Incremental change brings us closer to accessibility and equality ~ for all

by D.E. Bentley –

In reading Laurie Phillip’s piece about their visit to Corning Glass Museum, I thought again, as I have many times recently, about the life and times of Stephen Hawking – who died on March 14, 2018.  Hawking, as most readers will know from past stories or the more recent obituaries and press, was a theoretical physicist and cosmologist.  At the time of his death, he was the Director of Research at the Center For Theoretical Cosmology and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.  Hawking’s list of scientific accomplishments and publications is extensive, well beyond his high profile publication, A Brief History of Time, which remained on the British Sunday Times best-seller list for 237 weeks.

At twenty-one, two years before gaining his PhD – 1965, his thesis was on titled the ‘Properties of Expanding Universes’ – Hawking was diagnosed with ALS, a form of Motor Neurone Disease.  He used a wheelchair for much of his adult life.  His ability to continue to function and to thrive as the disease progressed came as a result of his personal determination to live, and live to the fullest, and the scientific advancements of his time that allowed him to remain active – including a computerized voice system that allowed him to continue to present to his students, and to audiences around the world. For many people with different abilities these simple and crucial tools for living with a debilitating disease are still economically out of reach, although there are changing attitudes, and legislation that are enabling more people access to the support needed, and the ability to reach their fullest potentials.

At the time of Hawking’s birth, in Oxford, England on January 8, 1942, the United Kingdom and much of the world was deeply entrenched in World War II.  There were also wars of equality being waged, in part to accommodate soldiers and others impacted physically and mentally by the war.  The 1940s and 50s saw several pieces of legislation in the UK that offered some legal protections and services to people with disabilities, including in home services and employment quotas.  In 1970, seven years after Hawking’s initial diagnosis, the British Parliament introduced The Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, the first in the world (see historical timeline link below*) to recognize and give rights to disabled people.  The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which “prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public” became law in 1990.

Discrimination, as we all know, does not end with the laws that prohibit it.  Change, including the kind of changes needed to adequately adapt existing structures to allow easy access for individuals needing to use wheel chairs, is slow.  The attitudinal changes needed to end discrimination and foster equality take lifetimes to come to fruition; battles for equal rights rage on, long after the ink has dried on the page.  Nonetheless, change is evident and we will, I believe, continue to move toward greater accessibility for and acceptance of all peoples – regardless.

* http://www.merseycare.nhs.uk/media/1749/disabiliyt-timeline-2013.pdf