Episode 135: The Open Road: Your Right to Accessible Travel

8:28PM Nov 5, 2024

Speakers:

Barry Whaley

Eric Lipp

Keywords:

ADA live

accessible travel

disability market

travel rights

Air Carrier Act

Air Carrier Access

pandemic impact

travel barriers

technology innovation

air travel

train travel

cruise lines

public busses

international travel

service animals

Hi, I'm Eric lip, and you're listening to ADA live.

Yo let's roll. Let's go

Hi everybody. On behalf of the southeast ADA Center, the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University and the ADA National Network, I want to welcome you to ADA live. I'm Barry Whaley. I'm the project director of the Southeast ADA Center. Listening audience. If you have questions about the Americans with Disabilities Act, you can use our online form anytime at Ada live.org or you can call the southeast ADA Center at 404-541-9001

and as always, those calls are free and confidential. Our guest for this episode is Eric Litt, founder and executive director of Open Doors organization. The mission of this nonprofit, open doors organization is to make goods and services accessible to people with disabilities in travel, tourism and transportation. Their goal is to teach businesses how to succeed in the disability market while simultaneously empowering the disability community. So Eric, it's great to have you on our show. Thank you for coming.

Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Who doesn't love to travel. Americans spend billions of dollars each year on leisure travel, according to the US Travel Association, this travel supports millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in economic impact, including food services, lodging, transportation, recreation, amusement and retail sales. When we turn our attention to the disability Travel Market, open doors organization reported that 25 point 6 million people with disabilities travel for pleasure or business and spent over $50 billion travel numbers have returned to their pre pandemic levels, and so this is the proper time to have this discussion in this program, we'll talk about two laws that affect people with disabilities when they travel. Title Three of the ADA, which prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in places of public accommodation, including hotels, restaurants, airports, bus stations and more. The second law is the Air Carrier Access Act, which makes it illegal for airlines to discriminate against passengers because of their disability. However, people with disabilities sometimes file lawsuits or complaints because they believe their rights were violated or they had a poor travel experience. So Eric, could you tell us to start off a little bit more about Open Doors organization, like

we are entering our 25th year as a non profit, and our mission has been always to make goods and services accessible to people with disabilities and travel, tourism and transportation. And our goal has always been to get people out of the house, traveling and tourism. You know, people love to go on vacation. I found that there was a real need for advocacy in that area. And 25 years ago, I started open doors to do just that. And now we work in almost every form of travel and tourism, from working with countries, entire countries and states and cities to local governments, big, big travel companies and all over the world, really excited about where things have gone. I think we've been able to open some doors for people over the years as well. Yeah,

that's great, especially when you say to get people out of the house. Because, you know, sometimes disability can be an impediment to travel, or can just simply be a hassle, one of the things you guys do is you conduct nationwide studies on travel for people with disabilities. So what are some of the interesting findings from your most recent study?

Well, I think one of the most interesting findings from our most recent study is really that the overall numbers of travel for people with disabilities are really back to normal. So we are in full recovery from pre pandemic levels, which means that there's millions of us traveling a year, and that's billions and billions of dollars. So I think that the real message is that, is that, well, people with disabilities are just like everybody else. We have this pent up demand. We've wanted to get out of the house, and the numbers are showing that in like aviation, we're spending ten billion and, you know, we're we're flying, still. Only one time a year. So just getting us to fly more than once a year is can increase billions of dollars in revenue.

I'm curious, Eric, because we last talked right at the beginning of the pandemic, how impactful was the pandemic on disability travel? Is there a way to quantify that?

There's not necessarily a way to quantify it, except that understanding that everybody's disability is different in the new what happened to us during COVID was tough because it became more restrictive. So things like wearing a mask make it really difficult for somebody who's deaf or hard of hearing to see right what you're saying. It could also be difficult for somebody with low dexterity to put on a mask and to take it off and to do those things. Sometimes people with disabilities need some aid, which requires contact, and nobody wanted to get close to each other, contact each other, things like that. So I think that we ended up during COVID, building some barriers because of COVID that made it more difficult to travel. Those barriers have since broken down. I mean, I travel every week, and I can tell you that, you know, no longer do you have to cough into your arm because people are just coughing randomly, everywhere again. So I think that a lot of those restrictions that caused us more obstacles. I think those are gone now back to just where we were before.

So open doors seeks to find solutions right to these accessibility barriers to make travel more accessible. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Eric, in

my 25th year of advocacy, my views have changed a little bit. I think for the first time, I'm going to say here that the future and everything is really the innovation. It's not necessarily good customer service and knowing and understanding me and my needs and all that. I think it's in the technology and the innovation that you use, and can that predict my needs, and can that solve my problem that once happened before you know, if this happens to me? Wow, and it happened to you too. Are we able now, through technology, to create an answer for those problems I see in technology the next great movement, like when we started texting, right? It became a great way for people to communicate. I think we're stepping into that direction. So I think the next best thing is actually the innovative and technology sector. It's no longer to me, in the customer service and the regulation part of it, it's really the technology.

So we have a lot of different transportation options when we travel, and let's talk about a few of them. And let's obviously start with air travel. We've all heard stories of people having damage mobility aids, wheelchairs, inaccessible restrooms on airplanes. What rights do travelers with disabilities have when they fly? That's

the difficult thing, and it's always tough for me, because there's actually two laws in place there. There's the Air Carrier Access Act and the ADA. And most people with disabilities don't even realize that there's two laws there, and that the ADA covers the airport and everything in the airport, and really the Air Carrier Access Act is on the aircraft and with the airline and reservations and all that in the airport, if the restrooms aren't working, I'm going to the accessible restrooms. If you don't have them, or they're not working and you don't have an alternative, I'm going to sue you, and we're going to settle out of court, and you're going to fix them right away. But which airline, in which airplane has the accessible bathrooms, right? None of them, 100% of them, don't have accessible bathrooms. So for us at open doors, that the first challenge is to make single aisle aircraft accessible, having accessible laboratories. And that is a you know, that's a challenge. You ask, what our rights are? Our rights are limited because of the Air Carrier Access Act a little bit. We have no individual right to action, and the D O T doesn't always do the best enforcement actions too. You know, a lot of these things have been the way they have for a long time, and I believe if they pushed hard enough, they would change. I do believe that, you know people, they have rights on planes. They're just not as many as we think, because they're not the same as the ADA, like you don't have any seating privileges, and some people think they want the bulkhead seating, but it's not always the most convenient say for a service animal, because there's really nowhere for the dog to go underneath in the bulkhead. So I think that passengers rights in aviation and cruise lines, they're there, but there's nothing new in your rights that were not already in the regulations. Speaking

of the D O T, you know, they've just released a proposed rule. Able to strengthen the air carriers Access Act, and the rule would ensure passengers who use wheelchairs can travel safely and with more dignity. Can you tell us a little bit about what? What's in those new regulations?

Yeah, you know, there's a couple parts about the wheelchairs and damaging wheelchairs. So the deal is this, we damage about 1.3% of the wheelchairs we carry, let's call it 1.5 of the total amount of chairs we carry. We only damage 1.5 but because we're damaging 1.5 we've increased the regulations. And when we increase the regulations, what can very easily happen is this, you damage somebody's chair, you replace it for $30,000 and then on top of that, now you're going to get fined $40,000 so that's $70,000 what are you going to do next time you're not going to carry the chair because they don't have to, because that's what the law says, that they don't have to if they think They're going to damage your chair. So just because you screen the loudest, some of the advocates don't understand that we've actually regulated ourselves into a corner. Now the airlines can just very easily say we're not going to accept those chairs. So of the 1.5% that we break 30% or higher are going to be denied completely, which means those people will no longer be allowed to travel. And that really upsets me. I think that's the problem with all these regulations and these new, you know, things with damages is that when you start to over regulate, you take innovation completely out of the picture. And we've regulated so much that we can't actually use the new technology until the regulation changes. And to change that, it takes a lot. It's a luxury to fly. It's not a public service.

I am encouraged that the Access Board is looking at different ways where people can take their mobility devices onto airplanes, rather than have to transfer to a chair that is the property of the airline. Do you have any crystal ball on what that might look like? Eric,

well, my crystal ball on that is a message to the airlines, if you made more comfortable seats, people will transfer out into the seats. Because most of my friends, if you put them in first class, they don't want to sit in their own seat, right? They want the live flat seat, and they want to do that. Don't blame them, either. So my crystal ball, it's aviation saying, Hey, make more comfortable seats. Otherwise you're going to have to end up taking one out to have us tie down. My problem with the tie down stuff in my crystal ball is this, don't let me tie down in the aircraft until I can get to the bathroom. So we can't create another series of problems with one. Again, that's where regulation can come in. All of a sudden, we're regulated to do this, but you can't do that. So why? Why do this first? So I think we have to be really careful on what we do, and make sure that we're methodically moving through and doing the things that are going to be able to help everybody in in a sort of manner that makes sense,

right? So let's, let's go back down to the ground, Eric, and talk about train travel. Most train travel, of course, in the US, is provided by Amtrak. What is Amtrak doing to meet the needs of passengers with disabilities?

So this gets more exciting to me than air travel does, because Amtrak is a great way to travel if you have the time. What's going on at Amtrak is really super amazing. I wish that it could happen every industry such as this, but right now at Amtrak, it's always been difficult, because if you're going on a long haul, you can't go upstairs to the viewing car or the dining car and all that. Right? The new Amtrak trains that are coming out, you are going to be able to go upstairs. You're going to be able to go to the viewing car. In fact, not only will a car be accessible, the whole car will be accessible. So you can choose any seat you want in the car, so you'll be able to roll down the aisle of at least so almost like 25 30% of the train is going to be accessible, which is really exciting. I also think train travel for people with disabilities is a great way to travel. I'll tell you why. There's no security. It's a lot less stressful. And the train, you can get up if you need to get up and walk around on the train, you can get up at any time, right? I There's a lot of families with children with intellectual developmental disabilities or autism. They always ask me, you know, they're worried about flying and flying, and I tell them, try take the train. Amtrak is a great way to travel. I can't recommend it enough. Especially for people with disabilities, you get a little bit of a discount too. There's a wide variety of accessibility. For instance, if on a train from Chicago or New York to Los Angeles, you could have. Right? A room with your own accessible bathroom. That, to me, is really cool. That's like, different than aviation, completely, right? You can stay in your own chair if you want. You can get out if you want. You can pretty much do whatever you want. So I love the train for people with disabilities. I can't say it enough. I know people hate when I say, Oh, the train is the best way to travel because it's slow, but it's still the most convenient. Easiest

certainly is comfortable, far more comfortable than an airplane had the opportunity to ride Eurostar last year, and just the level of quiet and comfort was just unimaginable. Well, there have been some issues, though, with Amtrak, especially around inaccessible stations. I know the DOJ is a settlement with Amtrak, and then I saw earlier that a member of Congress has proposed the Think Differently Transportation Act would include ADA compliance information in the report to Congress that Amtrak provides. Do you know the status of that? Eric? Think

Amtrak is down to about 70 stations that need to be finished, and they're all on tap. They're going to be done really soon, which was really surprising. We're talking about, you know, hundreds of stations across the United States. They're almost fully accessible. There's a group of people with disabilities who kind of advise Amtrak. And these, this group of advocates, got more done than I've seen in any type of transportation. This group got whole new trains where we can go upstairs. So I think that, you know, given the challenges that they have at Amtrak because of the age of everything and the system, I think they're really further ahead. There was an action against the DOJ, but they've been doing the things. They're training all their frontline staff. They have recurrent training. Now, I do know there's been trouble, but I do believe that they're getting better, and there's a lot going on there because of that DOJ settlement. Well, certainly

it's good to hear that they are responsive in being proactive with the DOJ settlement. So thank you, Eric. This is great information. Ada live listening audience. If you have questions about this topic or any other ADA live topic, you can submit your questions online at Ada live.org or you can call the southeast ADA Center, 404-541-9001 we're going to pause now for a word from this episode. Sponsor, open doors organization.

Have you ever waited an hour and a half to exit your plane after arriving at your destination. Have you ever

been the center of attention just because it's difficult to enter a restaurant with unexpected stairs? More

than 54 million Americans with disabilities have found themselves in these and other inconvenient and difficult situations.

With your help, open doors organization will teach companies how to reach the disabled market, ultimately driving new revenue and creating accessibility. Open Doors

organization is seeking corporate sponsorship, individual support and charitable donations to fund upcoming training and educational programs. These include training programs that assist airline employees in making patrons with disabilities feel comfortable flying, and educational programs that create opportunities to teach our youth awareness to

learn more about Open Doors organization or to make a donation go to open doors. Nfp.org, that's open doors, NFP, as in, not for profit.org. Or call 773-388-8839,

see how you can help open doors for everyone, open doors organization is a non profit organization, and all charitable donations are tax deductible.

Hi Welcome back, everybody. I'm Barry Whiteley with Southeast ADA Center, and we're having a great discussion today with Eric Lipp, the executive director of Open Doors organization. We've been talking about the mission of Open Doors organization to make all types of travel more equal and accessible for people with disabilities. We've talked about air travel. We've talked a little about train travel. Let's turn our attention to cruise lines. Eric, I was reading the cruise line International Association released a 2024 global cruise passenger statistics showing that 31 point 7 million people took a cruise in 2023 The report also noted that accessible tour excursions are on the rise, with 45% of cruise passengers booking an accessible tour for their most recent cruise, maybe you could talk a little about what we need to consider when planning for a cruise. What rights do we have on cruise ships?

So the cruise ships, similar to the airlines, they have their own law too, the passenger vessel, and so those are, you know, similar. So we have rights under those, again, similar to the Bill of Rights. There's nothing new. It's just you have to read them and understand them. It's very similar to aviation. In fact, it's the same group that wrote them and over. Season as well. I will say this, people with disabilities love to cruise. You know, we cruise more often than the general population. Our number one complaint throughout the years has been the long distances on the cruise ships. As you know, ships are getting bigger. There's different levels and there's confusion and there's elevators everywhere. So imagine being blind or low vision and trying to navigate all those long distances. Number two was small elevators and overcrowded areas, but number two now is difficulty finding my way. You know, you need a map. It's like walking into disney world without a map. You don't know where you're going. You could just walk around for days. It's the same thing on a cruise ship. You got to have a map. But I also believe it's still one of the best forms of transportation, because the cruise industry loves us. They're the only industry that I could say does it out of the business sense of it, they're the ones who say, hey, we do know you're coming and we want you, so come on, and here's what we're going to do for you. And you come on the ship, because we want you on this ship. And they're even making more and more shore excursions accessible. So they're definitely on top of it. The one thing I hear, though, is the problem with bruising is I usually have to fly to get there. Well,

certainly it sounds like an industry that knows who their customers are, right. Let's talk about inner city busses, much like Amtrak, there was a Department of Justice settlement agreement with Greyhound because of repeated violations with the ADA, saying that Greyhound had failed to maintain lifts and securement devices and didn't provide equitable transportation to people. What's going on with city with inner city busses in terms of accessibility? So

public busses are becoming more and more accessible. You know, here in Chicago, every bus is accessible, but not every train station. So, you know, here in Chicago and other big cities, you're really relying, you know, heavily on the bus system, because that is the easiest form of transportation. The problem with the bus system is that it doesn't reach enough of the rural areas and suburban areas, and some suburbs don't even have public transportation, and that's always going to be the challenge, because some of the good jobs are not necessarily in the city. While you might live in the city, you need to be able to get outside the city as well, and transferring those you know, from one bus line to another, from one municipality to another, that is cumbersome and and difficult. The good news on that is, is that there's tons of research being done on how to better get people from their home to where they're going, and making sure that the complete trip is accessible, not just getting the bus but the bus stop has to be accessible, right? It has to have all kinds of accessible features. And how far is that, and can you get to the bus stop that could be dynamic too, you know, because they're doing construction and things change and stuff like that. So I think the bus system in the city. Bus systems have been some of the best, as far as you know, becoming accessible. It doesn't make it that easy, though, you know, to get around always.

You know, I mentioned a few minutes ago Eurostar and I traveled last year around the European Union and this year in the UK. And, you know, international travel has its own challenges for disabilities. There isn't anything similar to the ADA. So I'm wondering what tips you have for people with disabilities who want to travel internationally?

I will tell everybody this, traveling internationally is going to be a challenge. So I travel with a scooter. I wear an orthotic on my right leg, and I'm a t4 incomplete, so I can't walk. I can't really do stairs. I don't walk a ton. I use my scooter because it's fast and gets me around. But in Europe, my scooter is no good. I found Portugal recently to be very challenging with rough surfaces, incomplete sidewalks, very few curb cuts, lots of hills Europe and traveling abroad, you have to do your homework. I'm getting ready to go to Bangkok, and one of the ways I'm getting around there is I'm checking where my meetings are. I have to pull it up on Google Earth to see if I can even if the path from where I'm staying is I can walk there. I suggest going overseas is a mixed bag. You know, if you go to Japan, you're going to see some great innovation, some great technology. And way fine, you're like, Wow, this is great. They don't even have an ADA. And they're doing things, but then you'll go to other parts of Japan will be very bad, very difficult, and no accessibility at all. Same with places in South America like Brazil and Argentina, there are accessible things to do, and access is definitely better than it was 1015, years ago, 20 years ago, but you have to do your homework, check out things like Be My Eyes and Ira and all those kinds of things. Do you have that at your airport? What kind of wheelchair services at the airport? Can I get a free or discounted bus pass or rail pass because of my disability, and how many spots are there for people with disabilities? And do you have a Braille menu? Do you have captioning on your TVs, all that kind of stuff, you have to ask. But the truth of the matter is, is that if you don't ask, you put yourself in a position where the consequences are serious, and people don't understand that. You know, when something goes wrong for us, it's not a hassle, it's a big deal, and you can't really tell people that they don't get it, so you got to cover yourself as best as possible.

So do your homework. We've talked about modes of transportation, but we haven't talked about hotels, motels and lodging yet. Are there certain things to be aware of when we make reservations regarding accessible rooms.

I can't stress this one enough to call the hotel and don't talk to the front desk. Talk to housekeeping or engineering. They know the inside of the room. There could be 30 different types of accessible rooms in a hotel, like here at the Hyatt Regency downtown, or at the big Sheraton or Hilton. Do you have to call the hotel and ask somebody to go in the room and tell them what you're looking for. So you might want to get a picture. And this is a pet peeve of mine. You know, when you in the accessible bathroom, when they put the towels above the toilet? First of all, I don't like my towels to be above my toilet. And second, I can't reach them, right? Nobody can reach the towels above the toilet, so don't put them there. So there's all those kinds of design things. I think the best thing is to go in there and FaceTime. And I haven't had any pushback, so people will do that for you.

Non traditional lodging places like VRBO or Airbnb. What sort of things should travelers keep in mind if they're looking at booking lodging in a place like that,

look at other people's reviews first. Remember that Airbnb and verbo VRBO, they are. They're in an un kind of regulated space, very similar to Uber and Lyft. So you may not know what you're getting. If you think you're getting an accessible facility or, you know, accommodation, you need to be sure of that. Need to call the same way. The hard part is, is that when you get there and something is wrong, it's always difficult to contact somebody to get it right, and you end up trying to get a hold of somebody for two hours when you can't even, like, say, get in the front door, whereas, if you stay at a hotel, things can usually happen a little quicker. And it's an unregulated industry, so people, they don't have to do anything really, honestly, they don't really have to do anything for you. We've

also seen circumstances where places will say that they are accessible, right? And then you get there, and there are three steps up to the front door. So your advice to read the reviews, I think, is very important. We touched on service animals and air travel a minute ago. Many travelers are traveling with service animals. We know that rules can be different depending on the definition of a service animal with the Department of Transportation versus the ADA. What advice do you have, or what rights do people have traveling with their service animal? Well, everybody

needs to know a few things. Number one, to travel with your service animal. Now in the US, there's a D O T paperwork you have to fill out. No matter where, what airline you're flying, you should be allowed to carry it with you and present it at the gate. Everything's really being judged upon his behavior of the animal. So traveling in the United States, you have to know there's this new paperwork that you have to fill out. You're going to be asked about the training. You're going to be asked what the dog's task is likely. Because, after all, you you want the airline to know the dog's task. Because at 30,000 feet, you want the flight attendant to know that when your dog is barking, it's actually alerting them, it's not misbehaving. So I think there's one of these things that people think that the task is asking too much, but I think you want them to know the task, because you want to be safe. You want them to know when to help and when to like understand that your dog might just be misbehaving, but traveling outside the US is a new dynamic, right? A service animal, because you're going to travel out of the US and to come back in, even if you're a US citizen, you're going to have to have CDC paperwork now, and that is something you're going to have to do on your own. You're going to have to bring that with you, too, to the airport and show it at Customs and Border. And if you don't do it, you're not going to be let back in your own country. So service animals and traveling with them has become much more complex. There's a lot of fraud, and a lot of that is making it tougher and tougher to travel. But the truth is, is people with legitimate service animals, they don't mind that because they want it to be tough, because they know that you know, a service animal that's not legitimate is likely to attack their dog rights. And you know, always feel free to ask us questions about traveling with your service animal, and it's good to ask up front and get and so you understand how it all works, rather than get there and not be able to get home.

So you mentioned this paperwork. Where do we find that?

Online at D, o, t and online at the CDC. They both have the paperwork. The airlines all have links to it in their websites, because you're going to need that paperwork. The one thing that people in the United States need to know is that it's no joke. So my recommendation is, is, is that if you have a self trained animal, I would not fly through the UK.

Good advice. So we're the Southeast ADA Center. We have some of the most beautiful beaches in the country. What are some things that beaches have to do to be accessible to people with disabilities? Eric,

you know, I've been a big fan always of beaches. I brought a product here years ago called The Moby mat, and I found that because they were making these Moby mats, so in Desert Storm tanks, US tanks could turn in the desert on the sand. So I thought, hey, if a tank can use it, then a wheelchair can use it. So I see things like the Moby mat and synthetic Woods making, you know, beaches accessible. To me, the most important thing is that they're wheelable, rollable, and that the the rolling has little outlets and things like that. So people can set up with their families and they can go to different parts of the beach. So I know along, you know, in the southeast, there's a lot of beautiful beaches, and some of them along Florida coast into South Carolina. They do have accessible beach mats, and there's a lot been going on. The hard part is, once you're you know, we got the path to the beach, it's just that not all the beaches have, say, beach wheelchairs or water chairs, canoes, things like that, that people can do, that are accessible, but I see more and more accessible beaches.

Eric, a few years ago, we spoke with the safety manager for Dollywood, who gave us a lot of great information on what they do to be inclusive of people with disabilities. What advice do you have for people who want to go to an amusement park?

I'm a dolly guy. I took my kids to Pigeon Forge and to them. You know, accessibility is the world, because if dad can't go, then they don't get to do it. I did find Dollywood pretty accessible. Amusement parks are different. Every Park is different. Even within the Six Flags family, they're different. You need to call the park ahead of time, because I wear an orthotic on my leg, and it's a below the knee orthotic, but it's because it's solid plastic. They wouldn't let me on them at certain amusement parks. So I've been to a ton of them, and they're usually pretty accommodating. However, I found it better to ask for forgiveness than permission. So I didn't go in saying that I had this brace in my cane, and I just put my cane on the side with everybody's presence and gifts of things that they won. And then I get on the roller coaster, and hopefully nobody says anything to me. The toughest part is the inconsistency from Park to park, but I do know that just about every park in the country now has accessibility, has features, has bathrooms, has family bathrooms, has dining that's available. So I highly recommend amusement parks. Here in the United States, the one group of parks that didn't really catch up are the water parks. The water parks they all you have this big, tall tower you have to get up and down, and that is, that's the tower of discrimination that you see every time you drive by a water park, because that tower totally takes away from a lot of people who can't do it.

I know that universal is pulled away from the requirement of having people apply for disability identification cards, but Six Flags, for instance, is still requiring that. I don't know if you have any opinion on those cards.

It's just sad, right? It's not really an opinion, because it's sad. We had to go there. Yeah, we have to do that. We're doing that only because of people taking advantage of the system. We're not doing it to actually prove it to anybody, right? They really aren't asking me to prove it. They don't want to ask me that, but they're forced to do it because of the way people take advantage of the situations. I don't have an answer or solution for I just find it really sad. Any of us with a disability, we would give it up for two hours. In a heartbeat, I gave you two hours as a quadriplegic at the amusement park. You would never worry about it again, because you wouldn't, you wouldn't cheat again.

Well, Eric, thank you for being with us today, and I'm going to give you the final word, any final thoughts to share

travel. Get out and travel. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to ask questions. This is our time. It's the time of change in travel and tourism. Just in about everything right and everything we do, there's now a more sensitive eye to disability and accessibility. So the only way that travel becomes better and easier for everyone is if we all do it, because there's strength in numbers, and we have the numbers and we have a lot of loud speakers, so get out there and do it, and if you have any questions, don't ever hesitate to contact open doors.

Good advice, Eric, thanks again for being with us today. Listeners, thank you for joining us for this episode. You can access all ADA Live episodes with archived audio, accessible transcripts and resources at our website, Ada live.org you can listen to the SoundCloud ADA live channel@soundcloud.com forward slash ADA live. You can download ADA live to your mobile device, your podcast app by searching for ADA live, you have questions about the Americans with Disabilities Act. You can use our online form anytime at Ada live.org or you can call your regional ADA Center at 1-800-949-4232 109 4942 32 those calls, again, are free and they're confidential. ADA live is program at the southeast ADA Center, the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University, and a collaboration with the disability inclusive employment policy rehabilitation research and training center. Our show is produced by Celestia Ohrazda, with Cheri Hoffman, Mary Morder, Marsha, Schwanke, Chase Coleman and me. I'm Barry Whaley. Our music is from four wheel city, the movement for improvement. We also invite you to tune in to our companion podcast, Disability Rights today for in depth discussions on important court cases that have shaped disability rights and the Americans with Disabilities Act. You can learn more at Disability Rights today.org. Get out there, as Eric said, and travel, safe travels. Everybody can't get over