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Hi,my name is Joseph Scamardo and I am an 
assistant professor of philosophy

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and associate Director of the Institute in Public Affairs

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at San Diego State University

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I specialized in philosophy of disability and
bioethics.

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I also identify as disabled, I have a spinal cord injury as well as a rare kind of dwarfism

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So you get two for the price of one with me

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So, my first memory of discrimination was, well, it's hard to say.

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I have lots of memories as far as the experience of stigma

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or bigotry, mostly around my dwarfism

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and so, you know I have lots of early memories

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around that with children staring and laughing and that sort of thing

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from a very young age.

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Then as far as sort of a more systematic discrimination that sort of excluded me from something

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that I wanted to do,

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I had a pretty good experience as a child,

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mostly because my parents really did a lot to make sure that I was included

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I can remember being in boy scouts and cub scouts when I was a kid

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and my father, really doing a lot with me

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to ensure that the inclusion of my disability--

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You know going on camping trips with me

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and sort of acting as a personal attendant

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kinda thing to make sure that I was able

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to go and participate,

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and that sort of thing.

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And so the first real experience

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of exclusion that I can remember

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happened when it was time

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to go to high school.

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I had gone to the public schools in my town

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in my town up until the 8th grade

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and then when it came to high school,

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I was supposed to go to the same

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private religiously oriented school

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that my older siblings went to

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and I took the entrance exam and

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even got a small scholarship to go and everything,

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but it didn't have an elevator,

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and so I used a motorized scooter

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to get around, and it was

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going to be impossible for me to

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attend that school, because there was no

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elevator. Now this was actually

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after the passage of the ADA,

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but because it was

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a religiously oriented school,

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it was exempt from the requirements

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of the ADA.

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And so, I didn't have any leverage with

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that law.

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To be able to get them

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to make accommodations for me

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so I ended up going to the public school

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in my town, which actually, personally,

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I was pretty happy about anyway,

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because that's where all my friends

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were going.

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But it still sort of clued me into the fact that

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not everything is accessible,

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not everything is designed for me and that

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this was going to be something

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I was gonna have to figure out throughout

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my life.

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As far as

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remembering the ADA and its ()

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and that sort of thing,

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I was pretty young when it was passed,

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I was sometimes referred to as part of the

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ADA generation, which means that

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I grew up with the ADA mostly,

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I was born in 1982,

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so I was 8 or 9 years old when the ADA

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passed,

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and so I didn't really have

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any kind of recollection of, "Aha!"

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That's--Of the moment that it passed.

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And the recall of where I was at the time

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or anything like this,

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but I do remember my father explaining

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it to me, around the time of my

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start of high school.

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When I experienced this with that

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private catholic school, and having that

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sort of systematic discrimination experience.