Americans with Disabilities Act ADA and glasses.
This past week The Americans with Disabilities Act or the ADA celebrated its 29th anniversary. One can argue that this monumental piece of legislation is the most important civil rights law of the twentieth century due to its impact across a broad intersection of individuals and groups serving to protect and develop a better quality of life for an ever-growing population. While businesses have certainly adopted the law, there is still a hesitancy to truly embrace the ADA and see this legal framework as a true value add to organizations that will enhance a company’s long- term competitive advantage. There continues to be an unconscious bias as it pertains to cost, ability and even need. While the perception of disability has seen ongoing changes and the signing of the ADA has helped to galvanize real transformation one of the great barriers of a litigious society is for business to see the ADA as something that is there to augment growth rather than hinder the potential of this burgeoning market and valued employee base.
It is imperative for American companies to rethink the Americans with Disabilities Act as not just a legal tool, but rather as a component of their strategic growth. The ADA should serve as a blueprint in expanding human capital as it pertains to hiring and retention practices to not only expand the talent pool but create alternative methodologies to mine the power that candidates with disabilities have. The ADA is pathway to greater inclusivity and a method for companies to deal with daily workforce challenges and to create an environment that understands the essential need for diversity and inclusion as not just an afterthought, but rather the cornerstone to stimulate a genuine competitive advantage.
Certainly, there are American companies that are seeing the ADA as a value add and developing corporate cultures that view disability as an essential part of doing business. Disability: IN and The American Association of Persons with Disabilities (AAPD) developed the Disability Equality Index (DEI) which serves as the gold standard for bench marking and rating businesses and based on their work are providing proof that the ADA has helped to redefine and refine the way business is conducted and companies are seeing the benefits in substantive ways. While this is critically important, one of the key aspects of the ADA and why it can be argued it is the most important civil rights law of the twentieth century is because the law protects a community that continues to grow and due to the fact that this community is so diverse in its own right people and companies need to see the ADA in a more comprehensive and humanistic way. Rather than just protecting one class of people, the ADA serves as a framework that protects all of us and offers solutions to enhance both the personal and the professional.
As the ADA comes of age it is important that we re-evaluate this piece of legislation and frame it in a new context. Taking a more humanistic stance allows us to see the intention of the law beyond the legal prose that has defined it in the framework of the courts. Perhaps companies should frame the ADA in terms of the idea of Homo faber which is Latin for "Man the Maker" which illustrates the concept that human beings are able to control their fate and their environment as a result of the use of tools. Being that the ADA is essentially a tool that is there to benefit the community at large and companies can utilize their own creativity to engage the framework of the law and make something new that enhances the collective good and offers a modern approach to business that push both organizations and the law forward in tandem rather than being viewed as oppositional.
The ADA and American business need one another. It is time that corporations further investigate this piece of legislation and see how they can make it work for them to create the next wave of business strategies that are inclusive of persons with disabilities across all sectors.
