Signed in as policy on July 26, 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act is now celebrating its 32nd Anniversary. While robust legislation like the ADA is the world's envy, domestically, the foundational change, it sought to bring needs to be faster. However, disability history goes beyond the ADA, I Capitol Crawl, and the first disability pride marches, or the activism as described in documentaries like Netflix’s Crip Camp. Disability history is, as the saying goes, as old as the hills.
The problem is, too; often, we don’t know that history. Before policies and non-profits with acronyms like IDEA and ADAPT, there were people with disabilities seeking a life with whatever resources they had available. This isn’t just a problem for non-disabled people, either.
The disability community has lost access to disability history for two main reasons:
Disability history is rarely taught outside of disability studies classrooms or anecdotally through people who live it. A university education, where people can study their history in depth and have the time and money to do so, is out of reach for most people with disabilities. A second reason is that people with disabilities, like is true for many other marginalized communities, have lost their elders to time, abuse, and a lack of care. Health Affairs reports that life expectancies are lower among adults with disabilities than adults without disabilities. Higher mortality rates make it difficult to pass along one’s history.
An unsightly history
They were statutes in cities across America in the late 19th and early 20th century that dictated who could or could not be seen in public. These became known as the ugly laws. These statutes were concerned with appearance making it against the law to be seen in public if visibly “unsightly.”
After WWI, one of the world's most mass-disabling events, enforcement of these statutes became unpopular. Interestingly, war history and disability history have myriad connections – like the creation of wheelchair basketball to support WWII veterans in their rehabilitation.
The ugly laws, which received their name in 1975 – a year after they repealed the last one – were part of the reason the fight for the ADA gained momentum. You can see the ethos of this legislation in much of the ableist discrimination people with disabilities face today.
Public shaming
Disability history shows us that people with disabilities were put on display when it suited others. There was a time when America’s “freak shows” paraded individuals with disabilities alongside circus animals for others’ enjoyment. The entertainment industry uses the freak show angle in adaptations like American Horror Story to capture ratings and perpetuate a false history.
The circus shows performed across America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were one of the only ways for people with visual disabilities to make money. This relatively recent and painful history can help to inform how we approach all forms of accessibility policy and its impact on people with disabilities.
Making decisions, people or place?
When we talk about accessibility, we often talk about who gets to take up space and where. More often than we’d like to admit, accessibility features or design choices are pushed aside for their perceived aesthetics, visual clunkiness, and unexpectedness. When we talk about accessibility, we’re often talking about who gets to take up space and where. More often than we’d like to admit, accessibility features or design choices are pushed aside for their perceived aesthetics, visual clunkiness, and unexpectedness.
Similarly, physical buildings of various sorts and types – most notably churches – are deemed exempt from the ADA to preserve a nostalgic view of America. It seems as if these decisions boil down to someone with money and power saying, ‘We can’t have a ramp. That’s an old building. We have to preserve our history.’ Despite whether these decisions exclude whole populations of people.
With learning comes growth
Legislation like the ADA is something to be built upon and not a magical solution for the disability community. The ugly laws didn’t stop disabled people from existing, but they did limit how much society was willing to view people with disabilities as people of value. Freak shows didn’t prevent disabled people from engaging in life, but they did encourage viewers to confine the disabled experience into a tiny, exploitative box.
When we boil accessibility down into one set of directives and guidelines, we do a disservice to our clients, viewers, and communities. A lack of knowledge about disability history is just as damaging as a lack of knowledge about the tools we can use to make accessibility easier.
As the saying goes, we must be aware of our history to avoid repeating it. We must also use the past to gain insight into how we can improve the future.
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