MATA Community Tour

Is MATA Administration Listening?

By Allison Donald, Disability Connection

Across the country public transportation remains a barrier for persons with disabilities. Accessible transportation is a key component to community inclusion, so that people with disabilities can access it for their healthcare, employment, education, and recreation. 

The most affordable and accessible mode of transportation in Memphis is MATAplus. According to reports, MATA is planning to cut the bus service from 23 routes to just 16 routes and will be laying off as many as 200 employees. For people with disabilities in this city the news of the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) being 60 million dollars in debt leaves many in our community wondering where we go from here?

As a person with a disability who relies on MATAplus to get to work, to say that I am concerned about the state of public transportation in this city is putting it lightly. If they cut the 7 bus going down Winchester it is going to affect my ability to get to and from work. If they stop service on the 7 route, that also limits the area that MATAplus will serve. I will not have either a fixed-route or paratransit service near me. 

I know that I am not the only person feeling this way. My question is where are those individuals who will speak out on behalf of the disabled community? Is our community going to continue to be seen as an afterthought, and suffer the consequences of inaction.

We must show our faces and tell our stories. We will continue to have to deal with a public transit that continues to have capacity constraints putting even more pressure on a broken system. As a community we no longer have the luxury of sitting back and watching from the sidelines. If we do nothing, people living with disabilities in Memphis will become more isolated, face the reality of astronomical transportation costs and have to deal with ongoing irreverence from the leadership of MATA.

"I was upset that Director Mauldin, in the opening video, said that public input was required," said Tim Wheat of Disability Connection Midsouth, who was at the hearing in Orange Mound. "MATA did not seem to want or care about my input. The public was to follow along with the changes and respond on their phones at the meeting. I didn't feel like MATA wanted to listen to us at all."

At the Community Tour in Orange Mound, the MATA representatives used a slide presentation for people to respond. Although there were more than 20 people at the meeting, only 8 at the most, were participating in the show. Some in attendance were angry that they had made the commitment to come to an event that they could have taken part of better from home. 

The phone participation however, only allowed a single commitment per person and only one question. There was time for some discussion only because many people stayed beyond the hour allotted for the event. The questions and comments submitted by phone were answered quickly by MATA agents as if they were resolved. There was not a feeling like the input in writing would ever be considered. The final report of the Community Tour seems like it will be some ill-structured input on changing routes only from those with phones and resolved questions. It is hard to think that the MATA administration really intends to “listen” to riders. 

Until September 30, MATA will have representatives at a “Community Tour” for you to learn and share ideas for public transit.  If you would like to attend any of the public meetings to discuss the upcoming changes visit https://www.matatransit.com/transforming-transit/ for a list of dates and times of the Community Tour. Keep up with the conversation about MATA on our blog at https://www.disabilitymidsouth.org/news. 

Accessible Email

Tips for getting your message to everyone

By Christina Clift
E-mail is an essential part of our everyday lives. We use it to send messages for both business and pleasure. We are bombarded with e-mails from businesses that we patron and some that are simply junk. 

For example, I receive lots of e-mails from businesses like Yankee Candle, Sam’s Club, Lyft, the NFB, business related messages, etc., but then there are those that once I read the subject line or sender that I automatically delete. As a person who is blind, I’ve had many positive experiences using this form of communication and some that were frustrating as hell. 

My interaction and level of frustration are normally aggravated by either a poorly communicated message or an inaccessible message. Some email are just junk, a message which should never have been sent in the first place. 

Email has only continued to flourish since the early 90’s and with more and more users and brands using it for business communications, it continues to be part of everyday life across all age groups. But, the question here is: Are they reaching their potential target group and most importantly are they accessible?  

What about the people who are blind?  How do people who have difficulties in hearing or understanding use your email?  Around 253 million people live with vision impairment worldwide, of which 36 million are blind and 217 million have moderate to severe vision impairment. 

There are close to 300 million people who are color blind. People with disabilities use the web and email as much as others, thanks to assistive technology and tools such as screen magnifiers, eye tracking systems, and advanced sip n puff devices. It is, therefore, necessary to design and code emails that everyone can receive and understand, regardless of any physical or cognitive disabilities. 

Email accessibility is the practice of designing your email content in such a way that it removes barriers for individuals with disabilities and lets them access, perceive and interact with the content. Accessible content is more readable, logical and more usable by everyone not just for people with disabilities. Good accessibility means good usability and good usability means good business.  

Here are some tips on how to BUILD and TEST your attractive yet accessible email design. Email designing and content plays a major role in making it accessible to everyone. To meet basic accessibility requirements, your email should have the following: 

 

• Maintain a Logical Reading Order - Establish a logical order and maintain a hierarchy of your email content. Irrespective of their screen size, your subscribers should be able to view the content of your email in a logical reading order. This will especially help people with cognitive disabilities and subscribers using screen readers. Also, a logical order will help users to pull out the key information quicker.
  
• Use Large and Readable Fonts - Keep visually challenged viewers in mind while setting the font style and size of your email. Fonts lesser than 14pt become hard to read on desktop or laptop screens. Keep the text evenly spaced and keep the size above 14pt so that it is easily readable. Minimize the use of multiple font styles and typefaces that make it appear condensed.
  
• Keep the Content Simple - Avoid flashy content and keep it as simple and short as possible. Get straight to the point and avoid using complicated layout and metaphors. Avoid justifying your copy and highlight the important areas of your message. 
  
• Use Enough White Space in your Copy - Reading paragraphs and heaps of content that are spaced together requires a lot of effort. It is important to give proper spacing to the text and create enough white space around the copy to make it easy to read. Set appropriate line heights to the text and add padding to the tables and images in your content. People who read your copy must be able to scan it.
  
• Use the Right Color Schemes - Complex colors can be confusing for those with color vision deficiencies. Consider how viewers perceive different colors and choose a color scheme accordingly. Use the right colors in email, maintaining the basic color arrangement of dark text on light backgrounds and light text on dark backgrounds to ensure the content is easily distinguishable.
  
• Include a Text-Only Option - Your emails should have both plain text and HTML options while signing up. While the HTML emails will load the images, the text-only email will load only the text and let the users read the email comfortably. A plain-text version of your email can be of help especially to those using screen readers since they provide only the core content of your emails.
  
• Make the Clickable Links Prominent - Keep the clickable links large and visible, especially for those who have issues in controlling a mouse with precision. Keep the link differentiated from the images and make sure the link text describes what’s in the link. Tell your readers what to expect from the link by writing contextual link text. Instead of just saying “Click Here,” make it more precise by saying “Click Here to View the Products!” or simply: “View the Products!”
  
• Keep the Email Design Responsive - Keep the design responsive so that it is compatible with mobile devices, screen readers, and all other major devices. Maintain proper text-to-image ratio and highlight the main message so that the message is conveyed clearly, irrespective of the device and email client in which the subscribers view it.
  
• Use Precise Subject Lines - The subject line is the first and the most critical attribute of your email. Keep the subject lines brief and to the point. The subject lines should give the subscribers clarity in knowing what’s inside your email. Clear subject lines not only make your emails easy to access but also improve the overall subscriber engagement. 
  
• Use Semantic Tags - Header elements in emails such as , and ensure hierarchy to subscribers using screen readers, who may not be able to scan through your emails otherwise. Instead of using style statements like bold text and colors, use semantic tags such as

  ,

  and that will identify and differentiate the important sections of your content.
  

• Use Proper Alt Text for Images - Include proper alt text for the images in your email to describe the image when a subscriber cannot view your images. Make sure the text clearly describes the image. Sending images will be invisible to blind readers. Make sure that you include a text alternative.

Attachments are also often included with e-mails. All of the work you did to make it accessible, can be undone by attaching inaccessible files to your message. 

For example, if you are sending a flyer about an upcoming event, you could put the same information in your message. Remembering of course, to describe any images. Also, you can let the recipient know there is an attachment in the e-mail by including it in the subject or body of the message. 

Finally, it’s important to ensure that file names of attached documents make since and match their intended purpose. So, instead of have an attached file labeled as “11142019.doc,” you could label it is “holiday flyer.”  

While it does not guarantee that they are 100 percent accessible, these tips will go a long way in getting you there. Unfortunately, differences in operating systems, advancement of assistive technology being used, and that every person’s needs for accessibility are unique to them thus, this will sometimes led to differing results. 

If you follow these simple steps you will be one step closer in ensuring that individuals with disabilities like me have a positive experience if we choose to read them. Now that you know how to create an accessible e-mail message, I look forward to a more positive experience the next time I open my inbox.

The Caravan for Disability Freedom and Justice 2024

Memphis Tennessee

Wednesday, July 3, 2024 

I got a call about an hour before the Caravan was scheduled to arrive in Memphis. The Driver, CW, already had the schedule and just wanted to know if we had something before the Pizza lunch that was on his schedule. I said “no,” but I had packed the schedule with places to visit before the Caravan for Disability Freedom and Justice moved on. I wanted everyone to know that the Caravan had been here in Memphis.

Much of the reason for the Caravan is because of Memphis.

Less than two weeks before the Caravan arrived in Memphis, people with disabilities all over the country were celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision (June 22, 1999). Generally, the decision reinforced the Civil Rights protections of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act for people with disabilities. Olmstead held that segregation of persons with disabilities is discrimination.

Olmstead is also the story of two women that sued the state of Georgia because they wanted to live in their own home. They did not wish to receive services in an institution. The inconsistency is that home and community-based services are more desirable and cost-effective than institutional services, but many states only offered services that people with disabilities needed in expensive institutions. 

That was true for Tennessee. And when Latonya Reeves was young, she and her family were facing a life in an institution. In Tennessee, the only way for Latonya to get the services she needed was to, as a young woman, move into a nursing home. 

Latonya Reeves video: https://vimeo.com/751940724

Latonya can tell her story much better than I can. But I can tell you of a time when the Memphis Center for Independent Living, now Disability Connection Midsouth, helped people with disabilities get out of institutions. The Center here in Memphis helped people leave the state of Tennessee where they could not get services and move to Colorado, like Latonya Reeves did, to live in their own home and not an institution. 

The Center launched a decades long advocacy campaign to change things in Tennessee. But while we worked to change the institutional bias here in our state, we helped people escape institutions to live in their own homes. The parallel to the Underground Railroad was so clear to us, we called it the Underground Railroad. I am sure that other people did this, but no one talked about it much. I cannot imagine a nonprofit that is so passionate about their mission that they would move a person out-of-state, sometimes against a doctor’s orders (AMA), away from their family and into the care of people that they had only talked to over the phone. 

Deborah Cunningham was the director of MCIL who came up with the idea and developed it into a workable solution for at least a dozen Memphians. It was a different time, but as I think back on the Underground Railroad, I just cannot imagine how brave Deborah was to risk her job and the Center to see people live in their own home. And how brave the individuals were who left their home, their family and friends to have independence. 

All over the country I am sure that people with disabilities remember a much different time, now twenty-five years ago, when we did not have the same choices we have today. Please celebrate our Freedom and Justice and follow the Caravan in your area. 

CW and I got photos of the staff of Disability Connection Midsouth and the Arc. We stopped at Graceland, STAX, The Lorraine Hotel, The Pyramid (Bass Pro Shop), Beal Street and other landmarks around Memphis. Congressman Cohen met us at The Arcade, to get a photo with the Caravan in his Latonya Reeves shirt. 

I am really proud of this story in Memphis history. But I also know that for Latonya and all the people with disabilities who did escape on the Underground Railroad, there were many more who never knew what life was like outside of the institutions. I know we still have people, old and young, who will die in an institution.

Support the Latonya Reeves Freedom Act (H.R. 2708 and S. 1193), introduced by Rep. Steve Cohen from Memphis. The bill secures our right to live in the community and not, because of our disability, be forced into an expensive institution. 

Photo Album from Memphis: https://flic.kr/ps/CRKuE

This is a photo of the Caravan at the institution were Latonya Reeves was in Memphis. Now defunct, the property is still kept up, but it is empty at this time. A reminder of our segregated past. 

The Supreme Court to review 'separate but equal' for people with disabilities.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was written Twenty-Five years ago before the Landmark Olmstead decision on June 22, 1999. It is a good description of what the case was about and we hope that you will enjoy it and relive the importance of this decision for people with disabilities. 

By: Tim Wheat

On April 21, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Olmstead v. L.C. No. 98-536. The case involves two cognitively disabled residents of a state hospital who petitioned Georgia to allow them to receive services in the community instead of being confined to an institution. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in their favor last year and today they live in their own homes, in the community. Georgia's Commissioner of the Department of Human Resources Tommy Olmstead appealed the Circuit Court's decision and Tennessee Attorney General Paul Summers has signed on to an amicus brief with six other U.S. states supporting Olmstead's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Two Georgia citizens, Lois Curtis and Elaine Wilson, sued under Title II of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which requires that services offered by a public entity be delivered in "the most integrated setting." Georgia argues that forcing citizens to live in institutions does not constitute discrimination because non-disabled people do not receive such services, no "discrimination" in service delivery can take place. The ADA gives no protection to individuals with disabilities, Georgia contends, who receive services designed only for people with disabilities.

The Congressional findings in the ADA itself counter the rhetoric of the Olmstead petitioners. The federal civil rights law explicitly states: "Segregation of disabled people continues to be a serious and pervasive problem." Congress further made it clear in enacting the ADA that discrimination against individuals with disabilities persists in a wide variety of areas of social life, including "institutionalization." Since non-disabled people are not institutionalized, obviously the ADA is intended to end the isolation and separation from society of people with disabilities.

Those supporting Olmstead have adopted the erroneous reasoning of the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson. Justice Brown wrote in the majority opinion of Plessy, over a hundred years ago, that legislation cannot eradicate "physical differences," and therefore separate railroad cars were justified for different races. Similarly, petitioners hold that the ADA cannot eliminate physical differences that warrant people with disabilities being separated from typical social and community activities. Georgia asserts that separating people with disabilities is a state's prerogative, consistent with the ADA, and not discrimination.

Separate is not equal. Sen. Lowell Weicker, an original sponsor of the ADA in 1989, explained the aim of the civil rights legislation to Congress: "We have created monoliths of isolated care in institutions. It is that isolation and segregation that has become the basis of discrimination faced by many disabled people today. Separate is not equal. It was not for blacks; it is not for the disabled."

Resistance to non-institutional alternatives comes from the entrenchment of the nursing home industry and lobby. Before the summer of 1965, when the Social Security Act was amended to authorize Medicaid, there was no nursing home industry. Now, nationally the nursing homes special interest lobby is one of the 50 most exorbitant spenders for political favors. In Tennessee only three other interest groups spend more to influence our governor and legislature than the nursing home lobby.

More home and community based services are not any more expensive to Tennessee, but they can represent a huge loss to the subsidized nursing home industry. Currently nursing homes face almost no competition for the $750 million, mostly Medicaid, that flow into this state intended for the long-term care of Tennesseans. Ninety-five percent of the public funds for the long-term care of Tennesseans are paid to facilities.

Tennessee is dead last among U.S. states in provision of alternatives to institutional care. The 1997 Tennessee comptroller's report mentioned the success of Wisconsin, Oregon and Washington. Between 1979 and 1995, Oregon cut long-term care costs by $400 million. Between 1982 and 1992, the report declared, the total number of nursing home beds in those three states dwindled and home and community services increased. Yet Tennessee still prefers to offer, almost exclusively, the most expensive and least desired form of long-term care.

 

Six Tennesseans with physical disabilities have sued the state Department of Health for failing to provide services in the "most integrated setting appropriate" to their needs. The six plaintiffs in Newberry v. Menke, filed this past December, all face relocation to a nursing home. Altogether Tennessee pays less than 30 thousand dollars a year to provide the services in their homes, but nursing home placement will cost Tennesseans $219,000.00 per year.

Georgia also contends that home and community placement would be a financial burden. In the

January 1999 State Legislative Report, however, the National Conference of State Legislatures said "the annual cost of institutional care for people with disabilities is more than double the  average annual cost of providing home and community-based services." The report continues, "States across the country have realized significant savings by offering services that allow people with disabilities to live in the community rather than in nursing homes and other institutions."

Provision of institutional services alone are both unnecessary and more costly. Governor Sundquist has resisted expanding home and community based services to lower Tennessee's long-term care bill because he says he fears creating a "new entitlement," that would bankrupt the state.

The "new entitlement" that Sundquist fears are eligible individuals that are spending their own resources to stay out of a nursing home and might request home and community based services if they were available. Many people that are eligible in Tennessee do not seek any services at all because those services are only obtainable in a nursing home. Throughout the nation, most community-based long-term care is provided by family members and friends (Enid Kassner and Robert W. Bectel, MIDLIFE AND OLDER AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES: Who Gets Help? 1998). Therefore, Tennessee controls its long-term care costs, in part, by providing citizens with only the worst choice possible.

The tiny new long-term care plan that advocates have struggled for - against the nursing home lobby - will save Tennessee relatively little. By setting aside new funding, the new home and community based programs will not "compete" for the huge resources of the nursing facilities. The money does not "follow the individual," as the original Tennessee Senate Bill 2411 read. As a result, the state's nursing homes are guaranteed their huge government subsidy without interference or competition with the more desired and cost effective community services.

This month a Harris poll showed that nearly nine out of ten Americans supported and approved of the ADA. While most people see the impact of the ADA in accessible parking, buses and buildings, the essential goal of integrating society is less visible. The occupants of institutions are often the most disenfranchised members of our community. The effect of institutionalization is disempowering along with the loss of contact with family, friends and traditional community roles. President George Bush stated the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act would break down the "shameful wall of exclusion," separating people with disabilities from other Americans.