Steven Mendelsohn: A Man Behind The Scenes

Who wrote those comprehensive annual reports for the National Council on Disability as well as other policy papers over the years? For instance, ‘The ADA Goes Online’ dealt with the then new notion that access to the internet was as much a right as access to a physical facility.  In The Accessible Future, several key laws were analyzed for their impact on the lives of people with disabilities in the digital age.

You may not know the name Steven Mendelsohn, but you may have benefitted from the results of his years of policy analysis, legal research and thought-provoking testimony: thoughtful deliberation in various papers and forums over the past 25 years.

Steven Mencelsohn, a lawyer by training, became interested in the field of assistive technology in the early 1980's during his service as director of Project Job Site for the Vera Institute of Justice in New York, a project organized to help people with visual impairments find employment.  Early on, Steve realized that one of the keys to job success in the future would be access to what was in those days called "adaptive technology".  With that realization, he devoted full time to writing his first book Financing Adaptive Technology, a systematic analysis of all the sources that people could use to help fund their adaptive equipment: social security, Vocational Rehabilitation, the tax system, and special education for example.  No magic bullets, nothing particularly flashy; but previously no one had thought to draw all the resources together in a single volume.  To this day people come up to Steve and tell him how helpful that book was and what a difference it made in their lives.

As Steve traveled the country to various conferences promoting that book, (incidentally meeting his future wife along the way) again and again, people would be startled to discover that they could take advantage of the tax system to help subsidize the purchase of assistive technology.  After being asked all kinds of questions, Steve realized that no comprehensive source existed telling people with disabilities how they could leverage the tax system: not just to purchase assistive technology but to help obtain other goods and services as well.  Not until he wrote Tax Options and Strategies for People with Disabilities, published in the mid 1990's.  After a comprehensive explanation of how the tax system works in terms everyone could understand, he showed how you and I could buy our modified vans, talking computers, and pay for services we used on the job.

Over the years Steve has worked for various organizations and "think tanks" writing documents and reports on all sorts of subjects of interest to people with disabilities: employment, education, health, civil rights, communications.

Beginning in 2001 (and for the next seven years) Steve was the lead author of the National Council on Disability's annual report to the president and Congress.  That report is a sort of "state of the union" for people with disabilities and covers a wide range of topics from housing, to civil rights, to transportation, health, and others.  Over the years, several other major papers were also written for the Council with Steve as lead author.

Have you been to your local talking ATM machine lately to withdraw cash independently? We have Steve to thank for this opportunity as well.  He observed that the Americans with Disabilities Act specifically stated that people with disabilities, people with visual impairments as well as people using wheelchairs, were entitled to access automatic teller machines.  But every time he went to a machine, it had Braille symbols, he couldn't use it: didn't know when the screen was waiting for him to input something; couldn't tell how or where to confirm what he had entered.  Oh sure, on a few older machines he learned to push the third button from the bottom to get $40.  But by the time he learned this, the machine was replaced with a newer model.  In the mid 1990's Steve approached his law school classmate Barry Goldstein, a partner in a leading Oakland California-based civil rights law firm.  Mr. Goldstein heard what Steve was saying about the guarantee that ATM's should be accessible.  And the rest, as they say, is history.  Goldstein's law partner Linda Dardarian and civil rights attorney lawyer Lainey Feingold have turned the early ATM advocacy effort into the recognized process known as "structured negotiations."  As of today Feingold reports that tens of thousands of ATM machines are accessible to people with disabilities throughout the country, but you seldom hear the name of the man who got the process started.

Most recently Steve has been working on projects designed to bring about what is called "asset reform."  On some of the projects the World Institute on Disability (WID) has been a partner.  The fundamental question of these investigations is how can people living under means-tested social programs ever hope to acquire savings, buy a home, or improve their standard of living.

Steven Mendelsohn is currently working on an exciting new project: another book!  (Although it won't appear in traditional hardcopy format) He proposes a work: (the title yet to be determined) an annual publication discussing the year's developments in laws, and legal issues affecting the daily lives of people with disabilities.  The companion piece in this issue gives a taste of some of the subjects that will be covered in detail in the user-friendly publication.  Steve says the book (which he hopes will become an annual) will have the scope of what he used to write for the National Council but with more flexibility than is possible in a government publication.

The details are yet to be worked out: how and where it will be published and distributed.  Instead of a rather formidable legal orientation as in, "In the past year, what changes have been made in Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act?" the heading might read: "What recent changes affect my child's school?" or "What will be different about my job?"

When the book is available, Equity readers will be among the first to know.

Steve (a lifelong New Yorker until last year) now lives with his aforementioned wife Judy (and her terrific guide dog Terry) in San Leandro California.  He says, "You have to get up pretty early in the morning on the West Coast to keep up with developments in Washington."