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Graham visits DC for ADA anniversary event

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Twenty-five years ago, Chuck Graham was at the White House to watch President George H.W. Bush sign the Americans with Disabilities Act into law and this week, a quarter of a century later, Graham is in Washington D.C. again, to celebrate the anniversary of the sweeping federal law.

The ADA was a piece of hallmark legislation in its time, something that may be hard to imagine for the generation that grew up since its passage, where wheelchair ramps and handicapped parking are ubiquitous in public places. But before the ADA was enshrined into law, Americans with disabilities had virtually no legal protections for discrimination. Graham said that there is a marked difference in how cities like D.C. accommodate the disabled now compared to before the ADA.

“When I was in D.C. 25 years ago, the Metro was accessible but the busses were not. There were no cabs that were accessible to me like there are now,” said Graham, who is wheelchair bound since a car accident when he was 16. “People had the right to just deny service to a disabled person. My major is broadcast journalism. When I graduated, it was legal for a studio to say ‘our viewers are uncomfortable with someone in a wheelchair on the air, we aren’t going to hire you.’”

Graham will spend a total of 9 days in D.C. by the time he returns home on Tuesday. Last week, he met President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in a special reception at the White House. For much of the week, the Kennedy Center has hosted events commemorating the ADA. Yesterday, special guests gathered in the Smithsonian Museum of American history for an event memorializing some of the bill’s key players, as well as the millions of Americans it impacted.

Graham said the bill “opened up the physical world” to those with disabilities.

“You can’t treat people with disabilities like second-class citizens,” Graham said. “It means a lot in terms of opening up the work that I can have a bathroom and a shower when I’m in a hotel. It means the world is for us, not against us.”

Graham, a Democrat served as a state representative and state senator from Columbia, now serves as Associate Director of the Great Plans ADA Center at the University of Missouri, where they provide technical training on ADA compliance to everyone from architects and contractors to lawyers and transportation companies. And while individuals with disabilities have made great strides in the 25 years under the ADA, Graham says the staggering 70 percent unemployment rate is one of the many barriers that still exists.

The brewing court battle will likely be with web-based companies. When the ADA was crafted, businesses that had to comply where defined as physical structures and locations, long before virtual stores had become such a normal method of buying and selling goods. But with the rise of the internet has come the fight to keep web-based retailers, like Amazon, in compliance with a law that they say doesn’t totally apply to them.

“Right now the courts say that web-based don’t have to make products and services accessible to people who are, lets say, blind, but want to use their services or buy their product,” Graham said.

Issues like those, or even local negotiations with Columbia-area Uber and taxi officials on providing handicap-accessible rides, keep Graham busy with the work that remains to be done.

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