Jul 24, 2015 2 min read

DONORA – Mike Matthews was kept waiting for four hours when he went for a job interview soon after he graduated from college.

“I could tell I wasn’t going to get the job,” said Matthews, of Washington, who believed he was being discriminated against at the 2004 interview because he has cerebral palsy.

“I didn’t know my rights,” Matthews said Friday when he helped to host a picnic in Donora to mark the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

President George H.W. Bush signed the act into law July 24, 1990, making it illegal to discriminate against people with disabilities by denying them access to public spaces, the job market, to schools and to public transportation.

The law opened up doors for many people following years of activism demanding equal rights for individuals with disabilities.

“It’s our Independence Day,” said Michelle Loar, director of quality assurance at Disability Options Network, the organization that held the picnic in Palmer Park.

Loar, of Carroll Township, said those with disabilities used to be “pushed into a room like a day care center” to get an education.

“The Americans with Disabilities Act entitled people with freedoms and more rights,” Loar said. “It enabled people to go to the store like everyone else.”

Matthews said he went on a different interview for an X-ray technician job “fresh out of high school,” and the interviewer tested him by making him lift a woman.

He said Tri-County Patriots for Independent Living in Washington taught him about his rights, an education that led to his becoming assistant deputy director of Disability Options Network.

“The ADA is a great law,” he said. “What we need now is enforcement.”

Matthews said those with disabilities still face overwhelming unemployment levels.

“We still have a long way to go,” he said. “The fight is not over.”

Loar said society still needs to be educated about the ADA.

“That’s the key to stopping discrimination,” she said.

She said it is a better world today because her children’s friends see her as mom rather than someone in a wheelchair.

“The ADA helped me to become employed and have a family,” she said.

The network where she works is a nonprofit organization that helps to empower people with disabilities to live independently and concentrates on skills training, nursing home transition and support.