By Rachel Kolb ’08 | Guest Contributor
When the Americans With Disabilities Act was signed into law on this day in July 1990, my parents didn’t yet know how much the landmark civil rights law would soon shape my life — and theirs.
I was born profoundly deaf, but my parents didn’t even know this part yet. I was 6 months old that summer, and hearing screenings for newborns weren’t universal medical practice in those days. My parents had brought me home from the hospital thinking I was just like them — that is, hearing, someone who also lived amid sound and speech. But that August, just a few weeks after President George H.W. Bush signed the ADA on the White House’s South Lawn, they learned otherwise. My sensory and linguistic world was fundamentally different from theirs. And thus my life would be too.
My diagnosis came as a surprise for my parents. At first, they felt like they had no road map to follow. They didn’t yet know American Sign Language. They knew nearly nothing about deafness, and they lived in a culture where disability was still too often classified as tragedy. But they jumped into their steep learning curve — and found the ADA waiting for us.
Now, 35 years later, I am a member of the “ADA generation,” which means I know what accessibility can be: an invitation into greater human community, as well as a precious right we must preserve for future generations.
