Our Senator Earned her Seat in Congress

I was delighted when Tammy Duckworth won last week’s election: it means she’ll  serve as senator here in Illinois for six more years. Senator Duckworth has a long career serving her country, and when it comes to disability access, she is an expert: she served in Iraq and lost both legs when a rocket-propelled grenade struck the helicopter she was co-piloting in 2004. After she won the 2017 election for Senator of the State of Illinois, an article in the Chicago Tribune pointed out that running a Senate campaign involves lots of travel and complicated logistics. From the article:

Duckworth said she and her staff have a pre-event checklist to make sure the site is up to their standards — and that means making sure even the bathrooms are wheelchair accessible.

“I don’t go to any place that isn’t accessible even though I have artificial legs that I can walk in; it’s on principle,” she said. “If someone in a wheelchair can’t get in it, I’m not going to do an event there. Just because I can get in there with my artificial legs doesn’t mean somebody else can.”

The article said that during her campaign Duckworth often heard from voters who question her ability to serve. A question about using a wheelchair in public during the campaign came up when she first ran for Congress. “I’m not ashamed I’m in a wheelchair. I earned this wheelchair,” she said. “I’ve always insisted it’s not something that we hide.”

A seasoned member of Congress now, Senator Duckworth joined Representative Sarbanes of Maryland last month to introduce the Websites and Software Applications Accessibility Act (S. 4998 , H.R. 9021) in both houses of Congress. The bill will require employers, state and local governments, and private businesses to make their websites and applications accessible.

Much has been made about how people with disabilities benefitted from digital access during the COVID pandemic, but casual conversations I’ve had with friends who have visual impairments tell me how frustrated they’ve been with technology, the high number of web sites that are not easy to use if relying on speech software and the hours they’ve wasted trying to make it work.

I am one of those people. During the pandemic my husband Mike has had to take over much of the on-line ordering we do, the forms we are asked to fill out on line, and any online streaming we do. Throughout the pandemic I got a lot of messages in my in box about plays and concerts and lectures available on line free of charge, but when I gave them a try, the links and buttons were not accessible – frustrating!

If passed, this new legislation will make it clear that the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to websites and applications. I already know that my Senator will be voting in favor of the bill — she’s the one who introduced it to the Senate!

An earlier version of this post appeared last week on the Easterseals National blog.