What ADA means ...

Published: July 26, 2007

Jason Price claims he had to have a steel bladder before the Americans with Disability Act was signed into law 17 years ago today.

"Any trip outside the home was a risk. No matter where I went, there would be no access to a bathroom,” recalled Price, 33, who suffers from cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair.

Price was born in Dover, graduated from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah and now works at Shepherd Mall in Oklahoma City. He's as a vocational rehabilitation coordinator for the Social Security Administration. He's been married for 10 years.

"I personally faced innumerable challenges before the ADA was passed. We were a forgotten lot. People with disabilities were not thought of as human before ADA. We were an afterthought,” Price said. "In many cases, all the shortcomings and barriers were not outright malicious tactics by business owners. For the most part, they truly had not thought of us.

"Essentially, people with disabilities were on house arrest. We were forced to watch America pass us by even though we knew we had a lot to offer,” Price said. "The ADA changed that forever.”

Bill Austin, who has muscular dystrophy, and his sister, Anita, both are disabled.

But she got the wheelchair most days when they were growing up in Texas.

So, when Austin was a student at a Dallas elementary school, he once got tossed out of class because his disability posed "a potential harm that could affect me during the day when I was alone by myself in a classroom,” Austin recalled.

He remembered that incident and vowed things wouldn't ever get that strange or that difficult in his future.

He earned an accounting degree from the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond and now works for the state Department of Rehabilitative Services in Oklahoma City.

He's appreciative of all the benefits from the Americans with Disabilities Act.

"The largest impact has been to raise the awareness of Oklahomans to the plight of the disabled,” Austin said. "All we want as disabled individuals is to be recognized as hardworking, tax-paying and worthwhile human beings.”

Selena Sundling-Crawford, 30, has a bachelor's degree in accounting, and works for the Internal Revenue Service in Tulsa.

She was born blind.

But that doesn't keep her — "an adrenalin junky” — from bungee jumping, hang gliding, parasailing, ski diving, surfing, water skiing and downhill skiing

She's a certified scuba diver, too.

Sundling-Crawford also is blunt and outspoken.

"I was born totally blind with cataracts because people smoked around my mom when she was pregnant with me,” she said.

She has these thoughts on the American with Disabilities Act:

"I think the ADA is a good thing, but I feel that it is rarely enforced when it comes to how it relates to blind people,” she said.

"Well, there is an ATM in my federal government building that is not accessible,” she said.

She had to argue with a pharmacy because they would not sell behind-the-counter cold medication to blind people because "we only had a state ID and not a driver's license,” she said.

She also has issues with business that don't have their Web sites available to disabled individuals, especially those with vision difficulties.

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