God Love A Curb Ramp

There’s a Reason We Pass These Laws

John Cole, Balloon Juice - February 7, 2014

This is a nice and unexpected appreciation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, from a non-disabled blogger who recently hurt his knee, and discovered the uses of curb ramps.

I’m a regular Balloon Juice reader, and it is a very liberal / progressive blog, so I’m not all that surprised that Cole would be in favor of the ADA, in the abstract. But isn’t our main political difficulty getting people to focus on our issues, even before we get to whether they support our preferred policies? Sadly, there are plenty of progressives who happen to also be clueless about disability issues. Reading between the lines, I get the sense  that Cole still doesn’t know much. For one thing, he seems to think the ADA has fixed everything for people with disabilities.  But, I appreciate that he took his short-term experience and drew the right political and policy conclusions from it. That’s pretty good.

Note also that he also correctly identifies the typical enemies of accessibility and nondiscrimination laws ... cocktail party libertarians and stingy business people.