http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/07/31/428075935/she-owes-her-activism-to-a-brave-mom-the-ada-and-chocolate-cake
She Owes Her Activism To A Brave Mom, The ADA And Chocolate Cake
JULY 31, 201512:54 PM ET
To Haben Girma's grandmother, back in East Africa, it "seemed like
magic." Her granddaughter, born deaf and blind, is a graduate of
Harvard Law School and works as a civil rights attorney.
It's easy to understand why the grandmother feels that way. Years
before, she had tried to find a school in Eritrea for Girma's older
brother, who was also born deaf and blind. She was turned away. There
were schools for blind children and schools for deaf children. But no
school would teach a child who was deaf-blind (that's the preferred
terminology in the disability community). Girma describes that brother
as "brilliant."
Girma told the story last week at the White House, when she introduced
President Obama during a ceremony to mark the 25th anniversary of the
Americans with Disabilities Act.
By the time Girma was born in 1988, six years younger than her
brother, her mother had made a refugee's journey from Eritrea to the
United States. And in California, a deaf-blind girl like Girma had a
legal right to an education.
In public schools in Oakland, she was educated alongside other
students, leaving her mainstream classes for an hour a day to learn
Braille.
In an interview with NPR, Girma — who turned 27 on Wednesday —
explained more about the family's journey.
In the winter of 1983, Girma's mother, Saba Gebreyesus, left Eritrea.
The war of independence with Ethiopia was going on. It was a two-week
trek to Sudan, "walking at night to try to avoid the different
military groups fighting in that area." At one point she slept in a
tree surrounded by hungry hyenas.
A Catholic resettlement agency helped Gebreyesus move to the United States.
In the United States, disability civil rights laws provided
opportunities to Girma. The IDEA law says every child with a
disability is guaranteed an education, and the ADA bans discrimination
based on disability.
Still, when Girma went to college, she was unsure whether to assert
her rights under the ADA. A turning point came over an everyday
decision: what to eat.
At Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., Girma at first would walk
up to a food station in the cafeteria and put out her plate. She'd eat
whatever she was given. Sometimes she liked it, other times not.
She wanted choice. ("What if there was chocolate cake at Station
Four?" she says.) So the food service manager agreed to email the
day's menu, which she could print on a Braille reader. But the menu
came infrequently; food service managers said they were too busy.
Girma was reluctant to demand more. Mainly because it seemed trivial
to complain about missing out on chocolate cake — or even getting a
meal she liked — given her family's own hard life in East Africa.
"I'd grown up hearing stories about the war in Eritrea, limited
resources, people struggling to survive," she says. In the U.S., she
was living a good life, going to college classes, drinking hot
chocolate at Starbucks. "It was hard for me to make a fuss about
access to cafeteria menus. At the same time, I realized after months
of not getting access that if I didn't do anything, other students
with disabilities would face a similar barrier."
She told cafeteria managers about their obligation to make a
"reasonable accommodation" under the ADA. "Then their attitude changed
and they started providing me greater access to the menu," she says.
"And the next year, when another blind student came to the school,
that student was able to benefit."
One result of the cafeteria experience is that Girma saw the
importance of enforcing civil rights laws. She went to Harvard Law
School, graduating in 2013. (At Harvard, she also competed on the
Harvard Ballroom Dance Team.) Since then, she has worked at Disability
Rights Advocates, a California-based disability civil rights law firm.
At the White House, Girma talked to the president one on one, telling
him "that technology can bridge the gap for people with disabilities."
The president typed on a silver, wireless keyboard, and Girma read the
message on a digital Braille device (the technology that enabled us to
conduct our phone interview with her). The back-and-forth was
instantaneous. There's a video of Obama's conversation with Girma, and
with another woman with a disability, Alice Wong, who didn't attend
the White House ceremony in person but spoke to the president through
a robotic webcam that Wong could control and move.
A few days later, Girma again was stressing the importance of
accessible technology in a talk at Google that she called "Bringing
Helen Keller to Silicon Valley: Designing Technology with
Accessibility in Mind."
"Digital information is just ones and zeroes," she says. "It can be
converted into any kind of format. And those people who develop these
services — programmers, technology designers — they have an incredible
power to increase access for people with disabilities. And I hope they
use it."
Girma has taken her advocacy around the world. She has talked about
technology and attitudes toward disability on trips to China, Costa
Rica and Ethiopia. "Many cultures, including Ethiopian culture, view
disability as a curse on the family," she explains. "Advocates around
the world are working to change such attitudes, and I help as best I
can."
As for her deaf-blind brother, who couldn't go to school in Eritrea,
American civil rights laws changed things for him, too. "He started to
get an education finally at age 12," she says.
In the Oakland schools, teachers "taught him Braille, and he also had
to learn English and American Sign Language. And after that, his
education just took off."
Today, her brother, Mussie Gebre, travels around California, teaching
people with disabilities how to use technology — like the devices that
help him and his sister.
"To all of us here," Girma said to the crowd in the East Room at the
White House, "we know that people with disabilities succeed not by
magic but from the opportunities afforded by America and the hard-won
power of the ADA."
Received on Sat Aug 01 2015 - 11:18:09 EDT