Inclusion Desk

When most of Monroe County was designated a yellow zone on Monday over rising coronavirus cases, preschool classes for students with disabilities at CP Rochester switched to remote learning on a moment’s notice.

Allison Green’s 4-year-old daughter, Emma, was caught off guard this week when her school bus didn’t arrive.

“It led to tons of emotions this morning, lots of crying and just complete and utter meltdown over the fact of 'where's her bus?’ ” Green said Wednesday.

Gerard Buckley still clearly remembers July 26, 1990.

On that day, he stood alongside dozens of others in the White House Rose Garden, as then-President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law.

"It was really amazing," Buckley recalled. "It was everything I wish the country was today. The Republicans, the Democrats, the independents, the business community, leaders from the disability community all came together."

That day, Buckley was a young deaf man. Today, he is president of RIT's National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

Until recently, Sherrodney Fulmore rode a bus to get to and from his job at Wegmans.

From his home in Rochester’s 19th Ward to the Holt Road Wegmans in Webster, the trip usually took about an hour, he said.

Fulmore rode on the Regional Transit Service’s Access buses -- the smaller shuttle-size buses that offer curb-to-curb service for people with disabilities.

But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the Rochester area, Fulmore stopped riding the bus.

“We wanted to cut the chance of him getting sick,” said his father, Frank Fulmore.

July 26 is the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in several areas, including employment and access to government services.

Rebecca Cokley, who served in the Obama administration and is currently the director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress, recently talked to WXXI's Alex Crichton about the progress that has been made since the ADA went into effect and how much remains to be done.

Jon Seiger was 32 years old when he lost his hearing to an infection. He calls the experience “surreal.”

“Just walking through the world and breathing and not hearing your own breath all of the sudden was very odd,” he says. “And it made life feel bizarre and surreal, and I was kind of separated from the world.”