“That freedom to think big is what most marks the ADA generation.”

A thread with a few thoughts on the 30th anniversary of the ADA, the equivalent of the Civil Rights Act for me. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/style/americans-with-disabilities-act.html?referringSource=articleShare

On its 30th anniversary of the ADA, I am feeling grateful for the barriers it removed for me before I ever encountered them.

Case-in-point: closed captioning. I’ll never forget how excited my father was when he came home with this strange box.

We turned it on, and words miraculously appeared on the screen. Cartoons suddenly made sense to me. I became a voracious “reader” of TV. And it was why I was the 2nd grade spelling bee champion.

But that caption box cost money. I had the privilege of having a father who worked in A/V industry. I was probably one of the first kids in the country to get one! He also had the income to buy one. It couldn’t have been cheap. How many homes did not know or could not afford one?

1990 - 30 yrs ago - was a landmark yr for disability rights. Pres Bush signed the ADA (below), but he also signed the lesser known Television Decoder Circuitry Act that yr. TVs now had to have a built-in decoder, thus eliminating need for a caption box! https://www.nad.org/resources/technology/television-and-closed-captioning/

Fast forward to college. When I arrived at @UCBerkeley, I found myself in large lecture halls. Fortunately, I never had to fight for access because of Ed Roberts and many others who created a culture of inclusion that resulted in the founding of the DSP.
https://dsp.berkeley.edu/about/dsp-history

Students could request note-takers & Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART). But not every school had such services before 1990. The ADA opened the door for requesting “reasonable accommodations” such as CART in schools and workplaces across US.
https://www.nad.org/resources/technology/captioning-for-access/communication-access-realtime-translation/

Of course, the work continues. Just a few examples related to closed captions, or more commonly known as subtitles now:

TV channels must add CC: https://www.nad.org/resources/technology/television-and-closed-captioning/closed-captioning-requirements/

Broadcast video must be CC online too: https://www.nad.org/resources/technology/television-and-closed-captioning/online-closed-captioning/

And Netflix: https://www.nad.org/2012/10/09/netflix-and-the-national-association-of-the-deaf-reach-historic-agreement-to-provide-100-closed-captions-in-on-demand-streaming-content-within-two-years-home/

Netflix in particular has played a pivotal role in reminding us of a key idea as it relates to disability rights: inclusion is good for everyone!

Case-in-point: how many hearing people watch Netflix with subtitles on?