Hi, I'm Beth Haller.

I'm a professor of Mass Communication
at Towsen University in Maryland.

I also teach Disability Studies there
and at several other campuses.

I teach at City University of New York
and their Disability Studies program;

I teach at York University in Toronto
and their Disability Studies program;

I teach at University of Texas, Arlington
and their Disability Studies minor.

So I've been doing research since
the early 90's

about media representations of people
with disabilities.

So I have a kind of unique
relationship to the ADA

because I did my dissertation on
how the news media covered it.

So before I went to Temple University
in Philadelphia to get my PhD,

I was at University of Maryland College
Park getting my Masters and

I started that in 1989,

and there's a reason for all these numbers
(laughs) these dates,

and in 1988 is when the Deaf President
Now movement happened

at Gallaudet University in DC, and I think
somewhere in the back of my mind

I knew about what was happening because I
was a journalist before I became academic.

So when I started at College Park in 1989
I ended up doing an article for a class

about a deaf student at Gallaudet and I
got very interested in the deaf community,

there's a huge deaf community
in the DC area.

Ended up doing my Masters thesis on
how the deaf community was represented

before, during and after 
Deaf President Now

in the New York Times and the
Washington Post, and it kind of

that was a jumping-off point.

When I left College Park it was 1991
and so the ADA had just been passed

and when I got to Temple to start 
working on my PhD

I knew that I wanted to still work in
the area of disability

and we just had this major disability
rights law passed.

I remember it more as a focus
of my research

cause I don't necessarily remember seeing
the actual coverage on the day it happened

in 1990, but I do remember looking at all
the coverage because that was the subject

of my dissertation.

So it was really interesting to look
at it as an academic

and to kind of watch it happen and
then not happen (laughs)

as it moved into the future.

So my dissertation looked at how the
mainstream news media,

you know, all the big news magazines
and the major newspapers back then.

So I finished my dissertation in '94,
graduated in '95

so it was very early days of the ADA and 
so it wasn't really being implemented yet

because they gave several years for
people to get into compliance

but as the years have passed it's been
very interesting to watch how things

weren't happening.

And I think what we all thought was
going to happen was:

Congress passes this major
disability rights law and

then people would follow it
because it's now federal law

not to discriminate based on disability

but that isn't what happened (laughs).

And from a media standpoint, that really
kind of hurt the ADA because-

and I've even had this conversation with
Disability Studies scholars and

disability rights activists-
because they I think thought

in that same way that it's now law
and everything will be fine,

and there was such a history of being
covered in the media so badly

that the activists thought they could get
this past and everything would be fine

and they didn't need the
media for anything.

So I come onto the scene, I start going
to Society for Disability Studies

meetings in the early 90's,
started presenting my research

and even the disability community in those
first early years right after the ADA

didn't understand why the
media was important.

Because I remember presenting
at a conference,

at a Disability Studies conference,
and people coming up to me and saying

"That's really nice that you do work on
media, but we have bigger things we

need to be dealing with: getting people
jobs, getting people proper education

getting people out of nursing homes."
My response to everybody was

"How do you think you're going to do that
if you're not getting out information

into public opinion, so if you're not
able to change public opinion

how can you get these
things accomplished?

And how do you get public opinion
changed? You get a proper narrative

going in the media." And now there's
actual Disability Studies research

and disability activists who've talked
about this in the early 2000's

about, they took the wrong tactic
after the ADA was passed

and decided that, it was passed
it would get enforced.

"Yay we can move on." But
Unfortunately the business kind of

narrative came into the mix and they
controlled the message that was in the

media and so from quite a number of
years after the ADA was passed,

it wasn't being enforced because there
was this narrative in the news media

that it was an unfunded mandate and
"Well, we never saw a person with a

disability in our store, why do 
we have to do all this stuff?"

Well of course, the reason they didn't see
a person with a dis- a wheelchair user

in their store is because it wasn't
accessible or nobody came to their

website because it was inaccessible
(laughs) but they didn't get that.

A lot of the journalists didn't know
people in the disability community

and the disability community was
very wary of the news media

because they'd done such a bad job, but
any news coverage in my opinion is better

than no news coverage usually (laughs).

And so the business community really took
over the narrative and had this really

negative perception of the ADA
that was funnelling into the media,

and then people just didn't know about it
cause it wasn't getting covered that much.

There was a national poll done, I believe
in, like, 1995, of Americans

about what they knew about the ADA
and other disability rights issues.

Only 18% of Americans in 1995 had even
heard of the American Disabilities Act

if I'm remembering the stats right. and

So to me that is the fault of not engaging
with media to do stories about that,

and I know it's very difficult.

Even today it's very difficult to get
the media to do a more complex, policy,

legal, government related
story about disability

and not one of those 
inspiration narrative stories,

but it's still worth fighting to try to
get those stories into the media.

And the other kind of like data point I 
would say, what I always tell my students

when we're talking about the ADA: the 
ADA enforcement depends on who's

in the White House.

So we had quite a number of
Republican Presidents

who did not care about the ADA being
enforced for, like, 8 years,

so that is why it really only got more
enforced once Barack Obama became

president. There's a lot of external
factors that meant that the ADA

was not going to be changing things
as radically as we would have hoped,

or what we were thinking back in 1990.

The ADA has had impact in more recent
years like I said since President Obama

came into office and it was
just getting enforced.

I use a lot of these examples in my class,
of news stories about the ADA

finally being implemented.

A couple that I use, one is about a
little city in Pennsylvania.

The headlines of a lot of ADA stories,
still, are kind of I say they have this

blaming tone. "Things are expensive
because of the ADA things are closing

because of the ADA." I always tell my 
students that narrative should be flipped.

The story really is, "Why didn't this town
in Pennsylvania comply with the ADA

for however many years, 20 years."
So that, to me is the real story.

This one headline was about this town, I
believe was Logansport, Pennsylvania,

the headline was, "They must pay $8
million" for some kind of ADA compliance

that they were finally going to do, I
think in, like, 2008 or something.

And I'm like, okay that $8 million
would have been a lot less

if they'd just been compliant back in 1992
when they were supposed to be compliant,

but they're still blaming the ADA.

But now I think people, the general
public now knows a lot more

and I actually chalk a lot
up to social media,

because now people are getting, not a 
mediated story through the news media

and some journalist or some newscaster.

They're actually on social media
with people with disabilities

and see what their life is like.

And I know in the last couple of years
when there was an assault on the ADA

and people in Congress were thinking about
and the President was thinking about

figuring out a way to knock it out.

I saw lots of allies on social media
because they were finally aware that there

was a disability rights law and they said
it should stay, it should not be repealed,

and so I think the media
have a lot of power,

and now that we have this very
personal media of social media,

people get to know actual people with
disabilities in their community

and they see the benefits of having
things in braille or having captioning

or having wheelchair ramps, or just
thinking about asking somebody before

you barrel ahead and create something
that may be inaccessible.

So I think the general public is a lot
more aware than they were in 1995

when only 18% of people had
even heard of the ADA.

And even if they haven't heard of the ADA,
they're in favour of disability rights,

and I think that one thing that came out
of that survey, even back in 1995,

is that, they might have never heard of
the ADA, but if you pose to Americans

the concept of disability rights
then they agree with that.

They don't think people should be
discriminated against just because they

need a ramp to get into a building or
need a sign language interpreter

to apply for a job.

So I think there's a better feeling among
the American public in terms of

understanding disability rights and making
sure that everybody has equal access.

And also I think people now understand
people with disabilities are them,

are their friends, are their family 
members, and so a lot of the hidden stuff

that was happening before the ADA where
people with disabilities were being

hidden in their families, where
nobody talked about it,

I even noticed that, when I started
teaching at Temple when I was a grad

student, that the younger generation,
because a lot of them had grown up

in inclusive education, there was no shame
they were proud to talk about their own

disability, their parent's disability,
their sibling's disability.

I still remember a student, we had a 
discussion, actually one of my journalism

classes, and one student, she was talking
about, her mother was fluent in sign

language cause both of her grandparents
were deaf, so her mother's first language

was sign language even
though she was hearing.

Another kid was like, "My brother
has Down's Syndrome"

and he said it with pride.

So I think the cultural change that the
ADA brought was really powerful too,

cause that is what gets you to the
place, if you're a business person,

"Oh okay, maybe I should be more open to
hiring somebody with Down's Syndrome

to work in my grocery store, or whatever."

So I think having that cultural change
where people are now including

the disability community as
part of the American citizenry,

then that is a very powerful thing, I
think that the ADA did.

Yeah. If the ADA stays around, I think
that's a really good part of our future

because it's a really good law.
It was written really well,

and it just needs to be
enforced at all times.

We learned about how it could be enforced
in those 8 years that President Obama

was in office, and I think we
can continue to learn that.

And the Justice Department and Department
of Ed. and all the other federal agencies

that enforce it, I think the
community knows how to reach them

and tell them to enforce things,

and people are even getting a little bit
better, even the business community

understands now that people with
disabilities are a major part of our

consumer culture, and now with the
pandemic and everybody working online,

people with disabilities have
been, can be the leaders.

They're the ones that have been doing the
workaround to try to make a living

when they've not been able to go
to an inaccessible building.

So I think the future is bright if we
will listen to disabled people about

what the world needs to basically embrace
everyone and accommodate everyone,

and it'll be a better future for everyone
because we talk about the hidden benefits

of access for everyone, so think about
all the people that use curb cuts

for their wheelie luggage and
all the UPS guys that use curb cuts

for rolling their hand carts. All the bars
that use closed caption cause they're loud

So everybody gets benefits from disability
related access and I think it can only get

better, if people learn to trust that the
disability community can lead us,

because they're the ones who are most
innovative and entrepreneurial

about making sure that they can move
forward in the most access-friendly ways.

I think there should be a lot more
listening to people with disabilities

in the future cause they've
already worked out the problems

that we're now dealing with in a pandemic.

I think they can help us build a
future that's better for everyone,

whether you have a disability or not.

What steps can we take right now?

I think if you're not a person with
a disability, being a good ally.

If you're a family member, being- 
helping to make sure that the person

in your family with a disability is
empowered to be independent,

and giving them all the support they need.

If you're a person with a disability,
making sure that the world

is accommodating to you.

And everybody needs to focus on making
the world completely accessible.

A lot of people live in houses that
cannot be made accessible,

and a lot of things are grandfathered
into the ADA because they were built long

before the ADA existed,
but there's other locations.

There's online, there's video chatting,
there's all kinds of workarounds

that I think we can all embrace, and we
got to quit whining about this stuff

because, I'm talking to you in the
middle of a pandemic (laughs).

But I hear so many people complaining
about things that I'm like, you know,

this is all good, we can all
still be connected, it's fine,

and things are going to change,
we need to learn to adapt.

People with disabilities can teach us how
to adapt, and they have a major disability

rights organisation called
Adapt as well (laughs).

So I think that's the key for all of us,
is to start learning to roll with it,

learning to adapt and make sure
that we're bringing everyone along

into this new world that we're going to
have to fashion post-pandemic,

and that it's accessible to
everyone, that we're all equal,

that we're making sure that supports
and what people need are in place,

and then we can be a better community.

It's kind of a weird time to be
talking about all this (laughs).

I mean, I know it's the ADA's 30th
anniversary, I'm very glad that it's here

and still exists, but I really feel like
we can use the model of the ADA

from 30 years ago as we move forward.

We're going to have to 
restructure so much of our world,

why not do it accessibly this time?

And I think the ADA can still give us
guidance even though it's 30 years old,

I think it can, it was built to lead us
into the future just like a lot of our

founding documents were, and I think if
we look at the spirit of everything that's

been passed in the good way of
giving people rights in this country

and we follow them, we will fashion the
future of a place that's hopefully very

accessible and make sure that everybody
has equal access to our world.