Katy Beh Neas is Easter Seals’ point person on public policy for people with disabilities and their families. As Executive Vice President, Government Relations, Neas leads a staff of lobbyists to develop and achieve Easter Seals’ federal and state public policy goals. Neas has been a member of Easter Seals’ Government Relations team since January 1995, and a member of the Easter Seals management team since 2011. She develops and implements strategies to influence Congress, federal agencies, and others to increase opportunities for children with disabilities and their families.
My entry into professional life started with a position on the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Disability Policy in the late 1980s and its work on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). For three years, I worked side-by-side with disability advocates inside the Beltway and across the country. Our common purpose was to get the American public and Congress to understand that discrimination on the basis of disability took many forms – myth, stereotype, fear – and that this discrimination was counter to our values as Americans.
The Subcommittee conducted many hearings during which people with disabilities told their own stories about what they wanted out of life, why barriers must be removed and why our country could do better. I remember one woman who was in her late 50s and had breast cancer. She was a tough New York City stock broker who scheduled her chemo visits so they would not interfere with her job. She was fired because her employer didn’t want someone “sick” in their office. I remember another woman who had intellectual disabilities and had a job. When asked what she did with her paycheck – she flashed a huge smile and said – “I bought this beautiful dress.”
The story of the ADA is the story of America coming together. Disability organizations and advocates tossed aside parochial agendas and advanced the ADA with one voice. Civil rights leaders joined disability rights leaders as their cause was our cause. Democrats and Republicans worked together as parents, siblings, and neighbors with disabilities. Congress and the White House together made the ADA the law of the land.
If you’ve never read the ADA, I encourage you to do so. Here is just a sample:
“The Nation's proper goals regarding individuals with disabilities are to assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for such individuals; and the continuing existence of unfair and unnecessary discrimination and prejudice denies people with disabilities the opportunity to compete on an equal basis and to pursue those opportunities for which our free society is justifiably famous, and costs the United States billions of dollars in unnecessary expenses resulting from dependency and non-productivity.”
Today, we should take a page from the ADA handbook about the value of working together to advance a common goal. The past 25 years of the ADA prove this approach is good for all of us.
