ADA Laws - General
Preview: ADA Basics (The ADA has five titles. )
Title I
Title I is the employment provision. It requires employers to provide equal opportunity for people with disabilities in the workplace. It also requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations for qualified people with disabilities in the workplace.
Title II
Title II covers public services or what is better known as state and local government. The federal government is covered by another law, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The requirements are the same, but the law is different. Title II says that state and local governments may not discriminate against people with disabilities and must provide what's called full program access to people with disabilities. It also explains what "Full program access" means.
Title III
Title III covers public accommodations. Public accommodations are any place or business that affects commerce. They may not discriminate against people with disabilities in providing their goods and services.
Title IV
Title IV is the telecommunications provision, which established relay services throughout the entire country and talks about requirements for captioning.
laws actually provide more protections than the ADA.
Title V
Title V are the miscellaneous provisions which you never hear about, but which are important. This title talks about how the ADA relates to other disability laws and basically says that whatever law provides the most protection for people with disabilities has precedence. Some state and local
laws actually provide more protections than the ADA.
Who Is Covered By the ADA?
The ADA covers people with disabilities. The list of who is disabled and who is not has been changing continuously. To determine if you are considered disabled and thus protected by the ADA, you must meet this definition: An individual with disability is one who has a record of, or is regarded as having, a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity.
Major life activities are things like seeing, reading, hearing, thinking, sleeping, learning, speaking. The most important two words of the definition are "substantially limits." If you are deaf, you are substantially limited in your ability to hear. So you are covered by the law. Somebody with a back impairment or asthma, or who wears glasses, would have to show that this substantially limits their ability to perform one of the major life activities.
You can't automatically assume that just because someone has a "disability," they are covered by the law. A lot of ADA cases are being referred back to attorneys because the attorneys are not prepared to prove that their client is covered by the ADA. When a case goes to court, you not only have to prove that you were discriminated against, but first, you must show you were part of a protected class.
All above information can be found in section III of the Technical Assistance Manual for A.D.A.
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