The Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 is an immensely important piece of legislation that changed the country forever – for the better. It is considered to be the world’s first declaration of equal rights for people with disabilities. It ushered in an age of increased considerations for the lives of people who had, for too long, been unable to seek legal help when ignored, shunted away, or denied services.
The United States was not always kind to its disabled population – despite the US constitution stating that there should be equality for all under the law. Even through the 20th Century, people with disabilities have faced discrimination. Before medical knowledge and understanding became an accepted part of society, disabled children would often be abandoned to become wards of the state, and adults who relied on family members could be committed to asylums without question, and there was very much an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mentality, and the understanding and accessibility that we have today would not have been dreamed of then.
The Americans with Disabilities Act was a welcome step in the right direction and introduced legal requirements for protecting disabled people’s rights to liberty, opportunity, and freedom from persecution. The ADA was amended extensively in 2008 to reflect the lessons learned from the first few years working with the legislation. For example, it was found that courts would often not be consistent with how they pursued legal cases concerning discrimination against people with disabilities despite the existence of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The act contains 5 broad titles that govern different areas of governance. These titles are extremely significant. Here is a quick guide to these titles.
I: Employment
Title I cover employment. It requires employers to make reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities as applicants and employees in equal measure. It makes any form of discrimination based on a person’s disability at work a legal offense and provides people with disabilities with a legal pathway to receiving compensation for discriminatory workplace practices.
Reasonable accommodation can take many forms. Restructuring jobs, making buildings accessible to people with mobility issues, and providing specialist equipment: all of this would likely fall under this banner. Title I also regulate medical examinations and inquiries in detail. Title I is extremely important. People with disabilities are often discriminated against during or in the process of trying to find employment. Although they had recourse for the suing of unfair employers, they had no concrete legal route to pursue this kind of justice.
II: Public Services
Title II is concerned with ensuring that people with disabilities are allowed equal access to publicly owned services. This can include government buildings, publicly owned transport systems, and many other local and state government properties. This has changed the way American civil buildings look to a considerable extent – with renovations designed for ADA compliance experiencing a boom in the 1990s after introducing the new guidelines.
This title protects the right of people with disabilities to take part in civil life – including the ability to freely vote. Many people with disabilities had previously found that voting was extremely hard despite having their right to vote enshrined in previous US laws. All government buildings and facilities must comply with ADA design standards that aim to allow the broadest possible range of people to utilize them.
III: Public Accommodations
Title III covers all privately owned businesses. This can include private transport systems, stores, restaurants, and any other privately owned enterprise designed to welcome public members. Businesses must make reasonable accommodations by removing barriers to use and providing infrastructure. This title has been responsible for a broad change in how retail spaces and public transport vehicles are designed. You can see the effects of the Americans with Disabilities Act all around you! The busses, trains, and aircraft that you travel in have almost all been bought up to ADA standard – meaning that they will have had to receive considerable design alterations. Ramps, lifts, hearing aid loops, and many other modifications were installed on preexisting vehicles that did not comply at the time of the act’s passing.
Title III also governs the design of privately owned websites. By far, the most widely respected set of guidelines for web accessibility are the W3 WCAG. The WCAG – or Web Content Accessibility Guidelines – are a straightforward set of rules created by the World Wide Web consortium designed to ensure that web developers and site owners produce websites accessible by people of all abilities. The WCAG contains guidelines for creating fully scalable web text, intuitive design, and navigational simplicity, among other areas affecting how accessible a website is to people with disabilities. The ADA Title III regulations fall in line with the WCAG. This guide can help you untangle web accessibility to ensure your own website makes the grade.
IV: Telecommunications
Telecommunications providers must comply, whenever possible, with Title IV, which deals with the equal rights of people to use communications technology. In an increasingly networked world, this is more important than ever before. Telecommunications companies are required to facilitate the use of touch-typing phone use and other non-verbal services.
Title IV also stipulates that all federally funded television announcements must include closed captions for hard-of-hearing people. Unfortunately, this does not extend to private television productions – although inaccessible television content can still reasonably be faulted under other ADA titles.
V: Miscellaneous
Title V primarily deals with the protection of people looking to abide by or assist in the legal protection of disabled people’s rights. It prohibits coercion, threatening, or retaliation against people asserting their rights as a disabled American.
Title V also regulates access to medical insurance and state worker’s compensation. In addition, it regulates the methods by which entities can claim technical and financial assistance with becoming ADA compliant. Although most private companies are responsible for paying for their own compliance initiatives, some can claim back considerable amounts of money from the government for their efforts.
