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Voices from the Edge: Narratives about the Americans with Disabilities Act
Fear, rage, courage, discrimination. These are facts of everyday life for many Americans with disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), has made working, traveling, and communicating easier for many individuals. But what recourse do individuals have when enforcement of the law is ambiguous or virtually nonexistent? And how will its changing definition affect individuals' lives-as well as their legal actions-in the future? What is life like in post-ADA America?
Voices from the Edge seeks to challenge the mindset of those who would deny equal protection to the disabled, while providing informative analysis of the intent and application of the ADA for those who wish to learn more about disability rights. Giving voice to the many types of discrimination the disabled face--at a small Southern College, in the Library of Congress, on a New York City sidewalk--while illustrating the personal stakes underlying legal disputes over the ADA, this collection offers unparalleled insight into the lives behind the law.
Joan Aleshire on disability and the eye of the beholder.
Achim Nowak on disclosing HIV.
C.G.K. Atkins on being an academic liability.
Stephen Kuusisto on hope without the tenure lifeboat.
Leonard Kriegel on wheelchairs vs. NYC sidewalks.
John Hockenberry on trying one's luck at public transit.
Joan Tollifson on a license to drive disabled.
Shawn Casey O'Brien on the blue beacon of accessibility.
Jean Stewart on sign language in the ER.
Ruth O'Brien on everything you wanted to know about the ADA.
Voices from the Edge seeks to challenge the mindset of those who would deny equal protection to the disabled, while providing informative analysis of the intent and application of the ADA for those who wish to learn more about disability rights. Giving voice to the many types of discrimination the disabled face--at a small Southern College, in the Library of Congress, on a New York City sidewalk--while illustrating the personal stakes underlying legal disputes over the ADA, this collection offers unparalleled insight into the lives behind the law.
Joan Aleshire on disability and the eye of the beholder.
Achim Nowak on disclosing HIV.
C.G.K. Atkins on being an academic liability.
Stephen Kuusisto on hope without the tenure lifeboat.
Leonard Kriegel on wheelchairs vs. NYC sidewalks.
John Hockenberry on trying one's luck at public transit.
Joan Tollifson on a license to drive disabled.
Shawn Casey O'Brien on the blue beacon of accessibility.
Jean Stewart on sign language in the ER.
Ruth O'Brien on everything you wanted to know about the ADA.
- GenresDisability
312 pages, Paperback
First published October 26, 1998
1 person is currently reading
45 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 14, 2009
This book has a really cool structure: it's half short stories and half information about the Americans With Disabilities Act, which provides the legal context for the stories. The stories and legal info alternate throughout the book, so there's maybe eight or ten pages of legal commentary after every two or three stories, which kept me really engaged.
The stories were of varying quality and style, but they were all interesting and really did open a window into different people's experiences. The legal analysis was written in a very easy, accessible style, and in the end, I felt like I learned a whole lot. It had never occurred to me, for example, to think about the height difference between the street and the point where it meets the curb cut. I would just see curb cuts and think "Oh good, it's accessible for people using power chairs," when that might not actually be the case if the curb cut hasn't been installed properly. And even though I was familiar with interpretation issues that immigrants/non-English speakers face when receiving medical care, I didn't think about how deaf health care patients might encounter the same issues.
There were two things that I felt would have improved the book: the first thing is that all of the stories are about "physical" conditions, as opposed to emotional, cognitive, or mental disabilities, and I would have been interested to see how the law would apply to persons with those kinds of disabilities as well and how their experience is linked to persons with "physical" disabilities (with physical in quotes because seriously, where do you draw the line between limbs and the brain?). Second, all of the story narrators seem to be white or race ambiguous. Race is mentioned several times as a factor in how people with disabilities are perceived--in three separate stories, the narrators make observations along the lines of, "If I hadn't been white, my situation might not have turned out so well"--but it would have been good to include stories that explicitly gave the perspective of a person of color with a disability and how their experience as a person with a disability intersected with their experience as a person of color.
It was a good book and I would definitely recommend it. Also, it was really neat to read two stories by women with hand deformities and to read about things that had happened to them that I could identify with, since generally there aren't a lot of characters in books with deformities.
The stories were of varying quality and style, but they were all interesting and really did open a window into different people's experiences. The legal analysis was written in a very easy, accessible style, and in the end, I felt like I learned a whole lot. It had never occurred to me, for example, to think about the height difference between the street and the point where it meets the curb cut. I would just see curb cuts and think "Oh good, it's accessible for people using power chairs," when that might not actually be the case if the curb cut hasn't been installed properly. And even though I was familiar with interpretation issues that immigrants/non-English speakers face when receiving medical care, I didn't think about how deaf health care patients might encounter the same issues.
There were two things that I felt would have improved the book: the first thing is that all of the stories are about "physical" conditions, as opposed to emotional, cognitive, or mental disabilities, and I would have been interested to see how the law would apply to persons with those kinds of disabilities as well and how their experience is linked to persons with "physical" disabilities (with physical in quotes because seriously, where do you draw the line between limbs and the brain?). Second, all of the story narrators seem to be white or race ambiguous. Race is mentioned several times as a factor in how people with disabilities are perceived--in three separate stories, the narrators make observations along the lines of, "If I hadn't been white, my situation might not have turned out so well"--but it would have been good to include stories that explicitly gave the perspective of a person of color with a disability and how their experience as a person with a disability intersected with their experience as a person of color.
It was a good book and I would definitely recommend it. Also, it was really neat to read two stories by women with hand deformities and to read about things that had happened to them that I could identify with, since generally there aren't a lot of characters in books with deformities.
August 28, 2023
I was impressed with how insightful this book was. I didn't expect it to be such an easy and informative read!!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews