When the Americans With Disabilities Act was signed into law on this day in July 1990, my parents didn’t yet know how much the landmark civil rights law would soon shape my life — and theirs.
I was born profoundly deaf, but my parents didn’t even know this part yet. I was 6 months old that summer, and hearing screenings for newborns weren’t universal medical practice in those days. My parents had brought me home from the hospital thinking I was just like them — that is, hearing, someone who also lived amid sound and speech. But that August, just a few weeks after President George H.W. Bush signed the ADA on the White House’s South Lawn, they learned otherwise. My sensory and linguistic world was fundamentally different from theirs. And thus my life would be too.
My diagnosis came as a surprise for my parents. At first, they felt like they had no road map to follow. They didn’t yet know American Sign Language. They knew nearly nothing about deafness, and they lived in a culture where disability was still too often classified as tragedy. But they jumped into their steep learning curve — and found the ADA waiting for us.
Now, 35 years later, I am a member of the “ADA generation,” which means I know what accessibility can be: an invitation into greater human community, as well as a precious right we must preserve for future generations.
This truth is hitting me hard this summer. The ADA and I have come of age together, but modern life — and the future — now look different than I once thought it would.
First, the good part: Thanks to the ADA, many more doors have opened to me than my parents could ever have imagined in 1990. From my youngest years, I had access to early intervention services. I had an Individualized Education Program in school, where I was the only deaf student, and I enjoyed learning from my teachers and peers through watching my ASL interpreters. I went to after-school sleepovers with my friends, where we all watched TV with the captions on. My closest friends learned ASL, and as an adult I’ve felt astonished at how much they still remember. Now they, too, know wider ways to communicate.
The ADA has helped me figure out how to belong. Ever since I was a bookish kid, I knew that I wanted to travel, to write, to stay in school as long as I could, to have meaningful conversations with new friends and strangers. I just didn’t know how I’d do some of these things — unless I somehow became hearing, too, when I grew up.
News flash: I am still not hearing, but because of the power of accessibility, I’ve continued finding my way. I’ve lived abroad, completed my doctoral degree, written a book. I live a charmed life, and belonging to the ADA generation is one major reason why.
Now the not-so-good part: The ADA is still the law of the land, but these are terrifying times for deaf and disabled people in America. Our lives are under threat in ways I never imagined when I was growing up. Our current president overtly scapegoats disabled people, as we’ve seen on numerous occasions, from mocking a disabled journalist in 2015 to baselessly blaming people with disabilities for the tragic plane crash in the Potomac River in January. This spring, his administration withdrew 11 pieces of federal accessibility guidelines intended to help businesses comply with the ADA. The budget bill signed on July 4 makes huge cuts to Medicaid, on which many disabled people rely to access healthcare and essential support services. Ongoing federal cuts, including to the Department of Education, threaten everything from special education to antidiscrimination policies for students with disabilities.
The examples tumble on. It’s time for the ADA generation to step up as we never have before. This means pressing into the legal and legislative fights ahead, calling representatives and engaging in protests. But it also means bringing our native-born knowledge to all our interactions, while pulling in others we know, people like my childhood classmates, who have witnessed the power of inclusion. We can support each other’s access needs, even in the most everyday ways. We can speak out about what access has done for us.
When I was growing up, I always took the ADA for granted. I thought of it as my birthright, when I thought of it at all. It was only 10 years ago that I began to see otherwise: During the 25th anniversary of the ADA in 2015, I watched the White House celebrations online and saw members of my generation, surrounded by disability activists who had been present for the law’s passing. I saw how everyone in that room had their own distinctive ways of being and communicating, from wheelchairs to crutches to braille to ASL. And I also saw how they’d gathered with such vibrancy and joy.
At age 25, I’d only just started to identify with the broader disability community, beyond the deaf culture that was much more familiar to me — but I recognized the deep resourcefulness of the people in that room, the communal spirit it takes to build more inclusive worlds. And I wanted everyone else to see it too.
As the ADA and I are now 35, I see that we should not only celebrate those past disability activists but also embrace their approaches and bring the same doggedness and ingenuity to a new generation of challenges. We must keep providing care for each other, something that is always a political act in itself.
I don’t take the ADA for granted anymore. Instead, living in the world that it has made possible, here’s what I know: Deaf and disabled Americans already belong. And accessibility already belongs to all of us, especially once we recognize how transformative it can truly be.
Rachel Kolb is the author of the forthcoming memoir “Articulate: A Deaf Memoir of Voice.”