National Archives
President George Bush signs into law the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 on the South Lawn of the White House.
Thirty-four years ago this week, I was one of the many people who watched from the lawn of the White House as President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into law on July 26, 1990.
I don’t recall thinking much on that day about how the advent of this historic and monumental new federal law might shape the future. I just remember basking in the victorious glow of the moment.
I never was naive enough to believe that the ADA would immediately transform our country’s infrastructure and culture to the point where they would be fully inclusive of all disabled people. But I guess if I had thought about it, I would have predicted that we’d be further along than we are today.
To see a concrete example of a positive change the ADA has made, take a look at public transportation in Chicago, where I live. Before the ADA mandated that all new public transit buses put into service must be wheelchair accessible, none of the buses in the fleet of the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) were accessible. Today, every CTA bus is accessible.
But you can also take a look at other cities’ public transportation systems to see a concrete example of where the ADA has fallen short. In New York City, for instance, only 141 of the 493 subway stations have elevators as of November 2023. That’s just 29 percent. In Chicago, 80 percent of rail stations are accessible.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which operates the public transit system in New York City, has been sued more than once because of subway station inaccessibility. MTA settled one of the lawsuits last year by agreeing to make 95 percent of the system’s subway stations ADA-compliant by the year 2055.
On the warm and sunny summer day when Bush signed the ADA, he said, “Today’s legislation brings us closer to that day when no Americans will ever again be deprived of their basic guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” I don’t think he said anything like, “Today’s legislation means that some things might be 95 percent accessible sixty-five years from now.” If Bush had said anything like that during the signing festivities, it would have been a real buzzkill.
Bush also said, “The Americans with Disabilities Act presents us all with an historic opportunity. It signals the end to the unjustified segregation and exclusion of persons with disabilities from the mainstream of American life.”
But it seems as if the forces that believe that the humanity of people with disabilities is up for negotiation are still strongly asserting themselves, thirty-four years later. That’s why the ADA was needed in the first place, and why it is still very much needed today.