Jill Flagel and Kathy Hoell remember what life was like before the Americans with Disabilities Act passed 35 years ago. For them, the ADA isn’t abstract, it’s personal.
Flagel, of Lincoln, experienced a spinal cord injury in 1979 while she was attending McCool Junction High School. The accident left her paralyzed from the mid-chest down. She uses a power wheelchair to get around.
Flagel’s small-town high school “made do” by having football players lift Flagel to her second story classes in a chair with leather straps. After the fire marshal raised objections, school officials arranged for Flagel to attend all her classes on the first floor.
During the 1980s, Hoell, of Papillion, was a young Air Force wife and mother stationed with her family in Spain. She had a stroke that left her paralyzed from the waist down, although she later regained use of her upper right side. Hoell also uses a power wheelchair.
For both women, life as they knew it came to a screeching halt.
“I couldn’t go anywhere, and there was no place I could get into,” Hoell recalled. “I was angry about being a ‘a second-class citizen.’”
Life improved slightly for Hoell once the family transferred to New Hampshire. By then, son Graham was 4 or 5, and she could get into some grocery stores. The job market, however, was inhospitable for a person with disabilities. For example, the state’s nursing board determined Hoell could not join the state’s paid workforce, even though she was a licensed Registered Nurse.
Hoell regrouped and decided to return to college. The University of New Hampshire-Portsmouth had only one accessible classroom, so Hoell attended all her classes in that classroom. The campus lacked accessible parking spaces, so Hoell parked her vehicle in front of the academic building. Hoell took mostly classes that interested her and ended up with a bachelor’s degree in behavioral analysis. When she applied for jobs, she found “what people think is accessible and what really is accessible is different.” For example, one interviewer told her his workplace was accessible. When Hoell arrived on site for the interview, however, she couldn’t maneuver her chair past a large step. When she relayed her experience to the interviewer, he remarked, “but it’s only a single step!”
One month before the ADA became law on July 26, 1990, the Air Force ordered Hoell’s husband, Perry, to Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue. Hoell volunteered for the League of Human Dignity and earned a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Nebraska-Omaha. She got involved in the Statewide Independent Living Council and worked there for 25 years, including 20 years as its executive director.
Meanwhile, Flagel graduated from high school and began attending the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Initially, she considered becoming a lawyer or educator, but instead majored in Human Development and Family, Family Rehabilitation/Independent Living after observing its model programs. In Lincoln, Flagel occasionally had to navigate through an alley to reach her classes.
Even after the ADA became law, challenges for people with disabilities did not end. Hoell tried to attend an event at Omaha’s arena, then called the Qwest Center, and discovered it lacked accessible parking. Disability Rights Nebraska worked with government entities for about three years to mediate an agreement that provided accessible parking at the popular venue. Without the ADA becoming law, that result would not have been possible, Hoell noted.
Thirty-five years later, both women say that although the ADA has brought progress, problems remain. Hoell has had her power wheelchair dropped by baggage handlers at airports, leaving her stranded during trips and frustrated by hours of bureaucratic follow-up.
Mostly, they agree, it’s the attitudes toward people with disabilities that still need to change.
“Attitudes have improved, but they’re still not really good,” Hoell said.
Flagel believes “the best way (to change attitudes) is to be a good example.” Flagel grew up watching her father, who is 80 percent deaf, as an example of a person with a disability who found ways to adapt his disability while working as a printer and later a carpenter.
In Flagel’s work as Director of Faculty and Staff Disability Services at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, she helps faculty and staff members with disabilities find solutions and establish accommodations to help them perform their jobs. One day, she may help a scientist who uses a mass spectrometer, and another day advise a ranch hand who helps deliver calves. Reasonable accommodations in the workplace can be as simple as allowing a custodian with diabetes to carry a beverage on a work cart or allowing an office worker to use a sit/stand desk, Flagel said. “Accommodations don’t have to cost a lot of money, and many do not,” she said. Furthermore, she estimates that 70 to 75 percent of the reasonable accommodations her office develops are for disabilities that aren’t apparent, such as mental health conditions.
People without disabilities have benefited from the ADA, even if they don’t realize it, Flagel said. If you have ever used an automatic door with your hands full of groceries or rolled a baby stroller through a curb cut, you are benefitting from this law.
“Any of us can become disabled,” Flagel said. “It may not be you today, but it could be you someday.”
Treating all people with respect and being open to seeing that other people might have to do things differently goes a long way, Flagel said.
Molly Klocksin, Advocacy Specialist, has worked for Disability Rights Nebraska for 24 years. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and a master’s degree in counseling from Doane University.
