2025 marks the 35th anniversary of the signing into law of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA is a bipartisan law which intends to achieve equitable access to civic life for people living with disabilities who had been historically excluded from everyday activities. Although the law has not reached full implementation, it has achieved a lot since it went into effect. When the ADA was signed into law, people with disabilities gained civil rights to employment, to access state and local government programs, to access public accommodations, and to benefit equitably through telecommunications. But how does the law function? Today I’d like to offer an explanation. There are 2 entities that are required to designate a specific employee to ensure ADA compliance. That would be most state/local government entities and all transportation providers.
A common misconception is that people with disabilities are directly covered under the ADA. While individuals with disabilities derive rights from the ADA, the ADA applies to very specific contexts. Mentioned earlier, these are access to employment, state and local government, public accommodations, and telecommunications. Organizations that fall under these categories are known as covered entities. The ADA outlines responsibilities for these entities to provide access to people with disabilities so they can keep their jobs, vote, have dinner at a restaurant, and understand speech on broadcast television. It is because these entities have responsibilities that people with disabilities have rights.
Another common misconception about the ADA is that it can be enforced proactively. What I mean by that is that sometimes a person with a disability calls the ADA Center reporting that they are experiencing mistreatment because of their disability. These people want someone to come out and right the wrong. I understand the desire to have the ADA function like the police force or OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), but that’s not how the ADA was designed. There is no local enforcing agency for the ADA. Being a civil rights law, enforcement of the ADA is after-the-fact. Discrimination must occur before filing a complaint with the EEOC for employment issues, the US Department of Justice, or by filing a lawsuit in Federal District Court. Local police are not responsible for enforcing Federal laws, including the ADA. A city isn’t responsible for businesses to be accessible under the ADA. I don’t intend to paint a dire picture. I want to explain the basics of the law to help people navigate this system more efficiently.
Then how does the ADA get implemented?
The ADA relies on voluntary compliance. The law stands as a reference for those who want to do the right thing. It also functions as a regulation for people who may not care about disability access. My experience leads me to believe that most people truly want to provide access for people with disabilities. It’s a minority of covered entities who don’t accept their responsibilities to comply with the ADA.
Prior to the ADA, some elected officials openly refuted that wheelchair users even wanted access to public sidewalks. Curb ramps were not a universal feature at that time. They would use the fact that you didn’t see wheelchair users using the (inaccessible) sidewalk as evidence that people with disabilities did not go out in public spaces. Never mind the fact that they couldn’t go out in public spaces. This type of blatant disregard has largely fallen away from what can be considered acceptable discourse. Don’t get me wrong, these attitudes still exist and people with disabilities are still fighting for their rights.
In the early 2000s, the US Access Board and the International Code Council began work that would administer an alternative implementation strategy for the ADA’s physical access requirements. When the Access Board took on the mission to revise the 1991 ADA Standards, they sought to harmonize physical access requirements of the ADA with that of building code. The ADA Standards represent civil rights in the built environment, but the building code represents local laws that can actually be enforced locally by the building department. Issues with requirements common to both sets of laws can be caught and corrected by the local building code official before people with disabilities receive inequitable access. Much of the ADA’s physical access requirements can now be enforced through building code enforcement.
I believe that most people have good intensions, and the structure of the ADA’s implementation is founded on solid ground. Because of the ADA, systems are in place to guide voluntary compliance or enforcement when a heavier hand is needed. Looking to the future, I only hope that people with disabilities are not still fighting the same fights which they do today. I hope acceptance of the law broadens and more people do their best to make sure people with disabilities aren’t automatically excluded. Today, it’s worth celebrating the groundwork that the ADA has laid out.