Among the group of disabled rights advocates who met with Vice President Kamala Harris last week to talk about voting rights for the disabled was Olivia Babis, the senior public policy analyst with Disability Rights Florida.

“She was very honest and kind of admitted that there are things about disabilities she doesn’t know,” Babis told Spectrum Bay News 9 from her home in Tallahassee on Monday. “There’s a lot of things that people don’t know about disabilities. We’re kind of the community that isn’t discussed very often.”

Before the closed-door meeting began, Harris said, “The issue of voting rights in America is probably among the most serious and significant issues that we are facing at this moment. And voting rights for people with disabilities is one of our highest priorities.”

Disability Rights Florida is a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits that has been filed against the State of Florida following Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signing of an election reform bill (SB 90) in May that imposes some restrictions on mail-in voting and ballot drop boxes.

Tony DePalma, the director of public policy at Disability Rights Florida, said, “It is highly unfortunate that Florida is moving to broadly restrict elections access less than a year after it agreed to implement statewide accessible vote-by-mail balloting options for voters with visual and other print impairments — an obligation that has remained unfulfilled in state law for nearly two decades.”

Less than a week after the hourlong meeting with the vice president, Babis said she still considers it “kind of amazing" and said that the meeting "was very promising."

Harris said the White House will require the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to study the barriers to voting for people with disabilities and to provide recommendations.

Born without arms at birth, Babis has firsthand experience in contending with voting as a disabled person.

“I’ve experienced some of these issues where I’ve gone into a polling location that wasn’t accessible," recounted Babis, who has been a fierce advocate for the disabled and ran for state senate in Florida in 2018. "There was a temporary ramp that looked like it was going to fall apart if I went over it with my chair."

A report published earlier this year showed that disabled Americans had less trouble voting in 2020 than in previous elections, but that there were still millions who had issues.

The report by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission showed that the gap between disabled and nondisabled voters who experienced problems while voting has narrowed substantially.  In 2020, 11.4% of disabled voters reported having problems vs. 6.4% of nondisabled voters. That’s a considerable improvement over a similar report taken in 2012 that found that 26.1% of disabled voters reported problems voting, vs. 7.4% of nondisabled voters.

While that’s an improvement, a co-author of the report told the Huffington Post that 11% of disabled voters means that up to 2 million people are still reporting having voting difficulties.

“That’s a heck of a lot of people,” said Douglas Kruse, co-director of the Program for Disability Research.

Babis says that while voting-by-mail increases voting options for people with certain disabilities, it can’t be seen as the alternative way to channel people with disabilities.

“They still have to be provided the same options that we provide everybody else,” she said. “So they still have to have the ability to get to a polling location if they want to vote in that manner. If someone wants to vote in an early voting location, they have to have the ability to do that. If they want to be able to vote by mail, they have to be able to do that. If they want to use a drop box, that needs to be accessible to them.  So all of these options have to be accessible.”

The White House meeting came shortly before the 31th anniversary of the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act (that takes place on July 26). Babis says that there is still frustration that more hasn’t been done to make things accessible for the disabled in the United States.

“We’ve given people time,” she said. “We understand that some of these things can be costly, but a lot of these things can be done either free or relatively cheaper and it’s time that municipalities (and) elected officials start taking actions to do the things that they need to do in order to integrate the disability community into society.”