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The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) officially became federal law on July 26, 1990. So every year at about this time, I write something about how the law passed and if it has improved the lives of people with disabilities in the years since. I always end up saying that disabled folks have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.
Nowadays, every public transit bus that passes by my home in Chicago is wheelchair accessible. Before the ADA became law, none of them were. But the closest public transit train station to my home still isn’t wheelchair accessible, thirty-six years after that day when I was among the hundreds of people who went to the White House to witness President George H.W. Bush signing the ADA.
Now, I must admit, I am reluctant to talk about how much better things have gotten for disabled folks, because I don’t want to give the impression that we all can just sit back and watch the ADA make everything just right. The ADA came to be because a lot of people did a lot of work. The law makes it easier to push a boulder uphill. If no one keeps pushing, the boulder will not move forward, and might even roll back downhill.
But today, I am nevertheless going to celebrate how much the lives of people with disabilities have improved. Federal data shows that most students with disabilities in the United States spend most of their school day in general education classes. In the fall of 2022, 67 percent of disabled students aged three to twenty-one spent 80 percent or more of the school day in general education classes. That was an increase from 61 percent of students ten years prior.
These numbers are significant because disabled students who are educated alongside their peers who don’t have disabilities achieve more, not just academically, but in life.
Much of the credit for bringing about this improvement goes to the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1975. That law says disabled people have a right to a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. Before that, only one in five children with disabilities attended U.S. public schools, and many states had laws allowing the exclusion of certain students, including those who were deaf, blind, intellectually disabled, or emotionally disturbed.
This was indicative of the low expectations our society had for disabled people, and it was used to justify all of the shameful segregation to which we all have been subjected. But the ADA has brought about a huge cultural change that makes laws like IDEA more effective. Because people with disabilities have become much more visible in public spaces, including public transportation and classrooms, accessible design has become more of an automatic element of our societal infrastructure.
This is the primary legacy of the ADA. Things will never be the same.