9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Hi,my name is Joseph Scamardo and I am an [br]assistant professor of philosophy 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and associate Director of the Institute in Public Affairs 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 at San Diego State University 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I specialized in philosophy of disability and[br]bioethics. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I also identify as disabled, I have a spinal cord injury as well as a rare kind of dwarfism 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So you get two for the price of one with me 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So, my first memory of discrimination was, well, it's hard to say. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I have lots of memories as far as the experience of stigma 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 or bigotry, mostly around my dwarfism 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and so, you know I have lots of early memories 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 around that with children staring and laughing and that sort of thing 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 from a very young age. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Then as far as sort of a more systematic discrimination that sort of excluded me from something 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that I wanted to do, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I had a pretty good experience as a child, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 mostly because my parents really did a lot to make sure that I was included 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I can remember being in boy scouts and cub scouts when I was a kid 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and my father, really doing a lot with me 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to ensure that the inclusion of my disability-- 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You know going on camping trips with me 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and sort of acting as a personal attendant 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 kinda thing to make sure that I was able 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to go and participate, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and that sort of thing. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And so the first real experience 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of exclusion that I can remember 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 happened when it was time 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to go to high school. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I had gone to the public schools in my town 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in my town up until the 8th grade 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and then when it came to high school, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I was supposed to go to the same 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 private religiously oriented school 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that my older siblings went to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and I took the entrance exam and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 even got a small scholarship to go and everything, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but it didn't have an elevator, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and so I used a motorized scooter 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to get around, and it was 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 going to be impossible for me to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 attend that school, because there was no 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 elevator. Now this was actually 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 after the passage of the ADA, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but because it was 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a religiously oriented school, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it was exempt from the requirements 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of the ADA. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And so, I didn't have any leverage with 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that law. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 To be able to get them 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to make accommodations for me 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 so I ended up going to the public school 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in my town, which actually, personally, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I was pretty happy about anyway, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 because that's where all my friends 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 were going. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But it still sort of clued me into the fact that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 not everything is accessible, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 not everything is designed for me and that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 this was going to be something 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I was gonna have to figure out throughout 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 my life. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 As far as 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 remembering the ADA and its () 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and that sort of thing, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I was pretty young when it was passed, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I was sometimes referred to as part of the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ADA generation, which means that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I grew up with the ADA mostly, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I was born in 1982, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 so I was 8 or 9 years old when the ADA 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 passed, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and so I didn't really have 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 any kind of recollection of, "Aha!" 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 That's--Of the moment that it passed. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And the recall of where I was at the time 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 or anything like this, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but I do remember my father explaining 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it to me, around the time of my 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 start of high school. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 When I experienced this with that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 private catholic school, and having that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 sort of systematic discrimination experience.