Celebrating Disability Pride Month and 34th Anniversary of the Passage of the ADA | By Kevin Phipps

July 30, 2024

“You’ve come a long way, baby!” This phrase actually originated with the Philip Morris agency in its early advertising for Virginia Slims cigarettes back in the late 1960’s, but it can still rather aptly be applied to the disability rights movement.

July is Disability Pride Month and coincides with the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on July 26, 1990, by President George H.W. Bush. Disability Pride Month was first celebrated in 2015 as a response to the 25th anniversary of the passage of the ADA; but the first Disability Pride Parades took place in 1990.

What does Disability Pride mean? Perhaps there are as many personal answers and interpretations of the phrase as there are people who identify as having a disability. Elizabeth Campbell, 24 years old, answered the question as follows: “In one word: Confidence. Being confident in who you are and understanding that whatever body, brain, or barriers you live and hopefully thrive with, in the end, it’s part of your own story of being you.” 

The Disability Pride Movement takes the Disability Rights Movement one step further. Not only should every person who has a disability have equal rights and access to the entirety of the community, but they should be able to proudly include, acknowledge, and even celebrate their disability/ies as part of their personal identity.

The Chicago Disability Pride Parade, which first took place in 2004, defines its mission in three ways:

  1. To change ‘the way people think about and define “disability.”
  2. To break down and end the ‘internalized shame among people with disabilities
  3. To promote the belief in society that disability is a ‘natural and beautiful part of human diversity’.

Sounds a lot like Hope Services’ own two-fold Long-Term Vision statement:

  1. We will lead with initiatives that help develop society’s acceptance of people with disabilities.
  2. We will promote a common understanding that the world is a better place when people with disabilities are fully integrated and accepted in all aspects of our culture and community

Disability Pride is all about changing the mind of “society at large,” i.e., both the minds of those among us with disabilities (1 out of 4 Americans, according to Patrick Cokley, Senior Program Officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation), and the minds of those of us who have no disability, or at least not one that has been diagnosed or identified.

Society must begin to see that disability is not as something that a person has that means that there is anything “wrong” with them, or that they are “less than” anyone else, but simply as just one part of a person’s identity that makes up the totality of who they are, and that is part of their day-to-day life journey.

The signing of the ADA on July 26, 1990, was a landmark event in the history of disability in America. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal civil rights law that:

  1. Provides civil rights protection to individuals with physical and mental disabilities.
  2. Guarantees equal opportunity in public accommodations, employment, transportation, state and local government services, and telecommunications.
  3. Prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in everyday activities.
  4. Applies to jobs, schools, transportation, and many public and private places that are open to the public.
  5. Requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations that break down barriers for employees with disabilities.

The ADA was years in the making, and many people worked together to turn the dream of increased rights and access for people with disabilities (PwD) into a reality. In 1986, the National Council on the Handicapped (later re-named the National Council on Disability, or NCD), an independent federal agency, presented to the President and Congress its report, “Toward Independence: An Assessment of Federal Laws and Programs Affecting Persons With Disabilities – With Legislative Recommendations,” one of which was for Congress to enact a “comprehensive equal opportunity law”.

Over the next four years, more lobbying by the NCD, including another report, “On the Threshold of Independence” (1988). Congressional action took place that led to the passing of the ADA by the U.S. Senate (1989) and the U.S. House of Representatives (1990), prior to its signing by President George H.W. Bush.

Since this landmark piece of federal legislation was enacted, several updated regulations have been put into law expanding the rights of PwD even further. In July, we celebrate how far PwD have come since the passage of the ADA, and how far society has come in its acceptance and celebration of PwD.

There is yet more work to do, but significant forward movement has taken place, and the groundwork has been laid for all people, regardless of disability or the absence thereof, to continue to build a more fully inclusive society together – and that’s really something to celebrate!

 

Thank you to Hope Services’ dedicated Grant Writer, Kevin Phipps, for sharing these important insights with our community.

 

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