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People with disabilities will remember your words and actions when COVID-19 is over

Inactions count as well. In the words of Geddy Lee — when you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice

Sheri Byrne-Haber, CPACC
Age of Awareness

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Authors note: Because of Medium’s refusal to address its accessibility issues for both authors and readers, I’ve moved my last three years of blogs to Substack. Please sign up there for notices of all new articles. Also, I will be updating older articles (like this one) and the updates will only be published on Substack. Thank you for your continued readership and support.

As I write this article, we are 5–10 weeks into the COVID-19 crisis, depending on what you consider the start date to be. I have lived slightly over half my life as someone with a mobility challenge under the protection of the ADA, and just under half without. The half of my life with the ADA in place I have seen improved access for people with disabilities. Sometimes painfully slow. Progress frequently required litigation or threats of litigation. But the needle was always moving in the right direction at a slow but steady pace.

As someone with the privilege of living in North America, the improvements were never fast enough for me. Imagine me as Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka reaching for the sky…

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