[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Welcome to Disability empowerment now season four, episode 100. I'm your host, Keith Murphy de Cansini, and today I'm talking to former Senator Tom Hawking, who wrote the Americans with disabilities act of 1990. Senator Hawkins, welcome to the show.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: Well, thank you very much, Keith, for having me. And you just said this is episode 100. Well, I'm honored to be episode 100 and to be with you today.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: We planned that this episode is recording about six months in advance of its actual airing because that.
So we, we have wanted to interview you for about a few years now. Well, we've only been around a few years and when I, because I'm a planner, I plan these seasons out months in advance, I thought, who could I get to really share this milestone with? I have to thank both Anthony Empanado and former Senator, your colleague, Dinage Di Ghinsini, who is my uncle, who both connected me to you. We actually met in 2017 when I was, when I was training with the Arizona LIND program and I was at the AUCD conference or didn't give woods the policy summit. That was a few months after that.
That's how we met in D.C. and I remember that because I have a photo of us and I actually used it that year to teach a course. And I could not stop sobbing as I talked about meeting you and everything you have done for the disability rights movement in the United States of America. I know I would not be anywhere without the tireless love and support of my parents, but also the Americans with Disabilities Act. And so I ended there. So this doesn't become a two hour fun facts of me just repeating the same things over and over.
I want to know more about your beginnings in politics and what led you to become involved with the disability rights movement.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: Well, Keith, first of all, it's nice to be with you again. I'm sorry it took so long, and I thank your uncle for calling me. Dennis and I were very close friends in the Senate, and it was just so nice to hear his voice again.
And so I'm really happy about that too. So it's good to be with you.
Thank you for what you're doing to inform the public about disability rights and about the.
The whole area of disability accessibility and employment and everything that we're trying to do to fulfill the mandate of the Americans with Disabilities Act. So thank you for your leadership in doing this.
Now, you asked me how I got started.
Well, I'm, I'm. I was raised in a small town in Iowa and I held an Older brother who was deaf. And so I saw how he was treated as he grew up. He was sent halfway across the state to a. A school for the deaf. And they. And they call it the School for the Deaf and Dumb.
And I remember my brother telling me one time, I may be deaf, but I'm not dumb.
And so I saw how what happened to him and how his whole future was limited because people perceived that he couldn't do anything because he was deaf.
And so he was told he could only do three things. He could be a baker, a shoe calber, or a prisoner printer's assistant. That's old.
Well, he didn't want to do any of that. Well, so I just saw how he struggled against these forces to carve out an independent life, to do the things he wanted to do, even getting a driver's license, which in those days, that would be about 1948.
And it was just a problem, even for a deaf person to get a driver's license because they thought he couldn't drive. Well, he could drive just fine and his jobs. And so I just saw how he struggled. Shortly after I got elected to Congress, I. And when I went to Congress in 1974, I decided I was going to do something about this disability of deafness.
Well, then shortly after I got there, Keith, my nephew, my sister's son from Colorado, had gone in the Navy, and he was on an aircraft carrier, and he got sucked down a jet engine, and he had a hard hat on, but it. He broke his neck, and he became severely paraplegic, almost quadriplegic because of that. He was like 19 years old.
And then I began to see his problems of even getting across the street in a wheelchair, of even getting in a house, going to a restaurant, I mean, could do any of that stuff. So then I began to think, wow, it's more than just deafness. It's mobility.
And shortly after that, I got to meet a young man here in Iowa who had down syndrome. And he was in high school. His parents had fought hard to get him in high school, and he acted in school plays. He became the manager of the football team.
And.
And then I saw how he was discriminated against in terms of employment and schooling.
I thought, wow, there's more to disability than just deafness or mobility. There's also what we would call intellectual disabilities, cognitive disabilities.
So out of that grew my whole interest in doing something on a broad basis, big basis, to address the civil rights of people with disabilities.
I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Crip Camp yet several times. Well, okay, so a lot of the people in that movie became sort of my mentors, people who talked to me, Ed Roberts, Judy Heumann, so many others that then worked with me and a lot of others in the 1980s on this legislation. I'll close with this. In 1964, we passed the Civil Rights act in Congress.
It banned discrimination on the basis of race, color, creed, sex, national origin, but not disability, not disability.
We needed to fill that in.
And based upon that, that's how I got involved in working to develop what now, you know, as the Americans with Disabilities act and getting it passed in Congress and signed by, by the way, a really wonderful president, George H.W. bush. He was strong for it. He never backed down. And I'm a Democrat, he was a Republican, but boy, I'll tell you, without George H.W. bush, we could never have gotten it passed. And he was just. He was just wonderful on this. And we had a lot of Democrats and a lot of Republicans both to work to get it passed. So that's sort of the background.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean, we're both Democrats and we can say what we want about George W. Bush, but he amended the ADA and added all those amendments, so.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: The.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: You're talking about. You're talking about the 2008. Yep.
Amendments that we passed under George W. Bush.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Yeah, right, exactly. And so that. That bill, unfortunately, the ADA could almost certainly incorrect me if I'm wrong in dear heaven, I hope I am, that a bill like the ADA could not get past today with the political rank.
Take us back to a time where the ADA is not a perfect bill, no bill ads, but it would very much every step of the way, a bipartisan effort. And we've unfortunately and changely launched that bipartisanship, by and large.
So take us back to that time period and actually working with your colleagues across the aisle and what was that like?
[00:12:45] Speaker A: Well, first of all, and I try to say this wherever I speak on it, I was not the first person to introduce the ada.
The first person was a Republican by the name of Lowell Weicker. He was a senator from Connecticut.
And remember, when I came to the Senate, the Republicans were in charge, and so he was the chair and I served on his subcommittee on disability and we worked together and he had this legislation he wanted to develop, so he introduced it. I was his chief co sponsor on the House side. It was introduced after we introduced. Ours is introduced by Congressman Tony Coelho and Major Owenso. Yeah, he's a Great guy, wonderful person.
And so then Lowell Weicker got defeated and then Tony Coelho left the Congress under some circumstances.
And so when we came back in January, then I picked it up and rewrote it because the first bill I knew wasn't going anywhere. And I started working with Republicans. My chief co sponsor was Senator Durenberger, a Republican from Minnesota.
And then on the House side we had a Republican by the name of Steve Bartlett, who was a congressman from Dallas, Texas, who was our Republican on the, on the House side.
And so I reintroduced it and then we got wonderful people like John McCain from your state. For Arizona was one of our first and strong supporters of the ada, Bob Dole, former Majority leader Bob Dole from Kansas. And of course we had Democrats like Ted Kennedy and a number of others on it also at that time, your uncle, of course, Dennis de Cassini was one of our great supporters.
And, and so we put together a. This coalition and we worked together. We didn't always agree on everything, but.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: We sat down, ever judged.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: No one ever does. I.
I always say, Keith, my wife, My wife and I have been married for 56 years. We don't agree on everything, but we still love each other and we're still married.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: Congratulations. 56 years. What's the secret to wedded bliss?
Everyone wants to know that.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: I know everyone.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Everyone always asks unanswerable question. Which converts chicken or egg? Chicken or egg. Unanswerable.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: Actually, actually the real answer, Keith, in marriage is the same in politics. The secret to a long marriage is compromise.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: Yes. And legend, legend that. And so drafting it and riding it with your colleagues across the aisle. You get a bill and you presented around. But then you also have to lobby the president, who we mentioned before, George H.W. bush, staunch Republican, but from everything that I've read and seen, he would such a supporter of this bill for that going in with this idea, gathering his support, if you can remember, what was it like being in the room of making that third phone call, really pitching this idea to the leader of the free world about this monumental bill.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: Let me see if I understand your. Your question correctly, Keith.
[00:17:47] Speaker B: Like presenting the bill and the idea to him.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: In presenting the bill to him.
[00:18:02] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: Well, for. Okay, good question. First of all, on the outside, outside of Congress, we had some key players.
One was an individual by the name of Justin Garth. Justin Dart was a man with a disability, used a wheelchair.
He was a Republican and he was close to the Bush family.
His family was. And so President Bush had appointed him the head of the president's National Council on Disability. Well, Justin Dart was sort of our go to person in meeting with the President and getting the President to, to understand what we were doing.
Justin Dart visited every one of the 50 states twice in his wheelchair. That's a big effort, just going around every state twice to meet with both Republicans and Democrats and office holders to get them to understand why we were doing this, what we were doing. And then after the first time he did all 50 states, he came back and saw President Bush and said, you know, there's a lot of support out there for this. You don't have to worry about it. So it was really key.
I wasn't the first person to talk to President Bush about it. It was Justin Dart. And it was Justin Dart who got the President to appoint Boyden Gray, who was, I think he was his chief lawyer or what would. What was Boyden Gray Chief counsel to the President.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: And he really worked with us in the Congress and kept the liaison going between the President and us on developing this legislation.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: And so you mention it to the President or Judson Dodd, and that's a very important name in the disability rights movement. Edwards Wallace, Ed Roberts, Judy Heumann and so many others. As you said, the bill got some push back and changes were made.
How was it overcoming those objections to the early days of the bill, to what we now know as the law?
[00:21:12] Speaker A: Well, Keith, you're right. It wasn't just smooth sailing. There were a lot of bumps in the road.
As I said, the initial bill that was introduced by Lowell Weicker, we had to kind of almost completely redo it were just too many objections. But we, we knew that we needed the support, also the business community.
So we went to the U.S. chamber of Commerce and we met with them. And Justin Dart was also involved in that and, and getting them on. Well, there were some things we had to cut down on and some other things that we didn't include. I understand, but, but we kept the basic premise of a broad civil rights bill.
Some things we didn't succeed on.
But, but we got the business community, we got the Chamber of Commerce. There was one business entity that never supported it. And they were a problem for us from the beginning to the end. Even on the ADA act amendments of 2008, they wouldn't support is something called the National Federation of Independent Business, nfib.
And I'm sure that if you walk around Tucson or any place, you'll see the little emblem in little stores and stuff, and they propose, they profess, that they represent small businesses they never supported the ada.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: Oh.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: They said it was going to destroy small business and small businesses couldn't do this and couldn't do that. But we got the US Chamber of Commerce on our side, so that kind of split the community.
And so we did get the business community on. I will give you one example that still today is a problem I wanted to include in accessibility housing.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: Well, the, the realtors, the home builders, others said no, we can't do that.
So the compromise is we got buildings.
So in the ada, after the ADA passed, all buildings built in America of two stories or higher had to have accessibility features, right?
[00:23:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: Elevators, widened doors, accessible bathrooms, ramps if needed. Accessibility features.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: But we never got into housing. And that always, ever since then I've, I've said it should be in housing. We're getting so many houses built in America, but they're inaccessible.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:09] Speaker A: And. And now, Keith, a lot of older people want to retire. They want to live at home.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: And. But they can't get a wheelchair around or anything.
So there's an industry started up to remodel your house so that you can live in it if you're elderly and you need accessibility. Well, that costs a lot of money.
[00:24:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: But if you do it from the very beginning and design it that way, hardly costs anything. So here's, here's my new project. Keith, we know that we need housing in America. Yes, we do, we do. And we need housing that's low income and that's also accessible.
So if Kamala Harris of my party has said that if she's elected, one of her goals is to build I think 2 or 3 million new low income housing all over America. What I want is, I want, if that happens and the federal government puts money out there for this, I want every house designed from the very beginning to be built accessible.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
That just makes too much sense. Senator, one of the things you could not proceed to put in the ADA of 1990, the Americans with Disability act of 1990 is website accessibility.
Because at 1990 the will be now known as the world Wide Web was about four, maybe five years.
I mean the. What we now know as the Internet was originally developed as chat rooms for military to go back and forth it would never ever made to be public at all. And then no one knew that it would become this worldwide phenomenon literally.
So it.
But website accessibility, particularly over the past decade and the pandemic had judge ballooned even further, had become quite rightly a hot button hot topic issue.
So had you been aware of the Internet.
How would it have factored in to the ada?
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Very simply this. You're absolutely right. But you know, what we did put in the ADA was telecommunications.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: Phones and that kind of thing.
So we, if had we had the web at that time, we would have incorporated the web right in with the telecommunications accessibility.
Well, you're correct to point out it wasn't, but later on we have included it. It has now been included later on and as you know, we are making some progress. Yeah.
In web accessibility. Yeah.
We have basically gotten web designers and others to incorporate again from the very beginning accessibility features, whether it's sight or hearing or it's formatting.
Sometimes people of low vision need larger fonts. So you need to be able to press a button and get larger fonts or you can actually there isn't even now some programs available for deciphering ASA ASL into. Into text.
[00:29:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: So think we're, we're making some pretty good progress on the web.
The problem is that some of the, some of the, some of the programs.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: That are developed for work, the workplace and that are in the design concept. I'm a little off base here. Again, what I'm saying is that many of the jobs that now accrue in the, in this space, the job itself is not designed for people with various disabilities. Yeah, again we're making some progress, but we're not there yet.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: Progress, it's slow. I mean the ADA could probably not have come out or been developed and you can correct me if I'm wrong, in the 80s or the 70s. We just want there yet. What is your response, and I'm sure you've heard it before several times that I don't want to say most of or a lot of. But what is your response to criticism that the ada, a lot of it is unimplemented or it's very hard to get implemented and enforced in the way it was supposed to. I hate to use this phrase expensively in front of its creator, but what did you respond to people who may think that the, a lot of the ADA unreinforced, basically window dressing?
[00:31:47] Speaker A: Well, first of all, it's a civil rights bill as such. It, it's not self enforcing.
Now there are mandates in it to be sure, on accessibility, different things but. And transportation, buildings as I mentioned.
But if, if for example a business doesn't comply with accessibility, someone has to bring an action against that.
So it's up to individuals or concerns to bring a case of not implementing the ada.
Now under the ada again One compromise we had to make, there's no penalty, there's no money penalty.
Okay? So if someone is found not complying with the ada, the only remedy is what we call remediation. Fix it, make it so that it is. And, and, and, and there can be time constraints. I mean, you have to do this within 18 months or two years or whatever it is, but you can't sue someone. So I still see, 34 years later, I still see some businesses, Main street businesses that are inaccessible.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know if you ever go up to New York or anywhere, but New York is actually where I'm from, born and bred there.
And it's amazing how many restaurants are not accessible.
[00:33:52] Speaker A: I know, it's, it's, it's just, it's, I don't know, I mean, you're right. And it's just, it's just a shame. And again, again, later on after the ada, this was not part of the ada, but right afterward we passed a tax bill still in existence today that gives a small business a tax credit of up to 50% of the cost of complying a tax credit. I think it's up to maybe $10,000 or $20,000. I don't know what the figure is now, but I mean, just to widen the door, put in a ramp, change the bathroom so it's accessible, you know, maybe make a pathway.
Things that don't cost a lot of money.
And, and, but I'm like you, I, if I go into a restaurant, I don't go to New York that often. But if I go there, if I go to anywhere and I go in a restaurant that's not accessible, I'll leave. I, I just say I can't eat here. I'm not, I'm.
But then the district attorney has to, you know, give them a notice that they're non compliant and get their response. And that takes some time, but that's, that's, that's the only way we can do it. And I always say there are a lot of good businesses and good mainstream businesses that comply. They ought to be together in saying, wait a minute, you too should comply.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Because again, the, it all comes down to cost.
And I'm sure the detractors said, oh, it will cost too much. Bankrupt business.
In actuality, the, it goes more to be unacceptable, non accessible than accessible. And it's just, but that still persists.
So what's next for the ADA and for the disability rights movement in terms of legislation yet? The ADA is important and without it, advocates wouldn't be much like without the special Education bill of a few years prior to the ADA and the parents bill a few years prior to that. It's all about building on each other. So as we go forward into the next decade or two, how can we enhance the ada? And I think, Vincent, where we will bring back your colleague Daniel.
Daniel, are you there? Hi, Daniel.
[00:37:38] Speaker C: Hi, Keith. I'm here.
[00:37:40] Speaker B: Can you introduce yourself?
[00:37:44] Speaker C: Sure. Hi, everyone. My name is Daniel Van Sant, and I am the Director of Disability Policy at the Harkin Institute based at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. Happy to be here. Always happy to work, of course, with Senator Harkin, but it's nice to be here with you, Keith, and with everybody listening.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: Thank you. So what next? How do we build upon the momentum, progress that we got with the ada of the 1990s and 1990 and the amendments that we got in 2008, both passed by Republican presidents? How do we build upon the progress already laid out over 30 years ago?
[00:38:55] Speaker C: Sure.
I mean, as you can imagine, that is a complex question with many possible answers.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: Why get paid?
[00:39:05] Speaker C: Right.
So I think so from my position, right. I was born with my disability in the ADA generation and have now spent my, you know, whole life and certainly my professional life as an advocate for myself and for other people with disabilities. And so I think right in that position, our focus is always on the shortcomings and how far we have to go in so many areas. I do always like to anchor that with thinking of how far we have come in the 34 years of the ADA. So before launching into the negatives. Right. I want to acknowledge that there has been a tremendous amount of improvement that I certainly benefited from by being born in the ADA generation. So I don't want to come off as too negative because, of course, things are a lot better for you and I, Keith, than previously because of the work of Senator Harkin. And so many, I think, think what we hear now, I mean, part of your conversation has already been on how many aspects of the ADA are not fully implemented. And so I think that that is still part of this conversation where we're hearing a lot of movement around pushing the ADA forward. I think one of them is going to be technology, Internet access. You know, there's a lot of conversation right now around artificial intelligence, automated vehicles, transportation.
There's. We are in such the middle of a technological boom that I think myself and other advocates are nervous that if people with disabilities are not at the forefront of these emerging technologies, that another 20, 30 years from now, we'll be having this conversation of retroactively changing automated vehicles to be accessible, to make AI accessible. So I think whether that is, you know, like I said, web accessibility, website accessibility, artificial intelligence, having that be accessible and responsive to disability is a hot button issue.
And even just transportation, right. We know that people with disabilities still in many places in the United States don't have access to private vehicles or, or private vehicles that we can drive or access to public transportation.
And so whether that is your, your subway, your city bus, your train that goes in between states, or you've certainly seen headlines around air travel.
I think this is, this is a space where people with disabilities still do not have equal access is just transportation. You've already talked about housing with Senator Harkin, so I will highlight that, but don't need to dive into it. Right. The benefit of the ADA generation is there is much more expectation among disabled people now that we will own homes and live independently and go to work independently and the housing is not there for us. So housing, transportation, technology I think are some of the big pieces.
And then I also want to highlight, I feel like we've come a really long way on physical accessibility in, in our country. But just a further acknowledgment that disability and accessibility also includes invisible disabilities, neurodiversity, mental health.
I don't know that we've done a really great job of including intellectual disability, mental health, other invisible disabilities into a full actualization of an accessible United States.
[00:43:15] Speaker B: So before we get to talking about the important walk, the Hawkins Institute and the annual Hawkins Summit Judge, because I want to respect the senators time, I want to ask the typical lots to questions that I asked on every episode in case there are any self advocates, aspiring politicians, policymakers, people who really want to get down in the weeds, the nitty gritty, but are just starting out as a siege and flow.
What would be some advice you would give them as they strive forward and follow in your footsteps?
[00:44:37] Speaker A: The best advice I would give Keith is simply what we have heard from the disability community for the last, since Crip camp anyway, for the last half century.
Nothing about us, without us.
My advice is if you're going to pursue legislative policies or even administrative policies, bring in people with various disabilities, as Daniel said, people with intellectual disabilities, people with physical, emotional, mental health, disability, and think about how you design and how you develop these policies from the very beginning to include people with disabilities as we go forward.
By the way, I might mention Daniel doesn't even know this, but I was at the convention last week, the Democratic Convention. And I saw Pete Buttigieg and I talked to him briefly. We're just kind of passing in the hallway and I said, look, you know, all your transportation, everything. I said, you know, we got to make sure that people with disabilities are included in that, that we make sure, like Daniel was saying, in transportation from the very beginning, systems are designed with people with disabilities.
Well, sort of. We just chatted a bit. Well, just this morning I got a call from his, one of his individuals that works with him, Kelly Buckland. Kelly used to be the head of the national center on Independent Living, and Kelly and I are old friends. So I just got a call this morning from Kelly saying the secretary would like to meet with you when you're back in Washington to continue to talk about these new. Because they're going to put up billions of dollars in the new transportation. Yeah, well, as Daniel said, a lot of this new transportation will incorporate artificial intelligence.
[00:46:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:49] Speaker A: Self driving, all the other things. Well, let's make sure from the very beginning if any of these tax dollars are going out for that. As I said, we include as advisors, as designers, people with disabilities. So they're there from the very beginning. So I'm hopeful that that's what Secretary Buttigieg has in mind.
[00:47:16] Speaker B: So we've talked about a lot in this episode and will continue as we get into the Hawking Institute and the annual Hawkins Summ.
I like to think that both advocates with disabilities and those who have yet to discover own race, their own disabilities legend and watch this program. I'm not naive enough to think that both groups and groups within those groups take away the same things from every episode. So as my guests, what do you hope that advocates with disabilities take away from this episode? And what do you hope that those who have yet to discover are. Embrace their own disabilities?
Take away from everything we've talked about in this episode?
[00:48:37] Speaker A: Well, I, I'll say one thing, I'll yield to Daniel for his thoughts on it. But what I would say is you have to be an activist.
Don't be passive.
I have. Again, it's been a frustration of mine for a long, forever that so many people with disabilities. And I understand this. You know, days can be hard just getting out of bed, getting ready for the day, getting transportation. So I understand that, I understand that. But people with disabilities have to become activated. They have to go to the public meetings. They have to get involved in government at all levels.
They have to go out and, and seek employment and, and, and, and, and, and, and don't be discouraged if you get turned down once. Well, go back somewhere, get turned down, don't give up on this, and just, you just got to keep being an activist. That's about all I can say if Daniel has other ideas. Daniel, sure.
[00:49:56] Speaker C: This is, this is Daniel. I was nodding along for people listening as the senator was speaking. I think the only thing that I would really add to that is to maybe also touch on your previous question, Keith, about advice for young self advocates that I would kind of loop into my thought here. And that is, I mean, I absolutely agree that disabled people need to activate. And right. As the senator said, a lot of our life is activation and we can be very tired and it's difficult to get up the next day and keep fighting.
That's sort of how it is and what it takes. But I think something that I would say to self advocates or people who haven't yet embraced disability, at least advice that I give young people who seek me out is I think by being disabled, we already have a certain level of expertise, right. We are experts in our own disability, our own experiences, and that is valuable in a lot of settings. There are companies looking for disability advisory committee members. There are government offices working on this.
But, but I also encourage disabled people to develop another expertise. So we've been talking, I mean, think of all the topics we've had today, from housing, transportation, lobbying. I mean, technology, AI so many topics. And there absolutely is a space for disabled people with expertise in all of these areas.
So that when Secretary Buttigieg puts out a call for people to be involved in this, we have people with the lived experience of disability who have the professional bona fides to be on that committee and to be trained up for that.
And that, that doesn't always just mean going to college and getting advanced degrees and education. It can be being very engaged in your county or in your city government on transportation, on the school board board, doing your own research and education, but developing a skill set that you can use in addition to the skills that you have by being disabled, I find to be a nice tactic. And that way you're not a token of inclusion. You have the expertise on how do we make artificial intelligence inclusive? Because you. Right, not Daniel, maybe, but someone out there is a computer whiz and you're disabled and you will have the solution for this someday.
And so I think, you know, engage with that disability side of yourself and with the disability community and develop the professional or the personal skill set to also engage in whatever passion area you want to do. Right. Some of us Use our disability in this disability advocacy space. We also need disabled engineers and architects and teachers and politicians and city planners and custodians and right. We need disabled people in every piece of the employment spectrum so that there really is nothing about us. Without us.
[00:53:19] Speaker B: What would bother me say to non disabled people who struggle to understand all the complexities of disability, disability rights, why does something need to be accessible or made more accessible or so on and so forth?
I mean yes, disability is over 20% of the American population. Disability is the only largest minority and the only minority you can join at any point in your life for any generation. But beyond that, because though those are very true, but they're political sound bites, they're not gotcha points.
But I mean they can get old and people can believe them if they don't want to.
How, how would you make disability accessible to be understood even though you really shouldn't have to?
But this word isn't perfect. And so how would you engage non disabled people about disability without reverting to it will probably happen to you at some point. You should be mindful, not like it's tactic. But how do you make accessibility in caring about disability rights when you're not disabled yet? Cool. Yeah. Engaging, fantastic, etc. Etc. That's a long tangent for quadjimba. I mean that's something I often lose sleep over trying to figure that out, how to make what I do more engaging to people who have very little if any idea why it's so important.
[00:56:35] Speaker C: This is Daniel, I, I'm happy to make a run at that and then Senator, if you want to jump in.
So I mean Keith, I think that's the billion dollar question. And I mean that literally right when we think about the market value of disability. So two things that I tell non disabled audience is like if you're, if you're just starting your disability like exposure journey, I always recommend that people watch Crip Camp, which we've already talked about. It's on Netflix, it's on YouTube, it's accessible to you. So watch that. And I think we find that it really changes people's minds about what they think they know about disability. It was nominated for an Oscar.
It's out there. I also recommend this book. So I'm holding up Demystifying Disability by Emily Ladell.
[00:57:34] Speaker B: Friend of mine wrote that and I interviewed her back in season two.
[00:57:42] Speaker C: Awesome. So I think Emily's book I recommend to everybody that has that sort of like I want to engage on disability, but I don't know what to say or what to ask. I think it's a really amazing primer to just get that conversation going. So I, I put those two things out as homework for, for people without disabilities.
And then I, I think, right. You, you covered a lot of the sort of standard talking points about, so I don't want to repeat those. Yeah, I think something that we really try to emphasize at the institute is maybe two, two sub points of each other.
One, we advocate for universal design and that is not specific to disability, but is really about all diversity and human experience. Right. Like all of us are different heights, weights, flexibilities, visions, all of that. So what we find is good universal design that is inclusive of disability is often preferable to people without disabilities as well. And so it's not just putting a ramp or using lighting that's good for disabled people, but like how many people without disabilities prefer automatic doors? Right. There's sort of that curb cut effect and I know you know about that, Keith, but.
So universal design really is about making our society better for all people. And I think it just happens that those of us with disabilities, because our day to day experience is in a world that's not made for us, we are just finely attuned at coming up with creative workarounds and solutions that can give us really nice design examples. Right. So without going down the whole list, I mean an example that I often in give is like the keyboard on the computer that I'm using today that probably each of us are using. The keyboard was a disability inspired invention. And imagine our world today without key, without a key. I mean, I don't go probably. I mean I might not go unless I'm asleep. I'm, I'm on a keyboard somehow on my phone, on my computer. Imagine if the keyboard was never invented. Right. Audiobook, curb cuts, audio books, electric toothbrushes, all of these things. I just saw an ad somewhere on social media for a zipper closure that the base of the zipper magnets together and you zip it up.
[01:00:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:00:35] Speaker C: And that is good for people with dexterity disabilities. Yeah. But also, as someone who grew up in Iowa doing a lot of outdoor activities in the winter, have you ever tried to zip up your coat with multiple layers of gloves on? If you're, you're a hunter out in the field, you're doing whatever. Imagine that your coat could just connect the zipper and you pull it up. That that technology might be inspired by disability but is going to benefit everybody. That's the first thing I thought of is having big bulky gloves on in the winter. And how much of my life has been spent trying to connect a zipper fashion that is not related specifically to my disability, but would be such a benefit. And so for anyone who's wondering about engaging with disability, think of the inventions like that that are out there or the design choices, or the policies or things that could be changed to make everyone's life better. Not only people who are presently affected by disability. Right. There's. There's so much out there that is the benefit of engaging people with different backgrounds, different experiences.
So that's, that's probably a rant from me. But Senator Harkin, anything you'd add to that, that's perfect.
[01:01:55] Speaker A: I don't know that I could add anything to that. Daniel, thank you very much.
[01:01:58] Speaker B: So before I let you two go, before I tried to turn this into the five hour interview that I really hope it could someday be, some day I'm gonna get there. I don't know with who. That's a running joke this season is.
But what's not running joke? It's the amazing, incredible work that the Hawkins Institute and the annual Hawkins Summit does for those listening and watching who are unfamiliar with both of those initiatives.
What are they?
[01:02:58] Speaker A: Well, Daniel, I'm gonna have to go to Dan because he runs the whole thing.
[01:03:02] Speaker C: So.
[01:03:03] Speaker A: Go ahead, Daniel.
[01:03:04] Speaker C: Sure.
[01:03:05] Speaker B: What do you. Daniel?
[01:03:07] Speaker C: I was gonna say I. I have the honor of carrying on Senator Harkin's disability work. So I am. Am, of course.
[01:03:16] Speaker B: Wow. About that.
Big shoes to kill.
[01:03:24] Speaker C: I know. I feel like. I feel like I could stand in one of those shoes alone and still not take up.
But anyway, so the Harkin Institute of course was founded by Senator Harkin and his wife Ruth at Drake University.
We're based in Des Moines, Iowa, which is where I am today.
And we work on four different areas of public policy that were central to Senator Harkins legislative history.
And those are wellness, nutrition, retirement security, labor and employment, and people with disabilities.
So I'll focus on our disability work. But you can of course find all of us at HarkenInstitute. Drake Edu is our website. You can also find the Harkin Institute on about every social media platform that you can think of. So follow the institute there for all of our work.
Our disability work really does focus on disability employment. And as I've mentioned, we do take a pretty wide approach or lens to that. So we have projects working with Medicaid, we have projects on transportation, we do some work on housing, education, international issues, looking for how it can positively affect the competitive, integrated employment of people with disabilities.
So that's, that's really the hook that we try to approach things with. And the reason we do that, as the Senator has already mentioned, is that in those 34 years since the ADA was passed, employment is the area that we've really made the least amount of progress and at least in modern day United States. Right. Your employment status affects your access to health care, your access to education, your, I mean, all of those things, transportation, housing, health care, you really don't have access to much of that if you don't have access to employment. So economic empowerment through competitive integrated employment is our focus.
We're based in Iowa and we have projects that are focused on Iowa, but we have projects that are nationwide and we do a lot of work internationally as well. So you can go to our website and see some of the policy briefs and research that we've done on disability employment and our other areas.
But our big flagship event, as you mentioned, is the Harkin Summit. So it is the Harken International Disability Employment Summit that is an annual event. We will be having the seventh one this December in Washington D.C. so I'll put up my little, I've got a nice little advertising placard here. I hope it's not mirrored in the video. It's showing up mirrored for me. But so December 18th and 19th in Washington D.C.
on the back there's a QR code. So I will just hold that up to the screen. For anyone watching the video, you can go ahead and scan this technology, folks.
[01:06:46] Speaker B: It's amazing.
[01:06:48] Speaker C: And if you are not watching, you can also go to harkinsummit.org and get that information as well. So the Harkins Summit is an annual conference on disability employment.
And just, you know, the 30 second elevator pitch is that we really work with this summit to bring three key populations together and those are the private sector, the public sector and self advocates.
So we bring representatives from those three populations from all over the world to our summit so that, you know, the corporate professionals, the elected officials and government professionals and disabled self advocates in, you know, the self advocacy or NGO space can all get together and hopefully solve and troubleshoot challenges and best practices for competitive integrated deployment across the world.
So like I said, our next one will be in D.C. this December. We hope people will join us there. And if you miss dc, we want to see you at the next one. I'm reviewing content actually this week and we have proposals from dozens of countries all over the world already hoping to come speak in Washington D.C. dec. 18th and 19th. It is also virtual as well. So if you can't make it in person, wherever you are, log in to join the live stream and sessions will also be recorded and put on our YouTube. You can find all of our past content from our last summit on YouTube as well. So I don't know if that was quite 30 seconds but that's the elevator pitch of the Harkin Summit.
[01:08:36] Speaker B: Any other I want to thank both Senator Hawkins and you Daniel for coming on now quite five hours. I don't know where that came into my head but I'm going with it on it they did said been a reminder remarkable 100th episode and I could not think about doing it with anyone else than Senator Hawkins nor could I do anything in life that should stretch the should take the cred.
Your legacy is legendary and I hope it is still talked about 2, 3, 400 years from now because it is is that important. And like you said, you had mentors in the disability community who informed your work and the builds that preceded the ADA informed it and you got wonderful project Jay who I'm not jealous of Daniel because I would not want to try to fill Canada Hawkins shoes. But on a positive note I am going to try my best to make it to the Hawkins Summit then December again. I want to also thank the Executive Director of Disability Rights California, my friend Anthony Empanado and my uncle, the former Senator from the great state of Arizona, Senator Dennis Digginsini Bolt for arranging this fantastic 100th episode of disability Empowerment Now. Gentlemen, thank you so much for the work you have done and continue to do. See you soon.
[01:11:38] Speaker A: Thank you very much Keith. We hope to see you in Washington.
[01:11:42] Speaker C: Yes, thanks Keith for having us.
[01:11:44] Speaker B: Have a great day. Bye.
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