EDITORIAL: Editorial: County can be a model for offering access to all

July 28--The Americans with Disabilities Act this week marks a quarter of a century of breaking down barriers.

No longer are people with disabilities hidden away. No longer must one try to crop a wheelchair out of the picture, as President Franklin Roosevelt did.

Thanks to the law, people with disabilities today can do things the able-bodied take for granted: Go to the post office, eat at a restaurant, go shopping, or maneuver city sidewalks.

The goal has been to remove physical barriers to an equal opportunity in life.

In Beaufort County, this equality may best be represented by the mats installed in 2002 on the soft beach sand to enable wheelchair access to Hilton Head Island's beach. It should be advertised as one of the island's grandest amenities. Yet, when the idea was broached, accommodations tax dollars were denied because it was said the mats would have no effect on tourism.

Flash forward to today, and the community is trying to raise money for a full village to enable independent living for the disabled.

In that way, we have started to address the crux of the act, which is to knock down attitudinal barriers.

Ben Mattlin, author of "Miracle Boy Grows Up: How the Disability Rights Revolution Saved My Sanity," wrote for The New York Times:

"The ADA is about more than ramps and Braille; it's about dispelling stereotypes, ensuring parity and fairness, creating opportunities and opening up our society to the full spectrum of types and needs. It's about accepting, even welcoming, a huge and often marginalized segment of the population."

That segment still needs more job opportunities. It needs more help in public and private transportation. It needs advocates who know the law and can see to it that the law is followed and maneuver through myriad government and private agencies.

Beaufort County, with its enviable tax base and countless volunteers, should be a model for the nation in breaking down barriers.

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