ADA Enforcement Please!

When I started blogging I swore I would not be the typical crip blog  or web page:i.e. “Fountain head of all knowledge of ADA information, disability rights or disability legislation and political correctness.  There is really too much of this going and  it all  staggers my mind. Why can’t I just be me? Mark the middle aged crip just getting by. Some times my disability enters into the blog because I AM  disabled  and I have to speak to disability.  So, having said that I am going to rattle on about ADA  for a while so  tune in or tune out.

I just got off the phone with Mary Ann  S.L.County’s American’s With Disabilities Act specialist. She is the person County employees can go to if they feel they have been discriminated against due to disability.  I suppose MaryAnn is also the person county residents might go to if they feel they have been discriminated by a county employee or office.  She had called to ask if I had heard  of “Salt Lake ADA office”.  There is ,of course, no Salt Lake ADA Office or Utah ADA office.  Oddly enough, about a month ago I began getting phone calls from people say they had been talking with someone at the Salt Lake ADA office and the caller wanted to know this or the caller wanted to know that.  I of course answer the callers questions or direct the caller to the person or office who can.   But, to my knowledge there is no such office. Possibly the caller may have tripped upon the office of Antidiscrimination over at Labor and mentally pushed this office into the STATE ADA office.  

I wish there was a Statewide office of disability discrimination.  I wish this state or any other state cared enough to have such an office.  So people know there is something called the American with Disabilities Act.  These people think there must be some sort of ADA enforcement tool like ADA cops or at least an Office of ADA Enforcement.  Truth of the matter is there is none of the above.  If a person really wants to push an ADA claim I can guarantee the prosecution of the claim will depend wholly on the person with a disability who was discriminated against.  There are no ADA inspectors, cops or even Amicus.  The closest  enforcement tools which exist  are volunteers who go round writing out “Courtesy Tickets” for people violating designated parking areas.  True more and more states and cities are passing legislation to increase the fines for abusing designated parking slots but you still have to encourage law enforcement to “push” the legislation.   Same way with building inspectors.  I still see new restaurants (trendy  cool places)not cookie cutters places who do adhere to the ADA  but the trendy places are not accessible.  Who are the inspectors letting these guys get by and why?

Whoa, I did not start this to be  a rant!  It just sort of got away from me.  People call here thinking that we are the ADA cops or we can lead them to the ADA inquisition  I cannot do it because there is no such thing.  The caller is always aghast  and cannot believe this is the way things are.  But they are.  Things might change someday but it will be when the person  in charge is also a person who has a disability or loves someone with a disability.  Other then than that it just ain’t going to happen.