabilities was reduced by 20 percent.

Today in a populace weary of COVID-19 restrictions and emboldened by herd immunity from vaccines and prior COVID waves, getting “back to normal” is a priority. Students are back in school, employers have called their staff back to the workplace, and travelers are on the move in record numbers. What’s more, the three-W guidance—wear a mask, wait six feet back, and wash your hands—has gone by the wayside. This is bad news for people with disabilities who have an underlying medical condition—such as cancer, chronic kidney disease, COPD, Down syndrome, or immunocompromised. They have a higher risk for severe illness.

As a result, discarding mitigating measures is a bone of contention between those at risk and those who are risk averse. The impassioned pleas of people with underlying medical conditions has largely fallen on deaf ears. To obtain a different result, parents of immunocompromised children with disabilities in Virginia public schools went beyond impassioned pleas to protect their children when Governor Younkin issued an executive order to stop mandatory mask wearing. They filed a federal lawsuit and won. Armed with words backed by the force of federal disability laws, public school teachers and students in the state of Virginia can be required to wear masks as a reasonable modification, under the executive order, for students with disabilities who request the masking.

            Likewise, under the Americans with Disabilities Act employers cannot exclude high-risk employees from the workplace unless the employee’s disability poses a direct threat to the employee’s health or safety that cannot be eliminated or reduced by reasonable accommodation. A High Efficiency Particulate Air filtration system is one example of a possible reasonable accommodation.

Despite President Biden’s assertion that “the pandemic is over,” COVID-19 not only persists, but is spreading. As of January 4, 2023, the Center for Disease Control weekly COVID-19 report included 2,731 deaths, 470,699 new cases, and 46,029 new hospital admissions. And these counts are an underestimate given how many don’t test at all, or don’t report home test results. And, due to the surge of cases in China, travelers from China must now show a negative COVID-19 test before entering the U.S.

So let’s add another W to COVID-19 guidance. Be Wary of positive political predictions—it ain’t over ‘til it’s over. 

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Categories
Celebrations

MIDNIGHT STRIKES ANOTHER NEW YEAR

Fireworks

The clock strikes twelve as it does every night. But one midnight strike stands apart from the other 364—over one billion people across the globe watch New York’s Times Square ball drop 70 feet in 60 seconds.

For 2023, the Ball lit by 32,000 plus LEDs twinkled with 2,688 Waterford Crystal triangles designed to represent ten gifts—love, wisdom, happiness, goodwill, harmony, serenity, kindness, wonder, fortitude, and imagination. The million or so celebrants in Time Square skipped the champagne toasts—no alcohol allowed—but enjoyed midnight kisses, Auld Lang Syne, and a one ton confetti shower inscribed with thousands of New Year wishes.

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Actually the Times Square party was a symbolic welcome to the New Year given that 28 time zones preceded New York in starting the party. A cascade of spectacular fireworks and light celebrations circled the globe from Sydney, Australia to Dubai, United Arab Emirates to London, United Kingdom to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

In December 2018, when visiting my family in Sydney, Australia, my husband Robert saw it as his chance to see the Sydney fireworks in person. My family worked very hard to convince him that he could not just roll up on his scooter a couple of hours before midnight. He’d have to be there for hours ahead of time and would be roped in by security for several more hours after midnight. On top of that, the crushing crowd of one million partygoers would block his 40 inch line-of-sight and make public transport home a nightmare. He reluctantly settled for a view from my brother’s balcony a few miles away.

About 20 years earlier, I messed with Robert and another New Year’s tradition. We were on vacation in Florida when he and his brother Peter were asked to dress up as Father Time and Baby New Year. I objected when Robert was chosen to dress as the baby. As little people we work very hard at being taken seriously and treated as adults. Age is not related to size. The last thing we needed was for Robert to be stereotyped as the baby with photos to prove it for years to come. The compromise came when Robert dressed as Father Time personifying the old year and his brother dressed as Baby New Year illustrating the new year.

As I close out 2022 and look forward to 2023, my perspective as an author and blogger draws me to quotes related to writing:

“Do not let kindness and truth leave you; write them on the tablet of your heart.”

~ Solomon

 “The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written.”

~ Melody Beattie

“New year—a new chapter, new verse, or just the same old story? Ultimately we write it. The choice is ours.”

~ Alex Morritt

 “Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one.”

~ Brad Paisley.

Praying you have a Happy New Year filled with God’s light and love.

For more information on my dwarfism book trilogy and weekly blog posts, go to my website at https://angelamuirvanetten.com.