When Equal Access Means Zero Access for All

Ghu, I've heard these arguments for so long: "it's too expensive to put a ramp in here" "we'll lose too many dorm rooms if we put an elevator in", "we can't afford to stay in business if we have to stop poisoning our employees / the neighbors"

These laws always grandfather in existing practice. UCB had plenty of time to know about it. It's unfortunate they didn't (I don't believe it was malicious) but it's fairer that we take a stand. And for chrissakes this is Berkeley the people most likely to agree with my statement!

And the fact is we all benefit long term from these changes. I didn't really care much about ramps until...I broke my leg! And years of playing and listening to extremely loud music has affected my hearing. And even "normal" people benefit from things like crash bars on doors (especially with hands full of coffee trays and sandwiches).

=== ( Parenthetical because it's orthogonal to my comment: I have a few friends who love the FEE and post lots of links. It seems to be an association of selfish people -- this is one of the least problematic things I've seen from them).

FEE is a fairly biased and bigoted organization, but their argument /sounds/ plausible.

It /sounds/ stupid that you should have to remove, or not publish, content just because deaf people can't read it. But the alternative is for the law to say that the ADA does not apply to deaf people. That is the /only/ way to stop this having to be pulled down.

If that exception is made then there is no longer any reason for any government organization to support deaf or hard of hearing (UCB is huge, so the cost argument that applies here, also applies to any other government organization).

Among other things, that means that the public education system would no longer need to support deaf children.

The ADA exists specifically because before the ADA existed schools did exactly that, as did universities, etc