Wednesday, August 11, 2010

20 Years of the ADA

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

“On a scale of one to 10…” By Joe Rosenbaum

At a CIDNY writing workshop we gather together to write in a supportive environment. When we are about to begin our writing the workshop leader, Avra, gives us a 'prompt' (a few key words to start our writing). We have 20 minutes to write. The 'prompt' for what follows was: “On a scale of one to 10..."

A table, a chair, alone

"Most importantly, the value of home health care lies chiefly in the social relationships between caregivers and recipients. Physical care sustains our biological existence as human beings, but caring
relationships maintain our humanity." Deborah Stone, "Reframing Home Health-Care Policy"

How to value what we, you, and I cannot see? If it happens that way to you, can the same thing happen to me? If it happens to me could it happen to you?

It was a warm summer day yet the hospital room seemed so cold. So big, too big for one person. A concrete floor. A bright light. Sunlight streaming through one relatively small window.

A table, a chair, alone.

As I walked into the room I saw Dorothy as she looked out over the
edge of the bed at the floor.
"Help me."
"Help me."
"Please, help me."

It was only me, unseen, but I had heard her voice, her plea, her cry.

"I'm here," I said. "It's Joey."

I didn't say, but I meant: "You don't have to feel helpless now."

"I want to get off the bed," she said.

The tubes going in and the tubes going out. Where was the helper to help her, to help her to cope, to help her to get off the bed?


Was it necessary? Could it be done? Was it worth helping an old lady after surgery?

What does it cost to help an old lady? How much hope is lost in the world by not helping her?

If you cast hopelessness in to the world how much will the ripple effect change the life of those it reaches? How much hopelessness creates despair?

Dorothy leaned out over the edge of the bed:

Where am I now?

How can I get my life back?

Who will help me?

Who knows who I am?

What can we do?

What was she given? Without the reflection of another person, would there be life after an accident? Will only half of life be given back now, given up to all those given something?

On a scale of one to 10, the first parts, the one to five, was done, was begun, but on this scale: 6 to ten gives back our humanity.

On a scale of one to ten, if she was given five, not to lose the five, she needed six to 10. For, as Dorothy said at her birthday party, "The kindest gift you can give to an old person is to let them know you remember them."

But to give that, to restore our humanity, to heal, was to fulfill the meaning of our lives...To be only onesid(e(ed)) was to now be half-hearted for an old person wanting to be whole again, a person.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Ode to the ADA

Once upon a time,
There was a very popular restaurant that attracted many.
Families flocked there to sample specials.
Couples reserved tables to enjoy drinks and appetizers for two.
Business people gathered, as well, to celebrate promotions
and for all sorts of ballyhoo.

But for those who used wheelchairs, a cane or a crutch,
Enjoying the atmosphere and savoring the cuisine
Presented an unwelcome test --
In the form of a dreaded mountain of steps.

Oh, in the early days, some were willing to accept a “lift”
No matter the safety risk,
Or the dent to their dignity.
That was a price some would pay,
All for the chance to join in the festivities.

But then came the ADA --
The most powerful legislation in our history –
Specifically crafted to protect the civil rights of people with disabilities.

Although neither a quick nor easy task,
To the dilemma of this inaccessible place
We applied the tenets of the ADA.
Indeed, according to the law,
Under what we’ve come to know as Title III,
Equal access to goods and services cannot be denied.
Everyone has a right to participate –
Yes, that’s right – Even people with disabilities.

And so it is to this very day.
The steps have vanished in favor of a beautiful ramp.
People looking for a bite to eat or thirsty for a drink
Continue to rush in.
And among them are all kinds,
Including those with disabilities.

Thanks to ADA, the landscape has begun to change.
Of course, there are many mountains left to climb,
But armed with the certainty of our equal rights,
We shall prevail –
One barrier at a time.

Friday, July 9, 2010

NYC Transit

Friday, July 2, 2010

In Celebration of the ADA

This blog is written in celebration of the ADA. I celebrate the ADA because it is a powerful document that has the potential to bring about big changes in the work force. I believe that my experiences are proof that the ADA can work and that eventually it will prove to be a very powerful weapon in the fight against employment disability discrimination. I further believe that the ADA has the potential of becoming a law that is in everybody’s interest.

My battle began in 1998 when I sued the New York City public schools in federal court for disability discrimination in employment. I had been hit by the polio virus in 1954 when I was an infant. Prior to the ADA, I had tried unsuccessfully to become regularly employed. But when my employers saw that I fell, they quickly let me go. Then the ADA was passed into law on July 26, 1990, and my life changed. On August 1, 1990, I moved across the country to Rochester, New York, and was hired to work as a day-to-day substitute teacher in the Rochester city public schools. The person who handled my job application stated that the law required her to hire me because I was qualified. My work experience led the state to assist me in getting teacher certified, and that is how I came to work for the New York City public schools as a high school teacher.

Imagine that you are in my situation. You have accumulated a student loan debt of over $24,000 in order to get teacher certified. You participate in an oral selection process that measures your professional knowledge to be a public school teacher in a large urban school district. Because of your score, you are provided a city license for a tenure-track position and placed on a list of qualified applicants who are randomly selected for job offers. After you are hired, you are required to complete a written medical examination. You are asked about past hospitalizations, medical, surgical, and trauma history. You had undergone several major surgeries as a child in order to make it easier for you to ambulate. You are not aware that your employer may be discriminating under the ADA by asking for such information. In fact, you could have brought a disparate impact discrimination class-action suit against your employer based on testimony provided you later in federal court. You fill out your portion of the form honestly, your doctor fills out his portion of the form, and you deliver it to the employer’s medical department.

Your supervisor provides you with a reasonable accommodation of one classroom and asks you to request permission for its continued use. You don’t know that this is unnecessary according to the employer’s own procedures. You file a written accommodation request personally with the employer’s medical department and provide documentary evidence of your history of a disability in order that the request will not be denied. What you don’t know is that your employer has a non-transparent and unwritten policy to terminate city licensees for medical reasons. So, without your knowledge, your status has been demoted and you are now a regular substitute teacher working in the same school at the same job. This provides you with less job protections. Had you known that this had occurred, you could have filed a disparate treatment class-action suit against your employer for violating the ADA’s provisions regarding medical examinations and inquiries. Your supervisor gives you a satisfactory evaluation for the semester, but you have lost seniority and are transferred to another school. You are told that the reason for your transfer is “budget considerations.”

At the new school, you are terminated at the conclusion of the school year for poor classroom management and ineffective instruction. You believe that your supervisors actually terminated you because you complained to your union and to the medical department about their disparate treatment of you and their failure to provide you with a reasonable accommodation. You file a discrimination charge with a federal agency. Several months later, you learn that your employer terminated your city license. You are under the mistaken impression that your license was illegally terminated after you filed a charge of disability discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The employer denies terminating your license in court, but its own administrative agents attest in documents that the license was terminated. The employer argues that the administrators are mistaken.

This is what happened to me. Because I could not find an attorney, I have been representing myself in the federal court in Brooklyn for nearly thirteen years. The judges were antagonistic, and at one point my trial judge accused me of wanting privileges because of my disability. Then in 2005 administrators (who were responsible for the adverse decisions regarding the termination of my license) made incriminating statements. After winning an appeal in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, I have asked the district court to certify my claims as a class-action suit whose members are potentially all teachers who must undergo a medical examination by my employer.

No doubt the employer will state that at least one of my claims (medical inquiry into past hospitalizations) was not filed within 300 days of the time that I learned of the practice and therefore is untimely. However, on May 24, 2010, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Lewis v. City of Chicago (case involving African-American firefighters) that in disparate impact discrimination claims the use of the discriminatory practice is relevant. The City of Chicago had argued that the relevant time period was when the plaintiffs first learned of the discriminatory practice.

Maryam (Maya) Ayazi
Elmhurst, New York

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

A Star is Born

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

A Ways to Go

A co-worker and I had decided to go out after work for drinks. She had picked out a restaurant close to the job. Some of my co-workers had been to this restaurant in the past. When we got there we told them that I had a guide dog. We were told that there were no dogs allowed in the restaurant. I tried to explain to the person that this is a guide dog and not a pet and that I was blind (Just in case that was not obvious!). We were still told no.

We started to walk out and I decided to ask for a manager. They were taking too long it was pouring outside and we were already pretty wet. We decided to leave because truly after being refused, I would not have felt comfortable eating there anyway.

My co-worker and I decided to go to another place where my dog would not be an issue and the environment was much friendlier.

I did contact the NYC Commission on Human Rights. They assured me that they would be jumping right on the case. They had had issues with service dogs not being allowed in restaurants in the past but not a guide dog.

Unfortunately in this day and time there is still some ignorance to the law as well as some prejudices when it come to guide/service dogs being allowed in public places. We still have a ways to go.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Giving City Gym An Accessible Workout

I use to work out at a City Gym on the east side. I was training for the Paralympic World games. Even though I was working out with a trainer, there were times when I had to work out on my own. I tried to go in the gym with my guide dog whose name was Kira. I was told that I could not take the dog in the workout rooms with me and that she would have to be tied to the bench outside the door .

A few years ago, I started to use the City Gym on the west side. This gym did not mind the dog in the gym. And even though that City Gym was accessible for wheelchair users, it was not for blind and visually impaired people. Their equipment was not marked. So I could not use the equipment independently.

After asking if I could mark the equipment. I was told to contact the Parks Accessibility Coordinator for the NYC Parks Dept. I got the ok from him and begin marking the equipment for use. But what I was able to do was a temporary fix for a long term issue. They did not want to have permanent glue left on the equipment so I had to use Dymo tape. But because of the surface on the equipment it would not stick for long. I could only mark one piece of equipment of each set which would cause another problem if someone else was using that particular equipment that day. So to say the least our Parks department has a way to go with making our city gyms accessible.

I was able to get them to put up the Braille signage in the correct place, which was a plus.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Marilyn Saviola, Independent Woman | StoryCorps Facilitator Weblog

Marilyn Saviola, Independent Woman | StoryCorps Facilitator Weblog


Recently, Marilyn Saviola came to the StoryBooth in Foley Square to share her story of courage with long time friend and co-worker, Jean Minkel.

During the summer of 1955, one of the last years of the Polio epidemic, Marilyn Saviola was 10 years old and on vacation with her family in Connecticut. She was playing with cousins, fell down, banged her head and the next morning she woke up with a headache and a stiff neck. Upon her return home to the Bronx she was examined by a doctor who told her parents that she needed to go to the hospital because he suspected Marilyn had “P-o-l-i-o”. Even at 10, she understood what that meant.

While her parents were looking for a cure, Marilyn focused on what to do with the rest of her life. One of the most difficult decisions she’d have to make was to live at Goldwater Memorial Hospital instead of living with her family. At Goldwater she could live with other disabled youth, go to school and begin to forge her independence. Once there, Marilyn met another resident, Bruce, and together they dreamed of going to college. “I wanted to get out. I wanted to do something. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life at Goldwater.” While Bruce received funding and was admitted to Long Island University, Marilyn faced resistance from state funders. They declined her application, telling her that she was “too disabled” and “never going to be employed” and that “it was a waste of money.” So Marilyn sent a letter to then-Senator Jacob Javits to plea her case and was eventually granted one year of funding on a trial basis. Saviola turned that trial year of undergrad into a graduate degree in Rehabilitation Counseling from New York University.

Despite her progress, obstacles remained. Although she had become more mobile with the use of a motorized wheel chair, wheel chair access was non-existent on the campus at the time. She did her interview in a van. “We had to threaten to sue,” she remembers. The Americans with Disabilities Act was not yet established and Saviola had to fight for every inch of her independence. The school made a temporary ramp that had to be assembled and disassembled every time she used it and she had to employ the help of classmates to get in and out of class. Accessibility wasn’t ideal, but it was enough to get her through grad school. Marilyn’s impact would reverberate for years to come–after her graduation, a permanent wheelchair ramp was built.

Saviola returned to work at Goldwater as a rehabilitation counselor f0r 11 years. She eventually got her own apartment, and in 1983 became the Executive Director for The Center for the Independence of the Disabled which provides advocacy and services to empower people with disabilities. Marilyn’s work and activism has helped provide services and accesibility throughout New York City. She’s a true hero.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

No Signs, No Access

I am visually impaired. When I attended Hunter College in the graduate program I experienced difficulty finding the class room because there was no Braille on the doors. I attended the evening program so it was really hard to find someone who could be asked to locate my class room. With this difficulty, I contacted my rehabilitation counseling program coordinator. He advised me to contact the Director of Access Center for Students with Disabilities and the Committee of Section 504 at Hunter College as well.

I contacted the Director of Access Center for Students with Disabilities. During the meeting, I said that there was no Braille on the doors and it was really hard for me to find the class room especially in a large campus like Hunter College. She replied that a small number of blind students were studying at Hunter College, so it didn’t make sense to spend a large amount of money to put Braille on the doors. During the meeting, I tried to describe the difficulty for a blind or visually disabled person. I also mentioned that I had gotten a graduate degree at Brooklyn College. Brooklyn College campus is very accessible for people who are blind and visually disabled along with other disabled groups. There are Braille and large print signs on the every single door at Brooklyn College. I also drew her attention to the fact that Brooklyn College and Hunter College both are under CUNY system and Hunter should be accessible for all people with disabilities. She said, “I will talk to the authorities when I get a chance, but I don’t think it will happen.” She also mentioned that she would put Braille signs on the Access Center door. I checked a few days later I saw that she had done that.

Since I immigrated to the United States, I have a good knowledge and experience with the CUNY system. I attended an English as a Second Language (ESL) Program at Queens College in Flushing and Baruch College in Manhattan. Not only this, I have two graduate degrees from Brooklyn College and Hunter College. I was so confused to hear the director’s response. However, I shared this issue with my friends and I had been advised it would be better not to pursue it while I was a student at Hunter College. I used to use Hunter College’s Access Center for Students with Disabilities during my study period and I believe Hunter College Access Center is a wonderful place for students with disabilities. I graduated in the Rehabilitation Counseling Program and throughout the course I studied the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) and National Rehabilitation Act, along with other relevant courses. Hunter’s lack of accessible signage is clearly a violation of Section 504 and the ADA, which prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Thursday, April 29, 2010