TRIPIL Web Article Archives
Kyle Glozier at the ADA Notification Hearing
Congressional Judicary Subcommittee on ADA Notification Act.
Date: May 18, 2000
Article has been reformatted for archival purposes.
ADA Notification Hearing
Statement of Kyle Glozier, Private Citizen
May 18, 2000
Good morning members of the Subcommittee on the Constitution. I am honored to be here this morning. I learned of this bill last week from an email that was sent to my mom and dad. The American's with Disabilities Act has been in place for 10 years on July 27, 2000. When my grandpa died last year and I went to the funeral I had to be carried up and down the steps because the funeral home was not accessible. My family talked with the funeral director and told him about the ADA and how he was violating my civil rights by his building not being accessible. He promised that he would make it accessible. My grandma went and checked on this a few months later to make sure the funeral director kept his word, and he did. He installed a lift so that other people who use wheelchairs would not have to be carried up the steps.
I feel that this bill that Mr. Eastwood is lobbying for is a bill that was designed to weaken the ADA and take away the civil rights of people with disabilities. Doesn’t he understand that the ADA has been in place for 10 years and that if you renovate a building you must make it accessible to people with disabilities? He failed to do that and now wants the Congress to support him in his failure to comply with a law that is clearly written. He says that the sleazy lawyers that file these so called "frivolous" lawsuits are in collusion with people with disabilities. This is not the case! There are no money damages for individual plaintiffs under title III of the ADA, and the only financial incentive for businesses to address accessibility issues is the threat of having to pay the plaintiffs attorneys fees. Many people with disabilities hire lawyers to sue people who fail to make their place of business accessible. Many people with disabilities file their own pro-se law suits against businesses that fail to make their buildings accessible. It is people with disabilities, whom Mr. Eastwood refers to as "people who can’t defend themselves," that hire lawyers and file law suits for violations of the ADA regulations, in fact it is the most effective way that people with disabilities have to defend their civil rights in a society that does not accept them as equal. Mr. Eastwood had the opportunity to comply and choose to fight the case and lost. That’s his motive for being here today. Many small and large businesses already have voluntarily complied with the law. This bill would reward those who only will comply when threatened with a lawsuit.
It is not right that I should be excluded from someplace simply because the owner fails to think about "ALL" the people that may visit their place of business. If my school wasn’t accessible I should have to wait for 90 days for them to decide whether or not they want to make it accessible? Why should my education be put on hold while they decide to make the building accessible. It’s already bad enough when I go on field trips with my school. I always have to be segregated from my classmates to enter the building that we are visiting. This bill is something that will make it virtually impossible to impose any kind of violations against the businesses that disregard the ADA by building buildings that I cannot get into. Why are people with disabilities singled out as the only class required to give advance notification of their violation of civil rights? I’m a member of the public and I have rights too!
Downloads and Media
You can download a text copy of Kyle Gloziers Statement as well as an RealAudio clip to the Congressional Subcommittee on ADA Notification Act below:
Media Clips Require the add-on: RealPlayer Addon Download Site 
