People without disabilities are employed at three times the rate of disabled people despite unemployed disabled people reporting higher interest in seeking employment than non-disabled counterparts.

Guest columnist

• Daniel Van Sant is the Harkin Institute’s director of Disability Policy.

On July 26, the Americans with Disabilities Act turns 33 years old. As the law and the ADA generation carry on into our early 30s, we can look back at how far we’ve come and still see how far we have left to go.

Over the past 33 years, the Americans with Disabilities Act has changed the way we enter buildings, cross the sidewalk and has slowly increased access for the more than 25% of the population that identifies as disabled. When it was signed, the ADA was heralded as the “emancipation proclamation” for people with disabilities. And today, the various outcomes of this landmark legislation can be physically seen and used in our everyday lives. Most notably, we think of sidewalks curb cuts — a disability innovation that benefits not only those in wheelchairs but any person who uses a stroller or roller bag or skateboard. Additional modern advances rooted in disability innovation include automatic doors, captioning on televisions, audio books, the electric toothbrush, and even composing an email on your QWERTY keyboard.

Society as a whole has benefited from the ADA. Physical spaces are more accessible today than 33 years ago, but full accessibility still lags behind. For example, many...

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