Disabled access

Congress should stand tall and help, not hinder, people with disabilities.

Love may be blind, but finding romance in the age of dating apps isn’t always easy for the visually impaired. Those challenges were explored in the short documentary “Blind Date,” written, produced and directed by Houstonian Nicole Ellis and Maya Albanese and screened last month at the Houston Reel-Abilities Film Festival sponsored by the JFS Alexander Institute for Inclusion.

While moviegoers were applauding the courage of the visually impaired in their quest for romance in “Blind Date,” the fighting spirit of the School for Deaf Rangers football team as they took on a competitive league in “4 Quarters of Silence” and other people depicted in the films who work hard every day to overcome their limitations, the U.S. House of Representatives was passing H.R. 620, sponsored by retiring Congressman Ted Poe of Houston. This bill would make it harder, not easier, for people with disabilities to lead normal lives.

Under the 25-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act, private businesses must ensure new buildings are accessible to the disabled and must remove barriers in older buildings where it is “readily achievable” — a standard that considers the cost of the change and the resources of the business.

But under the bill that passed the House last week, if a person in a wheelchair can’t access a restaurant, he must provide the owner with a written notice in a technical, specific form. Some people don’t have the skills to comply with this requirement.

The business owner then has 60 days to respond and 60 days to resolve the issue unless there are factors beyond the business’s control, in which case they only have to make “substantial progress.” This term — which is not defined — could provide cover for foot dragging.

Houstonians who value the rights of people with disabilities should write U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and direct them to kill any companion bill that is introduced in the Senate.

No other civil rights group is forced to wait 120 days to enforce their civil rights.

“This will set precedent because, for the first time in history, a protected class would have to provide notification of its intent to exercise their civil rights,” according to a November open letter from the National Council on Independent Living, a national membership association of local not-for-profit organizations. The letter was signed by more than 500 disability rights groups, including over 20 in Texas.

The bill arose because of a problem with a few unscrupulous lawyers shaking down noncomplying businesses for monetary settlements. This lawsuit abuse needs to stop, but serial frivolous litigation is better handled by state laws and local legal disciplinary authorities than by an overreaching federal law.

Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who had both legs amputated as a result of a combat injury in Iraq, said in a Twitter thread following the vote: “I understand that not everyone thinks about these things because for most of my adult life I didn’t either. But the truth is that everyone is just one bad day away from needing accessible options the #ADA requires to help them get around.”

After 25 years of progress to ensure that society is open to all Americans, we’re starting to move backward.

Here in Houston, on the brink of primary elections, the Justice Department canceled two related hearings seeking to observe county polling places for legal compliance with the ADA.

The federal government had sued Harris County in August 2016, alleging some of its voting sites violated federal law because they lacked appropriate parking, proper ramps, navigable sidewalks, passageways and voting space and other mandatory accommodations, as reported by Chronicle reporter Gabrielle Banks.

Apparently the government now sees nothing wrong with literal barriers to the physically challenged being able to vote.

It’s unconscionable to block our disabled community’s determined paths with more inaccessible voting booths, restrooms, inaccessible medical equipment, inaccessible parking lots, inaccessible entrances and inaccessible tables at restaurants.

Life can be hard enough for our disabled community. Congress shouldn’t make things any more difficult.