i am sure this very thing has been lamented before, but it seems to be getting worse. Apathy is a problem, but the real problem is the esteem of the general populace. We are a country of "nobodies" run by a bunch of idiots. To put this in context, here is where i am coming from.
i was reading to roomie a story on Facebook about how "The House Judiciary Committee is currently considering imposing significant limitations to the ADA through the passage of the ADA Education and Reform Act of 2017." It was basically saying that instead of people with disabilities being able to quickly resolve an issue with a business by taking it to the DOJ or quickly thru municipal courts, the disabled person would have to submit a concern in writing to the business, to which they would have 60 days to acknowledge, and another 120 days to show good progress towards fixing the problem. https://rewire.news/article/2017/05/30/ ... -congress/
The writer says, "Adding a notification requirement won’t make serial lawsuits go away. Instead, it simply sends the message to business owners that they don’t have to worry about complying with the ADA until they receive a letter notifying them that they are discriminating against people with disabilities. In other words, instead of complying, they can just “wait and see” if they are caught.
The imposition of a months-long “waiting period,” during which a business may continue to violate the law and deny access to people with disabilities once it has received a notice that it is violating the ADA, is simply not reasonable.
In short, the premise of bills like the ADA Education and Reform Act is that businesses should not be responsible for knowing their obligations to comply with a law that has been in effect for nearly three decades, but people with disabilities should instead be responsible not only for knowing the accessibility requirements of that law, but also for determining when a business is not in compliance and for knowing the specific requirements of the notice that they must provide."
When i shared, or tried to share, this with roomie, she stops me a quarter of the way thru, tells me she gets the gist and doesn't really care. She says she doesn't think something like this will pass and even if it does, "what is she supposed to do?" Granted, she is physically disabled, but i think this is common across the populace - there's nothing we can do, we are no one of any consequence and i just have to keep my head down. Sad thing is, some people stick their head up and get it lopped off.
01 Jun 2017, 6:06 pm
