Americans with disabilities, once treated as the &qunot;unknown minorities" of society, are steadily advancing on the road to equal opportunity and equal access through the use and enforcement of the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) also referred to as the DDA (Disability Discrimination Act). Historically, since 1964, statutes and regulations have been in place to prevent and make illegal racial, sexual, religious and national origin discrimination. Persons with disabilities were largely ignored and suffered shame, were hidden from society and "just not talked about:. In fact they suffered the indignity of being called "handicapped", a name associated with indignity and exclusion. Because of access barriers, the disabled suffered indignities of ot being able to enter into restaurants obtain a hotel room to accommodate them, inability to ride public transportation, lack of travel comforts and a host of other things that so called "normal" people took for granted.

Disability rights groups and people who supported them joined together and said in the proverbial words "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore". They mobilized, became a huge political force and voting block and got Washington's attention.

On July 26, 1990 President George Bush signed into law the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The long hard fight to gain equal rights for the disabled had produced tremendous results. The ADA is a powerful and far reaching law. It guarantees equal opportunity for individuals with disabilities in public and private sector services and employment. In general the ADA bands discrimination on the basis of a recognized disability. The act was modeled after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

FACTS ABOUT PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES IN AMERICA:

• There are approximately 54 million Americans -one in five people- with a disability
• The group is comprised of people of all ethnic backgrounds, cultures and ages and represents the largest minority subgroup-20 percent of all Americans-in the U.S.
• Of the nearly 70 million families in the U.S. more than 20 million families have at least one member with a disability.
• The market segment of Americans with disabilities maintains an aggregate income that now exceeds $1 trillion dollars of which more than $175 billion is discretionary spending.
• At least 700,000 people are newly disabled each year.
• 61 percent of people with disabilities are of working age, between 16 and 64 years old.

 In the beginning nobody really understood the power and significance of the Americans with Disabilities Act. President Bush said it best when he said just before signing the ADA into law...."Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down". Unfortunately the wall that excluded persons with disabilities in many areas of our society still has not come down. This is due primarily to attitudes of misunderstanding of the law and intolerance toward people with disabilities. The ADA is a federal law that covers the whole nation. It is not voluntary. Compliance with the law is mandatory and access barriers must be removed from places that are open to the public wherever removal of the access barriers is readily achievable. In more than ninety percent of the time access barrier removal is deemed readily achievable. Therefore, attitudes or not, the law must be complied with and those that don't comply are subject to severe penalties, attorneys fees and costs associated with failure to comply with the law.