1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,393 Hi, I'm Beth Haller. 2 00:00:02,393 --> 00:00:08,413 I'm a professor of Mass Communication at Towsen University in Maryland. 3 00:00:08,413 --> 00:00:12,872 I also teach Disability Studies there and at several other campuses. 4 00:00:14,344 --> 00:00:18,643 I teach at City University of New York and their Disability Studies programme; 5 00:00:18,643 --> 00:00:23,049 I teach at York University in Toronto and their Disability Studies programme; 6 00:00:23,049 --> 00:00:26,990 I teach at University of Texas, Arlington and their Disability Studies minor. 7 00:00:28,290 --> 00:00:32,698 So I've been doing research since the early 90's 8 00:00:32,698 --> 00:00:35,579 about media representations of people with disabilities. 9 00:00:36,247 --> 00:00:39,178 So I have a kind of unique relationship to the ADA 10 00:00:39,178 --> 00:00:44,070 because I did my dissertation on how the news media covered it. 11 00:00:44,070 --> 00:00:48,464 So before I went to Temple University in Philadelphia to get my PhD, 12 00:00:48,464 --> 00:00:52,963 I was at University of Maryland College Park getting my Masters. 13 00:00:55,266 --> 00:00:57,762 I started that in 1989, 14 00:00:57,762 --> 00:01:01,182 and there's a reason for all these numbers (laughs) these dates, 15 00:01:01,182 --> 00:01:05,527 and in 1988 is when the Deaf President Now movement happened 16 00:01:05,527 --> 00:01:10,648 at Gallaudet University in DC, and I think somewhere in the back of my mind 17 00:01:10,648 --> 00:01:17,289 I knew about what was happening because I was a journalist before I became academic. 18 00:01:17,289 --> 00:01:24,733 So when I started at College Park in 1989 I ended up doing an article for a class 19 00:01:24,733 --> 00:01:29,529 about a deaf student at Gallaudet and I got very interested in the deaf community, 20 00:01:29,529 --> 00:01:31,760 there's a huge deaf community in the DC area. 21 00:01:31,760 --> 00:01:36,009 Ended up doing my Masters thesis on how the deaf community was represented 22 00:01:36,009 --> 00:01:38,832 before, during and after Deaf President Now 23 00:01:38,832 --> 00:01:41,907 in the New York Times and the Washington Post, 24 00:01:41,907 --> 00:01:44,621 that was a jumping-off point. 25 00:01:44,621 --> 00:01:50,551 When I left College Park it was 1991 and so the ADA had just been passed 26 00:01:50,551 --> 00:01:54,002 and when I got to Temple to start working on my PhD 27 00:01:54,002 --> 00:01:57,167 I knew that I wanted to still work in the area of disability 28 00:01:57,167 --> 00:02:00,720 and we just had this major disability rights law passed. 29 00:02:01,930 --> 00:02:05,766 I remember it more as a focus of my research 30 00:02:05,766 --> 00:02:11,423 cause I don't necessarily remember seeing the actual coverage on the day it happened 31 00:02:11,423 --> 00:02:16,773 in 1990, but I do remember looking at all the coverage because that was the subject 32 00:02:16,773 --> 00:02:18,663 of my dissertation. 33 00:02:19,463 --> 00:02:23,705 So it was really interesting to look at it as an academic 34 00:02:23,705 --> 00:02:28,530 and to kind of watch it happen and then not happen (laughs) 35 00:02:28,530 --> 00:02:30,463 as it moved into the future. 36 00:02:30,464 --> 00:02:36,014 So my dissertation looked at how the mainstream news media, 37 00:02:36,014 --> 00:02:40,762 you know, all the big news magazines and the major newspapers back then. 38 00:02:41,792 --> 00:02:45,607 So I finished my dissertation in '94, graduated in '95 39 00:02:45,607 --> 00:02:53,294 so it was very early days of the ADA so it wasn't really being implemented yet 40 00:02:53,294 --> 00:02:57,769 because they gave several years for people to get into compliance 41 00:02:57,769 --> 00:03:04,221 but as the years have passed it's been very interesting to watch how things 42 00:03:04,221 --> 00:03:06,389 weren't happening. 43 00:03:06,389 --> 00:03:09,005 And I think what we all thought was going to happen was: 44 00:03:09,005 --> 00:03:12,420 Congress passes this major disability rights law 45 00:03:12,420 --> 00:03:16,351 then people would follow it because it's now federal law 46 00:03:16,351 --> 00:03:18,833 not to discriminate based on disability 47 00:03:18,833 --> 00:03:21,979 but that isn't what happened (laughs). 48 00:03:21,979 --> 00:03:29,607 And from a media standpoint, that really kind of hurt the ADA because- 49 00:03:29,607 --> 00:03:33,744 and I've even had this conversation with Disability Studies scholars and 50 00:03:33,744 --> 00:03:37,525 disability rights activists- because they I think thought 51 00:03:37,525 --> 00:03:41,134 in that same way that it's now law and everything will be fine, 52 00:03:41,134 --> 00:03:48,242 and there was such a history of being covered in the media so badly 53 00:03:48,246 --> 00:03:54,176 that the activists thought they could get this past and everything would be fine 54 00:03:54,176 --> 00:03:56,410 and they didn't need the media for anything. 55 00:03:57,150 --> 00:04:01,212 So I come onto the scene, I start going to Society for Disability Studies 56 00:04:01,212 --> 00:04:06,553 meetings in the early 90's, started presenting my research 57 00:04:06,553 --> 00:04:10,330 and even the disability community in those first early years right after the ADA 58 00:04:10,330 --> 00:04:14,487 didn't understand why the media was important. 59 00:04:14,487 --> 00:04:16,853 Because I remember presenting at a conference, 60 00:04:16,853 --> 00:04:21,244 at a Disability Studies conference, and people coming up to me and saying 61 00:04:21,244 --> 00:04:26,255 "That's really nice that you do work on media, but we have bigger things we 62 00:04:26,255 --> 00:04:30,885 need to be dealing with: getting people jobs, getting people proper education 63 00:04:30,885 --> 00:04:34,858 getting people out of nursing homes." My response to everybody was 64 00:04:34,858 --> 00:04:40,890 "How do you think you're going to do that if you're not getting out information 65 00:04:40,890 --> 00:04:44,310 into public opinion, so if you're not able to change public opinion 66 00:04:44,310 --> 00:04:47,396 how can you get these things accomplished? 67 00:04:47,396 --> 00:04:52,040 And how do you get public opinion changed? You get a proper narrative 68 00:04:52,040 --> 00:04:58,878 going in the media." And now there's actual Disability Studies research 69 00:04:58,878 --> 00:05:04,157 and disability activists who've talked about this in the early 2000's 70 00:05:04,157 --> 00:05:07,821 about, they took the wrong tactic after the ADA was passed 71 00:05:07,821 --> 00:05:12,400 and decided that, it was passed it would get enforced. 72 00:05:12,400 --> 00:05:18,741 "Yay we can move on." Unfortunately the business narrative 73 00:05:18,741 --> 00:05:23,811 came into the mix and they controlled the message that was in the media. 74 00:05:23,811 --> 00:05:28,348 And so from quite a number of years after the ADA was passed, 75 00:05:28,348 --> 00:05:34,372 it wasn't being enforced because there was this narrative in the news media 76 00:05:34,372 --> 00:05:38,559 that it was an unfunded mandate and "Well, we never saw a person with a 77 00:05:38,559 --> 00:05:41,518 disability in our store, why do we have to do all this stuff?" 78 00:05:41,518 --> 00:05:45,336 Well of course, the reason they didn't see a person with a dis- a wheelchair user 79 00:05:45,336 --> 00:05:48,651 in their store is because it wasn't accessible or nobody came to their 80 00:05:48,651 --> 00:05:51,933 website because it was inaccessible (laughs) but they didn't get that. 81 00:05:51,933 --> 00:05:56,570 A lot of the journalists didn't know people in the disability community 82 00:05:56,570 --> 00:06:00,621 and the disability community was very wary of the news media 83 00:06:00,621 --> 00:06:06,628 because they'd done such a bad job, but any news coverage in my opinion is better 84 00:06:06,628 --> 00:06:08,681 than no news coverage usually (laughs). 85 00:06:08,681 --> 00:06:14,475 And so the business community really took over the narrative and had this really 86 00:06:14,475 --> 00:06:20,431 negative perception of the ADA that was funnelling into the media, 87 00:06:20,431 --> 00:06:24,412 and then people just didn't know about it cause it wasn't getting covered that much. 88 00:06:24,412 --> 00:06:30,271 There was a national poll done, I believe in, like, 1995, of Americans 89 00:06:30,271 --> 00:06:35,133 about what they knew about the ADA and other disability rights issues. 90 00:06:35,793 --> 00:06:41,938 Only 18% of Americans in 1995 had even heard of the American Disabilities Act 91 00:06:41,938 --> 00:06:43,779 if I'm remembering the stats right. 92 00:06:45,090 --> 00:06:51,859 To me, that is the fault of not engaging with media to do stories about that, 93 00:06:51,859 --> 00:06:53,359 and I know it's very difficult. 94 00:06:53,359 --> 00:06:58,523 Even today it's very difficult to get the media to do a more complex, policy, 95 00:06:58,523 --> 00:07:02,523 legal, government related story about disability 96 00:07:02,523 --> 00:07:06,875 and not one of those inspiration narrative stories, 97 00:07:06,875 --> 00:07:12,652 but it's still worth fighting to try to get those stories into the media. 98 00:07:14,181 --> 00:07:19,691 And the other data point I would say, what I always tell my students when we're 99 00:07:19,691 --> 00:07:23,380 talking about the ADA: the ADA's enforcement depends on who's 100 00:07:23,380 --> 00:07:24,286 in the White House. 101 00:07:24,286 --> 00:07:28,825 So we had quite a number of Republican Presidents 102 00:07:28,831 --> 00:07:34,821 who did not care about the ADA being enforced for, like, 8 years, 103 00:07:34,821 --> 00:07:39,840 so that is why it really only got more enforced once Obama became President. 104 00:07:41,357 --> 00:07:45,357 There's a lot of external factors that meant that the ADA 105 00:07:45,357 --> 00:07:49,791 was not going to be changing things as radically as we would have hoped, 106 00:07:49,791 --> 00:07:52,664 or what we were thinking back in 1990. 107 00:07:53,754 --> 00:07:59,921 The ADA has had impact in more recent years since President Obama 108 00:07:59,921 --> 00:08:02,584 came into office and it was just getting enforced. 109 00:08:02,584 --> 00:08:09,732 I use a lot of these examples in my class, of news stories about the ADA 110 00:08:09,732 --> 00:08:11,733 finally being implemented. 111 00:08:14,173 --> 00:08:18,179 A couple that I use, one is about a little city in Pennsylvania. 112 00:08:18,184 --> 00:08:26,094 The headlines of a lot of ADA stories, still, I say they have this blaming tone. 113 00:08:26,094 --> 00:08:31,382 "Things are expensive because of the ADA; things are closing because of the ADA." 114 00:08:31,382 --> 00:08:35,043 I always tell my students that narrative should be flipped. 115 00:08:35,043 --> 00:08:40,890 The story really is, "Why didn't this town in Pennsylvania comply with the ADA 116 00:08:40,890 --> 00:08:50,260 for however many years, 20 years." So that, to me is the real story. 117 00:08:50,260 --> 00:08:56,028 This one headline was about this town, I believe was Logansport, Pennsylvania, 118 00:08:56,028 --> 00:09:02,501 the headline was, "They must pay $8 million" for some kind of ADA compliance 119 00:09:02,501 --> 00:09:06,569 that they were finally going to do, I think in, like, 2008 or something. 120 00:09:06,569 --> 00:09:11,536 And I'm like, okay that $8 million would have been a lot less 121 00:09:11,536 --> 00:09:16,347 if they'd just been compliant back in 1992 when they were supposed to be compliant, 122 00:09:16,347 --> 00:09:19,168 but they're still blaming the ADA. 123 00:09:19,168 --> 00:09:24,433 But now I think people, the general public now knows a lot more 124 00:09:24,433 --> 00:09:27,539 and I actually chalk a lot up to social media, 125 00:09:27,539 --> 00:09:33,620 because now people are getting, not a mediated story through the news media 126 00:09:33,620 --> 00:09:35,784 and some journalist or some newscaster. 127 00:09:35,784 --> 00:09:39,632 They're actually on social media with people with disabilities 128 00:09:39,632 --> 00:09:41,826 and see what their life is like. 129 00:09:41,826 --> 00:09:45,937 And I know in the last couple of years when there was an assault on the ADA 130 00:09:45,937 --> 00:09:50,104 and people in Congress were thinking about and the President was thinking about 131 00:09:50,104 --> 00:09:52,621 figuring out a way to knock it out. 132 00:09:53,964 --> 00:09:59,270 I saw lots of allies on social media because they were finally aware that there 133 00:09:59,270 --> 00:10:04,919 was a disability rights law and they said it should stay, it should not be repealed, 134 00:10:04,919 --> 00:10:08,034 and so I think the media have a lot of power, 135 00:10:08,034 --> 00:10:10,942 and now that we have this very personal media of social media, 136 00:10:10,942 --> 00:10:15,522 people get to know actual people with disabilities in their community 137 00:10:15,522 --> 00:10:20,698 and they see the benefits of having things in braille or having captioning 138 00:10:20,698 --> 00:10:26,268 or having wheelchair ramps, or just thinking about asking somebody before 139 00:10:26,268 --> 00:10:30,351 you barrel ahead and create something that may be inaccessible. 140 00:10:30,351 --> 00:10:35,330 So I think the general public is a lot more aware than they were in 1995 141 00:10:35,330 --> 00:10:38,330 when only 18% of people had even heard of the ADA. 142 00:10:38,330 --> 00:10:43,012 And even if they haven't heard of the ADA, they're in favour of disability rights, 143 00:10:43,012 --> 00:10:47,802 and I think that one thing that came out of that survey, even back in 1995, 144 00:10:47,802 --> 00:10:53,430 is that, they might have never heard of the ADA, but if you pose to Americans 145 00:10:53,430 --> 00:10:57,946 the concept of disability rights then they agree with that. 146 00:10:57,946 --> 00:11:01,598 They don't think people should be discriminated against just because they 147 00:11:01,598 --> 00:11:06,648 need a ramp to get into a building or need a sign language interpreter 148 00:11:06,648 --> 00:11:08,218 to apply for a job. 149 00:11:08,218 --> 00:11:14,778 So I think there's a better feeling among the American public in terms of 150 00:11:14,778 --> 00:11:20,941 understanding disability rights and making sure that everybody has equal access. 151 00:11:20,941 --> 00:11:26,284 And also I think people now understand people with disabilities are them, 152 00:11:26,284 --> 00:11:33,455 are their friends, are their family members, and so a lot of the hidden stuff 153 00:11:33,455 --> 00:11:37,205 that was happening before the ADA where people with disabilities were being 154 00:11:37,205 --> 00:11:39,849 hidden in their families, where nobody talked about it, 155 00:11:39,849 --> 00:11:44,713 I even noticed that, in my teaching at Temple when I was a grad student, 156 00:11:44,713 --> 00:11:48,836 that the younger generation, because a lot of them had grown up 157 00:11:48,836 --> 00:11:53,948 in inclusive education, there was no shame they were proud to talk about their own 158 00:11:53,948 --> 00:11:58,054 disability, their parent's disability, their sibling's disability. 159 00:11:58,054 --> 00:12:01,780 I still remember a student, we had a discussion, actually one of my journalism 160 00:12:01,780 --> 00:12:06,240 classes, and one student, she was talking about, her mother was fluent in sign 161 00:12:06,240 --> 00:12:11,040 language cause both of her grandparents were deaf, so her mother's first language 162 00:12:11,040 --> 00:12:13,202 was sign language even though she was hearing. 163 00:12:13,202 --> 00:12:15,812 Another kid was like, "My brother has Down's Syndrome" 164 00:12:15,812 --> 00:12:17,335 and he said it with pride. 165 00:12:17,335 --> 00:12:23,227 So I think the cultural change that the ADA brought was really powerful too, 166 00:12:23,227 --> 00:12:28,511 cause that is what gets you to the place, if you're a business person, 167 00:12:28,511 --> 00:12:34,758 "Oh okay, maybe I should be more open to hiring somebody with Down's Syndrome 168 00:12:34,758 --> 00:12:36,921 to work in my grocery store, or whatever." 169 00:12:36,921 --> 00:12:43,238 So I think having that cultural change where people are now including 170 00:12:43,238 --> 00:12:47,028 the disability community as part of the American citizenry, 171 00:12:47,028 --> 00:12:50,824 then that is a very powerful thing, I think that the ADA did. 172 00:12:51,343 --> 00:12:57,193 Yeah. If the ADA stays around, I think that's a really good part of our future 173 00:12:57,193 --> 00:13:00,668 because it's a really good law. It was written really well, 174 00:13:00,668 --> 00:13:05,278 and it just needs to be enforced at all times. 175 00:13:05,278 --> 00:13:10,648 We learned about how it could be enforced in those 8 years that President Obama 176 00:13:10,648 --> 00:13:14,858 was in office, and I think we can continue to learn that. 177 00:13:14,858 --> 00:13:19,018 And the Justice Department and Department of Ed. and all the other federal agencies 178 00:13:19,018 --> 00:13:23,018 that enforce it, I think the community knows how to reach them 179 00:13:23,018 --> 00:13:24,588 and tell them to enforce things, 180 00:13:24,588 --> 00:13:29,708 and people are even getting a little bit better, even the business community 181 00:13:29,708 --> 00:13:35,208 understands now that people with disabilities are a major part of our 182 00:13:35,208 --> 00:13:41,780 consumer culture, and now with the pandemic and everybody working online, 183 00:13:41,780 --> 00:13:44,594 people with disabilities have been, can be the leaders. 184 00:13:44,594 --> 00:13:49,370 They're the ones that have been doing the workaround to try to make a living 185 00:13:49,370 --> 00:13:53,167 when they've not been able to go to an inaccessible building. 186 00:13:53,167 --> 00:13:57,598 So I think the future is bright if we will listen to disabled people about 187 00:13:57,598 --> 00:14:03,482 what the world needs to basically embrace everyone and accommodate everyone, 188 00:14:03,482 --> 00:14:10,173 and it'll be a better future for everyone because we talk about the hidden benefits 189 00:14:10,173 --> 00:14:15,803 of access for everyone, so think about all the people that use curb cuts 190 00:14:15,803 --> 00:14:20,428 for their wheelie luggage and all the UPS guys that use curb cuts 191 00:14:20,428 --> 00:14:26,639 for rolling their hand carts. All the bars that use closed caption cause they're loud 192 00:14:26,639 --> 00:14:34,148 So everybody gets benefits from disability related access and I think it can only get 193 00:14:34,148 --> 00:14:39,206 better, if people learn to trust that the disability community can lead us, 194 00:14:39,206 --> 00:14:43,763 because they're the ones who are most innovative and entrepreneurial 195 00:14:43,763 --> 00:14:51,329 about making sure that they can move forward in the most access-friendly ways. 196 00:14:51,741 --> 00:14:55,860 I think there should be a lot more listening to people with disabilities 197 00:14:55,860 --> 00:15:01,179 in the future cause they've already worked out the problems 198 00:15:01,179 --> 00:15:03,977 that we're now dealing with in a pandemic. 199 00:15:05,530 --> 00:15:10,088 I think they can help us build a future that's better for everyone, 200 00:15:10,088 --> 00:15:11,856 whether you have a disability or not. 201 00:15:14,072 --> 00:15:16,217 What steps can we take right now? 202 00:15:16,217 --> 00:15:20,989 I think if you're not a person with a disability, being a good ally. 203 00:15:20,989 --> 00:15:27,339 If you're a family member, being- helping to make sure that the person 204 00:15:27,339 --> 00:15:31,382 in your family with a disability is empowered to be independent, 205 00:15:31,382 --> 00:15:34,423 and giving them all the support they need. 206 00:15:34,423 --> 00:15:38,116 If you're a person with a disability, making sure that the world 207 00:15:38,116 --> 00:15:40,306 is accommodating to you. 208 00:15:40,306 --> 00:15:50,287 And everybody needs to focus on making the world completely accessible. 209 00:15:50,287 --> 00:15:54,623 A lot of people live in houses that cannot be made accessible, 210 00:15:54,623 --> 00:15:59,431 and a lot of things are grandfathered into the ADA because they were built long 211 00:15:59,431 --> 00:16:02,844 before the ADA existed, but there's other locations. 212 00:16:02,844 --> 00:16:06,984 There's online, there's video chatting, there's all kinds of workarounds 213 00:16:06,984 --> 00:16:12,074 that I think we can all embrace, and we got to quit whining about this stuff 214 00:16:12,074 --> 00:16:15,719 because, I'm talking to you in the middle of a pandemic (laughs). 215 00:16:15,719 --> 00:16:21,167 But I hear so many people complaining about things that I'm like, you know, 216 00:16:21,167 --> 00:16:25,634 this is all good, we can all still be connected, it's fine, 217 00:16:25,634 --> 00:16:30,075 and things are going to change, we need to learn to adapt. 218 00:16:30,075 --> 00:16:36,404 People with disabilities can teach us how to adapt, and they have a major disability 219 00:16:36,404 --> 00:16:39,184 rights organisation called Adapt as well (laughs). 220 00:16:39,184 --> 00:16:46,560 So I think that's the key for all of us, is to start learning to roll with it, 221 00:16:46,560 --> 00:16:51,230 learning to adapt and make sure that we're bringing everyone along 222 00:16:51,230 --> 00:16:54,625 into this new world that we're going to have to fashion post-pandemic, 223 00:16:54,625 --> 00:17:00,237 and that it's accessible to everyone, that we're all equal, 224 00:17:00,237 --> 00:17:05,046 that we're making sure that supports and what people need are in place, 225 00:17:05,046 --> 00:17:08,819 and then we can be a better community. 226 00:17:09,680 --> 00:17:12,674 It's kind of a weird time to be talking about all this (laughs). 227 00:17:12,674 --> 00:17:17,764 I mean, I know it's the ADA's 30th anniversary, I'm very glad that it's here 228 00:17:17,764 --> 00:17:22,144 and still exists, but I really feel like we can use the model of the ADA 229 00:17:22,144 --> 00:17:25,438 from 30 years ago as we move forward. 230 00:17:25,438 --> 00:17:29,517 We're going to have to restructure so much of our world, 231 00:17:29,517 --> 00:17:32,369 why not do it accessibly this time? 232 00:17:33,567 --> 00:17:37,567 And I think the ADA can still give us guidance even though it's 30 years old, 233 00:17:37,567 --> 00:17:41,460 I think it can, it was built to lead us into the future just like a lot of our 234 00:17:41,460 --> 00:17:47,390 founding documents were, and I think if we look at the spirit of everything that's 235 00:17:47,390 --> 00:17:51,300 been passed in the good way of giving people rights in this country 236 00:17:51,300 --> 00:17:58,674 and we follow them, we will fashion the future of a place that's hopefully very 237 00:17:58,674 --> 00:18:04,565 accessible and make sure that everybody has equal access to our world.