Sticks and Stones, and Braille Phones, and Words that Never Hurt Me
Thirty years ago this month, President George H. W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into law. It's just so hard to think that it's been three decades since the enactment of what has come to be known as the Emancipation Proclamation for all people with disabilities. I didn't get to attend what was apparently an extremely hot outdoor signing ceremony at the White House on July 26. I was busy doing some sort of grunt work for the Summer internship I had prior to beginning law school in DC that Fall; I was twenty years old; AER was only six.
After graduating from GW Law in December, it was a really tough time for me trying to find work. I think it was during those depressing days when I truly felt "disabled" for the first time in my life. I'll never forget the fancy K Street law firm hiring attorney who, after interviewing me for nearly an hour and making very pleasant conversation, said to me, "Well, young man, you've got a very impressive profile, and I'm sure your parents must be very proud of you, but I'll be honest with you; I'm just not sure how in the world you could work for us because we don't have any braille phones." I couldn't believe what I was hearing, and I tried to make some joke about how my father could have provided copies of the long distance phone bills I used to rack up calling out-of-town love interests, but the guy didn't laugh. Mind you, this kind of open and ignorant discrimination was perpetrated by a brilliant lawyer at a prominent firm just three years after the ADA became the law of the land. How shamefully ridiculous.
No, I didn't sue the law firm or grandstand or throw a tantrum or go on the disability minstrelsy circuit playing piano and telling jokes about how I overcame such blatant prejudice to become the successful person with exceptionalities you see before you. No, I just kept going to frustrating and hurtful interviews and kept getting told no until one day when someone said yes. And that "yes," thanks be to God, opened up a whole world of work in the public policy and national leadership arenas; that "yes" was how I ultimately got to know you. That "yes" allowed me to attend a White House signing ceremony on October 8, 2010 where President Obama wrote his name on a bill that included a lot of my wordy writing, a bill that continues to this day to spur on a revolution in mainstream technology accessibility, including the accessibility of phones and other gizmos that none of us seem to be able to live without. Sometimes I think back on that lawyer who turned me down because their office didn't have any "braille phones" and wonder whether he would've reconsidered had he known he was interviewing the future author of federal legislation that would transform the telecommunications industry.
I guess my bottom line points are these. I am so grateful for having been told "no" as many times as I was. Every "no" was a slammed door to a destiny that was neither meant for me nor deserving of me. Each "no" prodded me forward, whether I wanted to or not, toward opportunities I never thought I'd have. So I suppose lesson one is that we should never allow the word "no" to hurt us. Just like speed bumps, the "no-"ness we have to roll over just jostles us as life's autonomous vehicle speeds along toward our final destination.
But the other bottom line isn't quite as inspiring, though it needs to be frankly named. More often than not, the "no" you hear will come from the very source that should know better, and very likely does — the renown civil rights law firm who wantonly discriminates in hiring; the sighted disability advocate who would never dream of having someone blind as a colleague, friend, lover, or especially a boss. That managing partner from long ago was right; my family was very proud of me. Yet I think we all know that sometimes even the proudest parents of disabled kiddos can be among the most profligate perpetrators of discriminatory practices. Why does this happen? Why do the very ones we count on to do the right thing so often fail us? Quite simply because, like you and me, they are flawed human beings who have fears and self-centric points of fundamental reference. It seems to me that the best thing we can do is accept this as a fact of life about others, recognize the tendency in ourselves, and get on with the business of trying to rise above our limitations as we challenge each other to grow and excel.
Anyway, as you can see, I've been thinking about the ADA lately, and about AER, and everything else, and how far we've come, and how so much farther we have yet to go. Was it really only within my father's lifetime when people like me would've been involuntarily sterilized? Was it really just a couple years before my mother was born when a child, Gerhard Kratschmar, was born blind, just like me, but euthanized at the request of his parents because of his disabilities? Nobody chants Gerhard's name today, and yet the euthanasia program that the Nazis launched with his murder inaugurated the pilot testing for the industrial mass killing of the holocaust. Kind of puts things in perspective, doesn't it?
We've come so far and have such a long way to go, but in so many ways, we're so spoiled. We indulge our feelings of self-pity and manufacture cases and controversies where none exist when there's plenty of actual work to be done and plenty of people with truly impaired character to feel sorry for and rise above. You and I are so blessed to have the opportunities put before us. Let's renew our resolve to make the most of them, to welcome "no" as we would a vaccine against complacency, and say "yes" to a future that has our fingerprints all over it.
Mark Richert, Interim Executive Director, AER
More on Mark Richert. At the time, Mark Richert was the Director of Public Policy for the American Foundation for the Blind. In both 2002 and 2005, the American Foundation for the Blind filed for exemptions to the DMCA, so that blind and visually impaired users could use eBooks in conjunction with accessibility software.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPJpAGxN66U