July 26th, 1990.

I was in Kindergarten in upstate New York and didn’t understand a thing coming out of the TV set when my parents watched the news. If it didn’t involve a cartoon rabbit trying to outsmart a hunter with a speech impediment, I wasn’t interested.

How little I understood what was taking place that day and how it would affect people around the country and in my own family. A bill, authored and sponsored by Senator Tom Harkin, the Americans With Disabilities Act was being signed into law.

“Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.”

President George H.W. Bush’s words and actions as signed the ADA that day, changed the lives of millions of Americans by doing so.

• Public entities at the local, county and state levels must be physically accessible to everyone. This applied to public transportation as well.
• An employer must give equal opportunity to people with disabilities who qualify for a position, even if additional accommodations are necessary.
• All new construction after July 1992 must be fully compliant with ADA guidelines to allow equal access to people with disabilities.
• Telecommunications companies were required to take steps to ensure consumers with disabilities had functionally equivalent services. This led to technology such as STS Relay and Video Relay Service.

There are members of my family who live with disabilities. I’m proud of the work that Tom Harkin did for many years to advance the cause of the disabled and ensure that their rights, as our state motto goes, are maintained.

Senator Harkin recorded a video about the upcoming twenty year anniversary of this historic legislation becoming law. Watch:

How has the ADA affected your life? Tell us in the comments.