that was 27 years ago. it is one of the first federal civil rights laws focused on protecting persons with disabilities and against discrimination and public accommodations and services and telecommunications. i am especially proud to highlight the commission's role. the disabilities focus and legislation in a 1983 report accommodating the individual abilities. a former staff attorney with the commission was one of the primary authors of the report described his job as to survey the whole field, history, legislation, legal commentary, and court decisions on the status of people with a in american society and the law. the conclusion of the report was that society has tended to isolate and segregate people with disabilities and to despise -- and despite some progress, discrimination continues to be a serious and pervasive social problem. as i expect to hear in a few minutes, the council followed with a report that ultimately led to the americans with disabilities act in 1990. before we hear from our speakers, i want to take a point of personal privilege to note how grateful i am to those commissions, congress, and president bush for the gift that is the ada. my brother has cerebral palsy. he spent the first 19 years of his life before the passage of the ada. we lived with the discrimination that before 27 years had no federal recourse. as much as we know compliance with the law is its own daily challenge i share one story to , celebrate why we are as a nation so lucky. a handful of years ago, my brother who was a teacher entered a contract to take an overseas teaching position. he prepared his life for an overseas move for a few years until the final skype meeting days before he was to get on a plane for the new job, somebody from the recruitment company witnessed my brother's disability and quickly communicated to my brother that the company does not take disabilities of any kind and he did not have a job. in the u.s., we could've moved quickly to educate that company about the law and the students would have benefited from my brother austria's excellence as a teacher. the act applies here and not abroad. my brother moved on and those kids learned from somebody else. i'm deeply grateful to live in a country whose laws respect the value of all persons. thank you to all those present today who worked to make it a reality and work to make its promises real in the lives of americans. we are so grateful today to have with us two speakers who will bring their own history in the movement for disability rights. our first speaker is a career federal government lawyer with more than four decades of experience across administrations beginning with the nixon administration and continuously thereafter through 2011 when he left federal government. he served as the department of technicalhief expert during the writing of the ada. he was chief author of the department of justice in 1991, ada regulations and created the technical assistance program in the department in charge of enforcing it. overseeing the department of enforcement efforts. he was responsible for the first major revision of the regulations including the 2010 standards for accessible design. he is also the chief author of the first federal regulation of title iv in 1973. thank you. as a member of the u.s. delegation to the united nations, he assisted in that the development on the convention of the rights of persons with disabilities. he now provides training and guidance and continues to work on the international level assisting countries with their own laws. in 2010, he was honored with the presidential distinguished rank award for exceptional achievement in his career. he received a ba from trinity college and mpa from harvard. our second speaker, rebecca served as the executive director of the national council on disability which is an independent agency charged with advising the white house on issues of national disability policy. she joined the national council in 2013 after serving for 4 years in various government agencies including the department of education, health and human services, and also at the white house. currently, she is consulting with civil rights organizations. and she is working on her first book. rebecca has a long history of advocacy including working at the institute for educational leadership for five years building resources designed to , empower youth with disabilities and their adult allies. in she was inducted into the 2015, inaugural class of the disability mentoring hall of fame and was the recipient of the frank harkens memorial award. she has aba and politics from the university of california. before hearing from our distinguished speakers, i want to turn to the commissioner. >> thank you, madam chair. good morning. i had the pleasure with my special assistant of working with our great staff to organize this discussion. i would like to add my welcome to the very distinguished speakers and thank them as well as the chair for sharing their stories as we celebrate the 27th anniversary of the passage of the americans with disabilities act. as well as the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the u.s. commission on civil rights which is one of the reasons we started the series. i would like to thank mrs. coakley for sharing her expertise with me and my special assistant over the past two years as we worked to make sure our commission hearings included the voices of people with disabilities. when signing the act, president george h w bush said it would ensure people with disabilities are given the basic guarantees for which they have worked so long and so hard, independence, freedom of choice, control of their lives, the opportunity to blend fully into the rich mosaic of the american mainstream. the national council on disability which ms. coakley helped to lead played a pivotal role in formulating what would become the ada and continues to ensure americans with disabilities have powerful voice in washington. as the chair mentioned, we are very proud of our commission in the formation of the ada and our report accommodating the spectrum of individual abilities that helped to lay the groundwork. we have issued several reports examining and recommending solutions for the continuing challenges that americans with disabilities face. currently, our staff is preparing an investigation for next year that will examine the disproportional impact of school discipline policies on students of color with disabilities. the passage of the ada made up -- made it clear that the rights of people with disabilities is a human and civil rights issue. i want to give particular recognition to one of the leaders who made that point very clear. the ada has greatly improved the lives of millions of americans fostering public understanding of individuals with disabilities access to vital public services, and demonstrating the immense positive impact that people with in ourities can make communities. it is the model for the convention which the u.s. has yet to ratify. it is important to learn from history to celebrate the progress we have made and recommit ourselves in ensuring every person is able to pursue their dreams and fulfill their full potential. as the chair noted america is an , amazing country because we are willing to acknowledge where we fall short and continue to strive to live up to our founding principles. that is why today's commemoration of the ada is important to all of us. thank you. >> thank you. we will start with you. >> good morning and thank you for inviting me to join you in the celebration of the ada and i am honored to be with you all today. you have asked me to give a historical perspective. since i lived through much of this, i will try to do that in 15 to 20 minutes instead of two or three hours. i will start, let me start my historical perspective in the 1980's. the consensus was developing that persons with disabilities did not have the same federal civil rights protections that other people in the country had, african americans had, women had that people of color, ethnic , minorities, persons language was other than english had protections that people with disabilities did not. congress had enacted title five of the rehabilitation act of 1973 which included section 504. but i think there was beginning to be recognition it was only a good first start. the problems with that was coverage was linked to the receipt of federal funds so coverage may vary from year to year. a fire department would get a grant one year and would be covered and then the next year it would not receive the grant and so there would be no protection for nondiscrimination in the next year. also, large parts of the american economy, especially the business community did not receive federal funds so there was not total coverage with section 504. and unfortunately, there had been really spotty enforcement of the law by both the federal government and private groups including disability rights groups. as a result, even in the 1980's, the picture for people with disabilities was bleak. there were very few accessible buildings. we learned there were almost no accessible public restrooms in american cities with little accessible housing. very few employment opportunities and we had a lot of people who were warehoused in segregated institutions. in the 1980's, factors and trends were starting to change the public dynamic. i would like to focus on a couple of them. one of them was the change brought about by returning veterans from the war of vietnam. because of advances in medical technology in the field, people, veterans with disabilities were returning who did not make it through earlier wars. these were people who came back and became disabled fighting for their country and were not willing to accept second-class status of people with disabilities in the country. in one of the hearings, there was testimony from a gentleman from long island was a vietnam vet who was disabled. his rehabilitation program included swimming. unfortunately, there were no accessible pools and no designs to make them accessible in his area. another factor and a very important one was the impact our laws on education had had . starting in 1968, congress enacted the education of the handicapped act and now it is called idea. and it required a free appropriate public education in a mainstream environment for children with disabilities. the impact of that law in our society was profound. it brought about integration of children with disabilities with their nondisabled peers. but it also created a generation of students educated and some had high school diplomas and some had certificates of completion. but they were all ready to enter and do thingsty their nondisabled peers were doing. happeningend that was was people with disabilities who began to organize saw how women's groups and african americans had organized to achieve their rights, so they adopted the tools and models of these movements whether it was , organizing for social action and protest, whether it was going to members of congress or to the executive branch to press their cause, or using the media as a way to get the message out, that they were facing discrimination. another another factor that i think is important is, we and our society had a series of laws that protected people with disabilities. there are based on the idea that people with disabilities needed our help. we had rehabilitation services, vocational, income support, there were that series of loss. we were used to using laws to solving problems of our society. starting in 1968 with the act of 1968, we started to enact some laws that started with a different paradigm. people with disabilities were individuals with rights. we had to pass laws that enforced these rights. we were not doing it because we were good, we did it because citizens have human and basic civil rights. the idea came about in 1968. there were a series of laws. title v of the rehabilitation act included a affirmative action and federal employment -- and implemented a federal government. establish the access aboard and created section 504. there was the air carrier access act that apply to air travel in 1986. in 1988, we amended the fair housing act to include disability provisions and require that multi family housing built in the united states must be accessible to people with disabilities according to standards. in 1988 there was the civil rights restoration act that expanded the reach of program activity for the coverage of section 504. the important message was, people would go to congress and use a law as a way to address their grievances. another factor, and an important one that was mentioned today, the work of the mission on civil what -- civil rights and the council on disability. i think the director of that time created the report towards independence, which included a text of the comprehensive civil rights bill. they had a report that talked about the history of discrimination against persons of disability. as the chair has mentioned, we have the report of accommodating the -- from this commission. that really made clear the concept of dust of the disabilities are a natural occurring problem of the human condition. we accommodate the full spectrum of people along that. these reports really provided that heft, vigor, the basis for what would become the idea. ada.at would become the another report came about in 1988 that was interesting. it was a response to the aids epidemic. there was a report that was done, admiral james was in part -- was in charge of it. it had 400 recommendations, 10 chief recommendations, and one of them was that there needed to be a law to protect people that were hiv-positive. that needed to protect their life and privacy, but also to stop discrimination against them. the report said, the civil rights bill should not just single out people with hiv, issue be comprehensive and deal with all people with disabilities. another thing in 1988, we had a presidential election. i guess my message is, one should not underestimate the power of a promise made in a campaign. you may remember in 1988, then vice president george h.w. bush was running for president. he was attempting to establish his own credentials and to separate himself from being vice president for president reagan. he had a long history of working with people with disabilities during the time of his vice presidency. at the beginning of the reagan administration, there was an attempt to look at the regulation and see that it was part in some and to review. there was -- burdensome and to review. there was a task force on regulatory relief. they asked him to chair that. there was an attempt to get rid of section 504, and to get rid of the disability laws in education. that brought vice president president bush and his legal counsel into contact with the disability community. over that period of time -- i was involved with that, i was at justice in the process of issuing section 504 regulations. we became involved in a negotiation between vice president bush, the disability department of justice, and a really created a working relationship that made the been vice president bush comfortable enough when he was running for president to say, one of the things he wanted to do was issue a comprehensive civil rights law. when he became president, fulfilling that campaign promise became a big deal. the most important trio -- trend or factor, which is the disability committee. they were incredibly well organized in the period of the 1980's. they were organized state-by-state. justin dark was a leader at that time, hugh and into every state in the country and worked with people with disabilities. he had them developed arteries of discrimination. everyday people just wrote down what their life was like. what discrimination they faced. when the ada was being considered, justin brought these diaries and presented them to the congress. congress had a sense of what the nature of discrimination is on a state level, and at a very personal level for people with disabilities. it let congress know that discrimination was widespread. another part of the organization -- i'd like to give a shout out to pat right, lou was the leader of disability rights. she became known as the general because of a strong control and strategic planning. what was important about that movement is that it was a cross disability movement. disability groups banded together for a common persis -- common purpose. the cohesiveness of this organization was essential to getting the ada. at one point during the ada process there was an amendment to strike people that were hiv positive from the bill. the disability groups banded together and said, no, you cannot take us apart. we will all stand together and this bill will cover people who are hiv-positive or will not support the bill. it is an idea of how that works. another example, i was involved with a meeting with a congressman in the morning with the disability community. i was representing the negotiations on the bill. congressman express doubts about the bill. that afternoon he was flooded the calls from his district, from disability groups saying, giving its -- giving information and saying, please don't have the point of view. that demonstrated the organizational muscle of the organization, as well as the need for the legislation in its own state. the last thing i will mention factors with economics. congress was aware of two things. support for people with disability, and the waste of natural resources of people with disabilities. a large part -- we are not being educated or a part of the economy. the idea behind this is, why spend billions of dollars to keep people unemployed? if you have got social security income support, you could not work. many people who got income support wanted to work. this was a disconnect that the legislation viewed as something that would benefit not only the federal budget, because we will take people with disabilities who get income support and train -- and were a drain on the budget and have them become taxpaying citizens. in the long run it would improve the nation's gnp and would help the federal budget. it will not allow me to go through all the ins and outs of how the law. pas, but i would -- passed but i would like to talk about three ideas behind the ada that made it work. parallelism, comprehensiveness and integration. i apologize for all the latin words. the idea behind the ada was a simple one. give the people with disabilities same federal projections that other people had. that women had, that african-american people had. it made what seemed to be a revolutionary bill, really an evolutionary bill. the main thing that we looked at was the civil rights act of 1964. title vii covers implement. it covers -- covers employment. public and private employers who have 15 or more employees. we could do the same thing with the ada. it requires you doc to be the agency that investigates in those lawsuits, we will do that for the ada. what do you do about the discrimination? what is the definition of someone with disability? it's a look to section 504. there were over 100 regulations for -- 26 for federally assisted. common language about what discrimination was. who people with disabilities where. many of these regulations were done during the reagan administration. republican administration had a sense of security in saying, we understand these concepts, we will include those in the bill. the next idea, comprehensiveness. the idea behind the ada was to open up for people with disabilities. to do that -- if you're going to transform american society, it has to be comprehensive. we need employment to get a person a job. if they have a job they will have to get to the job. if they have a job and want to participate in american life, they have to be able to enjoy the same thing other people do. going to the theater, going to bars, doing their own shopping. you have to cover the private sector fairly broadly. if you want them to be active citizens, you have to ensure that state and local governments -- the idea is that the bill must address all aspects of society. the bill was so massive that, in congress, there were five hearings because everyone of those had jurisdiction. the senate only had one. when you are dealing with the civil rights law, integration is a vital part of it. it was more important for people with disabilities to guess we -- because we had a history in this country of isolation and segregation. a report in 1983 gave evidence to that. integration, people with disability and to all aspects of american society was important. we had the experience of the idea, and saw the impact that educating children with disabilities together with their nondisabled peers had on society. the bill was going to have a significant impact on business. that was a concern to a lot of people in congress. i have seen plenty of provisions to the bill, provisions that dealt with american business did not have a size or grandfather privilege. the reason for that was, statistical analysis showed that if you had that requirement you would effectively eliminate most american businesses from coverage. we're talking about parallelism, the civil rights act of 1964 did not have those provisions. we were giving to people with disabilities the same protection. therefore it led to that. there was still concern of -- concern for small businesses. there were a couple of things included in the bill. these were things that came from 50 four and supreme court decisions in the 1980's. one was that, nothing in the bill would be allowed to create undue burdens, which was to find significant expense. nothing would be required that would require fundamental alteration in the activity of any business covered by this. cost limitations were part of the bill, except for the new construction requirements. the reason to that is that there were plenty of studies that showed making a new building accessible under standards that were in place, would only cost one half of 1%, the most to make the building accessible. the idea of having a door that is wider is a design issue, not a cost issue. another concern with lawsuit. it is a concern on people's minds under the ada. the bush administration was concerned about limiting lawsuits under the ada. the ada structurally does that. it does not allow for damages for private suits brought by people with disabilities. you only get attorneys fees if you win your lawsuit. the idea behind these was -- and these were similar to the approach is taken for the civil rights act of 1964. they were put in place to limit the ability, or to take away the fear that lawsuits would be the main thing that motivated a passage of the ada. it still allowed people with disabilities to have an independent access to federal courts, to change their lives. similar to the way that debt -- that -- i think they were very important. one was the idea of technical assistance. the ada was the first civil rights law that put an obligation on enforcement agencies, any agencies that had enforcement responsibilities to provide technical -- to give information to people with disabilities, businesses, the general public about what the law requires. the first week after the law with into effect, we had a very large technical systems program at the department of justice. we got a call from a hotel in north carolina. the hotel owner said, did you people pass a bill up there? we said what are you asking? she said realtors came to my hotel and said there is a new federal law that entitles them to the best room at the cheapest price? [laughter] >> we said, what did you do? said we give them the best room. they had equal opportunity to stay at the hotel. people with disabilities and businesses. in this upper piece of -- in ais set piece of separate piece of legislation congress established the national network, which is 10 centers that are still in operation today, that are there to provide businesses with people with disability, free of ice on how to comply with the ada. the last idea -- we knew businesses would have to spend money to make them so successful, whether it was for an interpreter for a doctor, whether it was making a finance for a small business acceptable. they would have to have those expensive -- expenses. the idea was to change the tax code so that businesses that had those could get a tax break. there were tax credits put in place and tax deductions so that the cost would be incurred by the general public through the tax code as a way to do this. so we are 27 years later -- as a result of all of these concepts, the bill passed with huge bipartisan majority. 91-6 in the senate, 403-20 in the house. as we look back, it is really mind-boggling to see. i wanted to conclude by saying a success of the ada. in my estimation, it has transformed american life. if you look at our building environments, our accessible transportation systems, educational programs, the changes to health car -- health care, especially people who are deaf, who had no access before the changes brought about by the ada, the revolution that isn't -- that is occurring in technology. the idea that people with disabilities should be able to live with family and friends in their own community and live independent lives and make their own judgment. the most satisfying change for me, that i have seen is at a personal level. this is about persons with disabilities. social science will play that one of the most important parts of barriers are added to no barriers. presidential assumptions, but the general public that people with disabilities internalize, because they are all around them. people with disabilities have come to devalue their own work because of the constant message they get from other people, as well as the laws in place by our society. in my view, as generations of people with disabilities have begun to live, play, and work side by the stereotypes and prejudices are coming with it tumbling down. anticipation in my view with everyday american life is a sense of self-worth for people with disability. that is some achievements of the ada. i think you for out -- i thank you for allowing me to go through this and i wish a happy birthday to the ada. >> thank you all for inviting me to come and speak about an issue that put me in this seat today. i would also like to think my co-presenter, who i love dearly. i will not lie, the -- i said please call john. john, justin dart and senator tom harkin's other reason i'm here today. based on the path the pope my -- that put career on the pad. as we talk about the 27th anniversary of the ada, and the 60th of this wonderful commission, justin continues to remind us that disability rights are civil rights. 1-4 people have disabilities. most people can tell i have dwarfism. you can't tell that i have obsessive-compulsive disorder, but both conditions come with rights and protection under the law. roughly 80% of people with disability today grow up with households with no other disabled people. no other point of reference for what their expectation should be for their lives, other than what their love once here and what happens in society. i had the fortune of not being part of that 80%. both of my parents were little people. the only little people in their families, but my dad ran a center for independent living in the bay area, and my mom ran a disabled student center at a community college. i grew up splitting my time between the centers of the college. disability was much a part of our families culture as us being irish was. i grew up watching anson uncles get arrested fighting for my father's right to access a public bus to be able to go to work. i grew up and watch my mom three years before the ada p denied a tenure at the college she loves so much. the college that gave her her education because she could only reach the bottom six inches of a chop board. i went to a junior high where my guidance counselor was able to get his job because of section 504. he was a veteran from vietnam who lost his legs in an explosion. he had me running my own 504 meeting from the first time i met him. you can go sit outside when rebecca and i are talking. my parents were super progressive and supers civil rightsy in terms of raising her daughter. they say she needs to learn how to advocate for her rights. two years later, when i walked into high school, the guidance counselor looked at me and said, kids like you do not go here. that was three years after the ada was passed. my response was, there is a school for little people around here. when i think about the importance of the ada, and the role that i have had for all generations, but particularly what we like to call the ada. -- the ada generation. first generations of americans with disabilities to grow up with the ada. the first iteration where he had the expectation of being able to get a job, or the american dream felt that much closer and there was a ramp to it with braille on the door and an automatic pushbutton. public policy has come a long way, but there is still so much to go. i think sitting here today in this hearing, there is evidence of that. the conversation about sex trafficking, i thought it was a powerful conversation, particularly around the discussion of traumatic stress disorder. and the individual. all i can to get about is, when they go back to their home and try to access the services they need, what is the education services they are entitled to under title 504? when they go to work to the understand their rights and responsibilities under ada to access those accommodations? those people are our people, those are my people, those are the people to think about every day in the work we do. those of the people i thought about every day for the foreign -- for the 4.5 years i worked across the street. there is not a single public policy issue today that does not impact people with disabilities. currently, as a think about where we go with the ada, one of the big issues i think about our civil rights with parents of disabilities. i am now a parent. i have two wonderful children, a six-year-old and a 3-year-old, they have endless amounts of energy, both of whom are african-american children with disabilities. they know they have disabilities, they are proud of their disabilities. they know their mom is a little person just like them. they know their dad has a vision disability. while we might use tools all over the house as our accommodations, it is an appendix -- it is bad for their dad's vision disability. they know they have to move them out of the way or three will grumble about those dang little people that live with him. [laughter] >> in 32 states, parents can lose their children based on the disability. not on the basis of behavior, not on the basis of an incident of concern for the child safety or parent safety, but solely on the basis of a parents disability. we heard cases of a mom with dyslexia who goes to cbs with her iphone and says to the pharmacist, could you please read the direction for this medication into my phone so that i can play it back to me and give my child medication? the pharmacist called cps and says the mother cannot research out because she cannot read. a father uses a wheelchair, much like my chair, throwing the ball for his son and the front yard. the ball rolls into the street. father takes his route -- wheelchair up to the curve, the baby steps down into the gutter to get the ball. neighbor sees and says what if a car came out of nowhere and hit the child, there is nothing that child could do, called cps and the child was taken. this happens on a daily basis, regardless of the type of disability. we have been fortunate enough to see strong guidance come out of the active civil rights at hhs, and from our colleagues at the department of justice that we need to see the ada taken into account. we also see this when it comes to adoption for parents with disabilities being denied the right to adopt. grandparents of disability being denied the right to foster their grandchildren. we really do need to see better training for judges, social workers, people with decision-making abilities throughout the child family services process on how to engage with people with disabilities. resources like those that provided through groups like, through the looking glass in the bay area. what good is it if you are told that the american dream is accessible to you, but you cannot have kids, and you want to have kids. another issue we continue to see a significant need for work on is tied to the engagement of law enforcement with the disability community. roughly 50% of individuals killed by law enforcement have a disability of some type, or some way or form. at the same time, we also don't -- as folks earlier talked about, the importance of data. this is another point where data is critical. one thing we talked about was a desire to see the custody act amended to include data around disability. so we can get a better handle on what that number is going in, as well as tracking the number of people who acquired disability as a result of police shootings. we also really need a hard numbers as it relates to the provision, the request, the denial and removal of accommodations while in police custody. we are far too often from our deaf siblings in the movement about being denied sign language interpreters upon being arrested. i think we saw first hand in the last several weeks, as we saw protests around the country, around the brca, the boy disabilities removed from their wheelchairs. there is a case in columbus, ohio where a protester still has yet to get her wheelchair back and cannot go to work because law enforcement has not given her back her wheelchair. she cannot parent, she cannot go to work, she cannot raise her children because she cannot get out of heard house. that is not acceptable. i think we need to see actual community and gauge people with disabilities, communities they live in and law enforcement. we talk about profiling, also looking at schools in the area, are there halfway houses? what other types of disability service providers in communities where we are seeing significant increases in police violence? i give a lot of credit to organizations that are helping to advance the rights of the deaf, who are really doing the yeoman's work when it comes to people incarcerated with disabilities. groups like that harriet tubman collectives who have been very outspoken on this issue. i look forward to the fact that my colleagues across the national council on disability will be releasing something this year. hope you guys are watching because i will hold you to it. [laughter] police violence on people with disabilities. as the mother of a six-year-old and a 3-year-old, both african-american children with disabilities, i am incredibly conscious of the fact that my son's tenacity, righteous indignation out of justice, and desire to literally talk everybody's here off while in endearing now at six, will be looked at far differently when he is 16 years old. i remember talking to the rebel and -- reverent of the hip-hop caucus, he reminded me that we are not talking about her having a direct impact now, but impacting him when he is 16 and being mindful of that. we are thinking ten years down the world a safer place. they are the future of the disability rights. this movement was significantly different than the movement that i grew up in. when i was at the white house i had the pleasure of cohosting the first-ever joint for him on lgbt people with disabilities. data coming out of europe tells us roughly between 12-20% of autistic youth also identify somewhere on the old gpt spectrum. we talk about what happen the student expression of gender i dared -- gender identity is written into their iep that they can not express their gender in the way they wish to because it is a disciplinary issue. we also convene the first forum of african americans with disability -- you should billet is. they say tell me what it means -- disabilities. tell me what it means to be young, gifted, disabled and black. he said it means, the minute i leave for school, i have to constantly worry about how i act. i have to control every part of my disabilities so that i do not get shot by police, or smothered like the little boy in the gym mat at his school. he is nine years old. his concern should be about who he will play with that recess, or the fact that he does not like his lunch. it should not be about whether or not he will die. -- whether or not he comes home at the end of that day. as we continue to talk about the importance, i am thrilled to see the commission working on disproportionality and discipline in school settings. this continues to highlight the true sections between recent disability. immigration is also a disability rights issue. disabled people and their family moved to the u.s. to access better services for their kids and themselves. we know that a large number of personal support service providers are immigrants. the immigration conversation is null and void unless you have disabled voices at the table. there are folks carrying on the fight today. the news is pushing back the attempts to roll back the key provisions of the affordable care act or if we are also continuing to hold the line on the ada. i refer to this as the public policy zombie. the ada information and education act wearing its ugly head in congress again. you would really like to leave the world a better place for your children, i cannot imagine my children having a harder time growing up than i did. then my parents generation did. we have the fortune of having three generations of disabled americans. my mom grew up before 504 and the ada. i grew up with both of those things. if jackson gets the opportunity to teach in another country, he does not have to worry about that discrimination. i really encourage all of you to continue doing the work you are doing. it is critical now more than ever. i think you for giving me the opportunity to come and speak. >> thank you for your presentations. i will open the conversations to my fellow commissioners for questions and comments. >> i will kick this off, thank you for reminding me about pat wright, she was a marshal, not for the disability, but i can tell you she marshals all of us. was very much a part of working to make sure the traditional civil rights groups were very much part of the movement under the leadership of ralph. it is a good memory to have. i wanted to explore the issue of the opportunity to work, and your assessment of how far the ada has come. i do some diversity work, i was pleased to see that many companies -- when you talk about diversity inclusion, they are thinking about generally, race and gender. now they are including people with disabilities, and trying to think through, how can they make the workplace more accessible, make sure they are tapping the talents of people with disabilities, and i see it affecting their bottom line. it is helping them to create new products and services that often not just benefit people with disabilities, but for those of us who aren't, still think it's cool. cable companies like comcast are working on mechanisms where you can control the setting of your channels with your eye, which i find fascinating. i know many people will love to get that when that technology is available. they came about and thinking about how to make your services more accessible to people with disabilities. i am wondering where you think the are now in that spectrum? >> i would see the manger -- the major failing of the ada, in terms of changing our society is in employment with people with disability. if you look of the statistics, people with disabilities are chronically underemployed compared to the general population. i think work has to be done in this area. there are reasons for that. some of them are changes that we are making over time. the idea that, in order to receive income supplements from the federal government, you had to be able to see that you could not work. that has been changing, that concept has been changing. i have hope for changes in this area. if you look at the statistics of the number of people with disabilities who were in american colleges and disabilities, for the past year it is at 11%. when i started doing disability rights work in the 1970's, there were all most notable with disabilities in our colleges. we are developing a cadre of people with disabilities, who will have the skills needed for the types of jobs being created in our economy. which are related to the information economy. they are suited for people with disabilities. i am optimistic that we'll change, but it is something we have to work out -- work at. the ada requires -- there is a lot of information. i have seen the same thing you are addressing, which is employers looking, including disability together with dealing with affirmative action, or other programs to increase women in their jobs and professions. there is hope there, but it is still a major problem we have in our society. >> when i think about the college of two, when thing i think is powerful that comes out of, particularly the work of judy human and curtis richards who really laid the groundwork for state-level leadership forums. i think it is in roughly 30 states. those camps take place on a college campus -- campus. ,hey take high school students who in many cases have never been away from home. some of these kids have never slept over a night at their friend's house. it puts them in a week. to watch the changing of expectations for those young people, from monday-friday, from, what do you mean my mom will not be here with me for the next five days, two at the end of the week saying, i will not even call my mom. to see them going to the cafeteria and getting crappy college cafeteria food, they are standing in line to understand how the bookstore process works. they are getting those experiences. i think what we have done less of a strong job is in that connection from college to work. a think there are some programs that see promising results, things like the federal government's workforce recruitment program, which is designed to increase federal employment of people with disabilities that have done a significant job. we have a long way to go. the internship programs we run in the disability community have not achieved their full potential. i can think of one of the big congressional internship programs that have been around from almost 20 years now. only three other interns have been hired in full-time employment on the hill, which is abysmal and unacceptable. that is also a problem we have on the hill. i think thinking about what is the shift that needs to happen from college graduation to work, i think there is also an opportunity -- and i have heard anecdotal things from people who attend minority service institutions who say they feel better pair to go into the world of work upon graduation because of the level of mentoring, the level of expectations that was based on them. my husband often talks about how the was no question he would get a job after college he cusses teachers would not have accepted the idea that he is this low vision black kid from south carolina, you wish is going to go home and live with his mom. i think doing real work to see what are the best practices in terms of moving kids with disability from college to work, what are the lessons we can garner and spread more throughout society would be useful. thank you. >> good afternoon, thanks for your important stories. i think we have all benefited from them. i have two topics i want you to offer some insights on to the extent that you can. one goes to the issue of mental health and adequacy of support and treatment, and the ways and which that can overlap with homelessness, and in turn, incarceration? that is one topic. the other is in a different area. it is an understanding about how our economies are you falling in terms of digital platforms and online platforms, and how the economies are adjusting to contemplate accessibility issues? two very different topics, but i think you may be able to speak to each of those. >> i will start. you have identified another problem that i have seen when i was a justice and forcing the ada. the issue was brought to us by juvenile judges who started seeing groups of children with disabilities who were being denied services at their elementary and secondary schools. either because they did not have the right kind of idp, or because of discipline actions that put them on the streets. what was happening to these children with disabilities is that they were ending up in the juvenile justice system, which was a straight line to the prison population. as a societal issue, looking at this, we will be spending society's money keeping these people incarcerated for most of their lives, and denying whatever they could have developed because we did not pay attention at the secondary level to their needs. a lot of these are children with psychiatric conditions, and the lack of services for them at the school, or in their community is a direct contributor to this. i think the department of education has started working -- the first important part is that it has been identified as an issue. there are solutions to this issue, and the solutions are interventions at a very early age on education terms, mental health services for them, for children that are appropriate for children that keep them at home, that do not send them to an institution. we know the solution is getting that solution to work. >> definitely. i think jails are the new institutions. jails are where we warehouse people with disabilities. cook county is a great example. it is a mental health facility in the country. that is a real problem. in talking about mental health, homeless lists and all those intersect -- homelessness, i go back to thinking about psd -- ptsd. the young woman asked for her services as a result of growing up with ptsd. i was in st. louis last summer i was talking to some activists on the ground. one of the things that one of the leaders said to me was -- -- i always want to make sure i give credit to her first such a powerful statement. she said, i do not believe in ptsd. she said, living the lives we live, we are constantly traumatized, there is no such thing as post. i think it is extremely true when we are talking about a lot of circumstances that children are dealing with. the idea that we act off the assumption that at some point you will be fine. this is the reality you are dealing with. how do we create a comprehensive system of support putting together school, health services, family support, all of these things to help your children thrive without the idea that they were -- without the idea that they will ever be over it. that is not appropriate. our last council meeting was in detroit. we had a bunch of folks on the ground come in from flint, michigan talk about how they had to rethink what special education services looks like in the context of lead poisoning. they had to go from early intervention to adult education. all the supporting services on top of that. thinking about how to wield -- how do we work at this from a silo perspective is not how to go about it. this is a real opportunity for the civil rights communities to weigh in and work on this. these are all of our kids. these are all of our young people. one of the inks that we saw -- we had -- one of the things that we saw -- we had an lgbt meeting at the white house because we lost for transgender mental health services to suicide. we realized, from the disability community site that we could not fix it by ourselves. we reached out to our colleagues from p flag and from other organizations to say, how do we save our kids? we are not going to deal with our elders baggage, we are still mad about it, get off our yard, whatever it is. >> you are not looking at john when he said that. >> how do we work together, because these are all our kids. we have to work together. we have seen unique collaborations with the lgbtq me to be on mental health. particularly with the african community -- african-american community around policing. something i never saw 15 years ago when i moved here. the only way we will tackle these issues is if we work together. >> i will start with your second question, commissioner. we are in the middle of the total change in our society. how we exist, how we pay our goals, how we interact with government, -- pay our bills, how we interact with government, we are in information age. the tools that we use are changing. what is important, and what we have seen over the little time that we have developed new tools and new ways to use them, whose -- that will make life easier for people with disabilities. we have done it often and a way that left them behind online learning in colleges with disabilities is a significant part of what they do. are they ensuring their website is excess of all, that the platform is accessible? i think you are familiar with the largest amount of legal activity, lawsuits, settlement agreements from the department of education, from the department of justice are dealing with these issues in a variety of different ways. hospitals of information. i think it is very important. the structure of the ada is there to provide the legal basis for it. because of the use of the "placements" and a lot of title iii, there is still litigation going on. it is a matter of being vigilant about this, working with -- the way our civil rights laws are created, they do not apply to the creation of an iphone, or an ipad. their actions by the department of education or department of justice that were using early kindle devices that were not allowed to be used by blind students. that is a violation of the ada, and a violation of common sense. you are talking about the idea of reducing all the books you have to carry into a document, but we will make the line person carry books but not the other student. there are happy solutions to these situations that have changed. those devices are now used. i think we have to be totally vigilant about it because technology is changing, even ensuring that we are getting devices, then using them by local government, by colleges, by hospitals, by elementary and secondary schools in a way that is inclusive in the ways that the need with disabilities across the whole spectrum of disabilities. not just people with vision impairments, but with manual dexterity issues that cannot operate a mouse, people with hearing loss that cannot understand a video on -- a training video unless it is caption. we have to be good about how we interact with them. >> we have seen interesting opportunities that have been going well. one around autonomous vehicles. there was a time when the disability community was at the table from day one with manufacturers, software developers, retailers as they are in the area of autonomous vehicles. the national council on disability to report on driverless cars two years ago. it has been in repeated conversations with the manufacturers, with ford, gm, tesla, audi, mercedes, talking about what this needs to look like. our chairman is very passionate about this issue. mr. terry was fortunate enough to ride across an autonomous audi in rush hour. for in individual that was blind and had never been able to be in the front seat, be literally and the driver's seat. there was an engineer sitting next to him with access to the controls, but he talked about the freedom it gave him, and the fact that, unlike so many of the technology innovations we have seen throughout our lifetime, the disability community has been actively engaging and sought after by the manufacturers, department of transportation and others. it is not just a hardware issue, or can you get into the vehicle, but once you get inside are you able to operate controls? how does this work for individuals with disabilities, or neural disabilities, or autism? what is the impact the vehicle could have for a family of autistics? i'd love it because my husband cannot drive. i would love not to have an hour and a half on my commute for day care. it has been so exciting to see. if we think about that as a model going forward, from the beginning, how do we talk about it from an innovative perspective? what are the talents we can bring to the table on the front end? it is a lot nicer that way. >> that leads to my question to you. i share your view that the ada has been transformational and the united states. you are famous for taking a collaborative approach to securing the promises of the ada. i wonder if you could share with us the approach in your explanation for why you have done that and how successful you have been? >> that is a very interesting question. [laughter] >> the way i look at this, civil rights laws are a blueprint for where we are going as a society. a lot of people look at it as a way to get something done. what is important with these laws are compliance. i have worked in civil rights since 1969. i know that even if that is your view, it is a very small percentage of the work that is going to get done. if we are trying to change the way america does business, whether it is for women, for people of color, people with disabilities, we have to be brought in our thinking because we are seeking compliance. voluntary compliance comic getting people to understand what the laws required at what benefits are for them. they are ways to achieve the civil rights laws voluntarily. i am an optimistic person and i have a very optimistic view of this country. my experience of working with businesses is that they understand what the requirement a's, and why it is bare, and what their benefit is, and they have support for -- requirement is, and why it is bare, and what their benefit is, and they have support for doing it. they think our goal is giving equal opportunity to this great country for everyone in it. we have to use all the tools. that is why i talk about the technical assistance asked tax -- aspects of the ada. i think it is a good model. there is something called the job accommodation network that is funded through the department of labor that provides assistance to employers and people with disabilities about what works on a job site. an employer confronted with a disability can go and get information about how it will work, what it will cost, and how they can do it. these are the things that will make the ada work, they will make other civil rights laws work as well. i think that kind of approach, being very broad-based in how you go about this, using aviation, which is a tool we used at the local level. a person that wanted to go to their 7-eleven wanted to have a good relationship with a person who ran the 7-eleven. sitting down and having a vehicle that allowed a win-win solution is important for their daily lives of people. >> any questions or comments from the commissioners? i think you both very much for your detailed and comprehensive presentation for the work, and for your time today and coming in. i hope we will continue to see the transformation that we have had seen today continue to evolve. thank you for his assistance in setting up today's presentations and all of our staff's efforts in making today's presentation, and today's meeting as smoothly as possible -- run as smoothly as possible. i adjourn the meeting. [applause] >> this week at 8:00 p.m. eastern, on c-span3, a special featuring american history tv highlights. symbolay, the emerging -- civil war blog symposium, including gettysburg, antietam, and the siege of export. tuesday we focus on civil war you --hip and long with with talks on robert e. lee, ulysses s. grant, wednesday through friday, we are at the gettysburg college civil war conference. when state creek -- features harold holzer. on friday we conclude the conference with author tj stiles. american history tv civil war special, on c-span3. >> monday night on "the communicators." >> hackers don't hack computers. they hack humans. >> we are talking with cyber threats with the ceo of net square. >> it is not easy to pack an organization month after month. it is recommended, but today we have to think about proactive defense. we cannot keep reacting to attacks anymore. we have to turn the concept around. you set booby-traps. you create customized environments. we have to engage in threat hunting. >> watch monday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span2. >> next on american history tv, raymond geselbracht, a formal archivist at the areas truman -- harry s truman library and museum, talks about truman's latin american travels. he explores the latin american legacy through photos and truman's detailed diary entries. the truman white house and -- to send carlos in's to in key west, florida hosted the , conference.