7/30/25 - The 35th ADA Anniversary

Belated happy anniversary!

Last Saturday was the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. So I'm again playing a little catch-up on articles written about it. These three should do. If other interesting takes crop up in the next week or so, I'll share them too.

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35 years of the Americans with Disabilities Act — celebrating the success and concern

Emily Chen-Newton, National Public Radio - July 22, 2025

"But, he says, this night is about more than finding top speed on his power chair; it's about being on the rink at all. As a child of the '80s, Denlinger remembers life before the ADA was fully implemented ... He says his introduction to activism was seeing his mother fight to get curb-cuts built into their neighborhood sidewalks. She told him, "This is happening for you," while watching news coverage of the Capitol Crawl, where disabled protesters abandoned their wheelchairs to crawl up the U.S. Capitol steps, demanding passage of the ADA."

The Americans With Disabilities Act changed my life. Now my generation needs to fight for it

Rachel Kolb, Los Angeles Times - July 26, 2025

"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."

As the ADA turns 35, groups fighting for disability rights could see their federal dollars slashed

John Hanna and Kenya Hunter, Associated Press - July 26, 2025

"Nancy Jensen believes she’d still be living in an abusive group home if it wasn’t shut down in 2004 with the help of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, which for decades has received federal money to look out for Americans with disabilities ... But the flow of funding under the Trump administration is now in question, disability rights groups nationwide say, dampening their mood as Saturday marks the 35th anniversary of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act. Federal dollars pay for much of their work, including helping people who seek government-funded services and lawsuits now pushing Iowa and Texas toward better community services."

These articles capture pretty well the unusually wide range of emotions a lot of disabled Americans have felt during 2025's Disability Pride Month and the 25th anniversary of the ADA. Just about every response seems at least partly appropriate: expansive, joyful celebration and awareness-raising; reflecting on the many things that are clearly better for disabled people thanks to the ADA; pride in the fact that for the most part, we, disabled people, achieved the ADA for ourselves; dismay and fear that so much of the structure around us other than the ADA itself is being dismantled, both deliberately and through a kind of hostile carelessness.

I find myself remembering how it felt when the ADA was about to pass, when it did pass, and all the things disabled people did to energize the new law in the months and years just after. It was an exciting time. But, I think at the time we both underestimated how important the ADA would be, and overestimated how much it would affect our personal, everyday lives. And I don't think many of us in 1990 had any idea of what we would be thinking and saying about the ADA 35 years later, in 2025.

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