In the News

Augusta dentist finds disability law provides 'level playing field'

Dr. J. Ronald Bennett doesn’t have much use for whining.

“I look at it from the standpoint that we all have something that is holding us back,” said the longtime Augusta dentist, who has been a paraplegic since a car accident in 1966. “You can whine and hold yourself back on any little given thing. The way that I look at it, God put us on this Earth to try and accomplish as much as we can. Get those things behind you and move forward.”

As groups this week celebrate the 25th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, advocates can point to a lot of progress but also still some barriers, particularly with employment and public transportation in Augusta. The law, which forbids discrimination against those with disabilities and has helped create more accessible buildings and cities, is really about one thing to Bennett and many others like him.

“Everyone is on a level playing field now,” he said.

“If you ask most people with disabilities what the ADA has meant to them, that’s exactly the answer you will get,” said Eric Jacobson, executive director of the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities. “People are looking to level that playing field so they have the same opportunities as everybody else.”

After his accident, Bennett went on to complete his degree in accounting at Augusta College and then was inspired to try to enter dental school at Medical College of Georgia. When he approached the school, “I could not have asked for them to be more receptive,” Bennett said.

The school actually did not have to make that many changes to accommodate him and each problem that came up they worked around. Because most dentists use a foot pedal called a rheostat to help control hand instruments, Bennett and the school had to come up with a hand-operated one that he says actually allows him better control. Other than that, looking around his Augusta office on West Wheeler Parkway, “everything else is standard,” Bennett said.

Children with disabilities who have been born after the passage of the act can look forward to things like college and careers that were much less likely than before it was the law, Jacobson said.

“That expectation level and that acceptance within the community as a whole is a tremendous benefit from the passage of this one piece of legislation,” he said. People with disabilities of all kinds are just more visible now, particularly in media and advertisements but in the community as a whole, Jacobson said.

“They are seen as valued parts of our society,” he said. “But are we there yet? Obviously not.”

Being able to have that employment and that independence is one of the biggest desires of those who work with Walton Options for Independent Living, said Director Tiffany Clifford.

“It’s one of the most liberating things to give people the opportunity to make their own choices by being in control of their income and resources,” she said.

But relying on public transportation in Augusta makes that a problem, Clifford said.

“The routes are limited, the hours are very limited because it mostly runs during daytime and doesn’t have extended hours,” she said. “If you’re going to depend upon transportation in Augusta, you’re pretty much on a 10-4” schedule.

But those who will rely on the law in the future will have it easier because there are those advocates out there now fighting those battles to remove those barriers, Bennett said.

“They’ve got somebody out there batting for them,” he said.

The original article appeared in The Augusta Chronicle on May 26, 2015.