Enabling Acts

The Hidden Story of How the Americans With Disabilities Act Gave the Largest US Minority Its Rights

By: Lennard Davis

Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell

The first significant book on the history and impact of the ADA - the "eyes on the prize" moment for disability rights.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is the widest-ranging and most comprehensive piece of civil rights legislation ever passed in the United States, and it has become the model for disability-based laws around the world. Yet the surprising story behind how the bill came to be is little known.

In this riveting account, acclaimed disability scholar Lennard J. Davis delivers the first behind-the-scenes and on-the-ground narrative of how a band of leftist Berkeley hippies managed to make an alliance with upper-crust, conservative Republicans to bring about a truly bipartisan bill. Based on extensive interviews with all the major players involved, including legislators and activists, Davis recreates the dramatic tension of a story that is anything but a dry account of bills and speeches. Rather, it's filled with one indefatigable character after another, culminating in explosive moments when the hidden army of the disability community stages scenes like the iconic Capitol Crawl or an event some describe as "deaf Selma", when students stormed Gallaudet University demanding a "deaf president now!"

From inside the offices of newly formed disability groups to secret breakfast meetings surreptitiously held outside the White House grounds, here we meet countless unsung characters, including political heavyweights and disability advocates on the front lines. "You want to fight?" an angered Ted Kennedy would shout in an upstairs room at the Capitol while negotiating the final details of the ADA. Congressman Tony Coelho, whose parents once thought him to be possessed by the devil because of his epilepsy, later became the bill's primary sponsor.

©2015 Lennard Davis (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Rarely told narrative!

Great format for crucial civil rights narrative! Highly recommend for anyone interested in history, all members of the disability community, and anyone interested in civil rights.

this book is so informative

gentle reader I wish to let you know that I am a man with cerebral palsy who uses canes in a wheelchair to get around I am in my late 50s and was alive long before the Americans with Disability Act became law. the story in this book about how the Americans with Disabilities Act came into being and became law should be read and understood by every person in the United States. I lived through discrimination and being talked to as if I was a child for many years. sometimes able-bodied people don't think the people with disabilities can think for themselves or even have feelings. this comes out in the book. how disabled people and able-bodied people fought for the Civil Rights of people with disabilities is something that should be studied as much as civil rights movements of other groups. this book is amazing and well worth spending of your time to listen and to think about it. thank you for reading this I hope it helps you understand