Voices from the Edge: Americans with Disabilities Act
Voices from the Edge, by Ruth O’Brien, is one of the books I picked up by random while studying in Robart’s Library. Although I have a few friends involved in accessability for people with disabilities, and I volunteered for three months at a community of people with disabilities in Mexico, I did not know much about this problematics. This book is brilliant in that it uses narrative and fiction to let a number of people with disabilities tell the stories of their obstacles encountered with public transport, access to public services, in work situations and others - and then at the end of each section has a part that analyzes what happened from a legal point of view (of course, American-centered) based on the Americans with Disabilities Act; a landmark piece of legislation that still has a lot of shortcomings.
Being in Mexico in a little poor village, I saw the obstacles and the ways of overcoming them that the citizens there used; but I didn’t know much about the problems for people with disabilities in more industrialized countries. Whether it be trying to traverse the sidewalks in New York, getting access to an interpreter for sign language in an emergency ward, or keeping your job even though you have AIDS, the stories are many and varied. And the frustration they get when trying to enforce their rights, and the law, is tangible. I wanted to step up and campaign for elevators in the subways in New York!
It is also interesting because it affords an insight into a legal system that is very unlike where I come from. A lot of the problems with enforcing the law comes from the intersection of federal and state law, including various Supreme Court rulings and so on. Coming from a small and very centralized country, this is all new to me. It is also strange how they made the ADA into a legal tool, so that users can sue non-compliants, this seems to put all the burden on the users. Instead, in Norway (I think), one would simply say that it was obligatory or illegal, and if the users then reported noncompliance to the government, the government would pursue it themselves. But sadly I know very little about the details of the Norwegian legal system.
Stian
