== Site Navigation ==

Main Page Past Shows About Us Show Hosts Comment

== Project Sites ==

Disability Law Lowdown Podcast Disability Law Lowdown Podcast
en Espanol
Disability Law Lowdown Podcast
in ASL Southwest ADA Podcast

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Noncommercial - No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

[ Listen | Download | Transcript | Printer Friendly Version (New window) ]

You’re listening to the Disability Law Lowdown, Show #37

[music plays]

Jacquie Brennan: Today's podcast is going to be sort of an update of what's going on right now in disability news. We’re going to have a few settlements that the Department of Justice has worked out, or the EEOC in one case, and we’ll also be looking at a couple of new websites and some other news. So this news is current as of August/ September 2009.

The first settlement I want to tell you about is a settlement that the Justice Department signed with Niagara Falls to ensure civic access. It announced this agreement that was reached under the Department of Justice's Project Civic Access Initiative and its idea is to bring state and local governments into compliance with the ADA and this particular agreement was the hundred and sixty fourth agreement that was reached under Project Civic Access. “Officials in Niagra Falls recognized that civic access was a civil right and I applaud them for working to ensure that all citizens, including individuals with disabilities, can enjoy one of America's most treasured and visited landmarks,” said Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. She also said this agreement helps mark the nineteenth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act and we are pleased to take this major step forward in our mission to improve accessibility nationwide.”

Under the agreement, the city of Niagra Falls will be taking several steps to improve access for persons with disabilities and I’m just going to list those out for you: one is making physical modifications to facilities so that parking, routes into the buildings, entrances, public telephones, restrooms, service counters and drinking fountains are accessible to individuals with disabilities, officially recognizing New York State's telephone relay services and training staff in using the city TTY relay service, continuing to ensure that 911 emergency service TTY calls are answered as quickly as other calls received, that such calls are monitored for timing and accuracy, if other calls are monitored, and that employees are trained and practiced in using a TTY to make and receive calls, ensuring that the city's official website is accessible to persons with disabilities, developing a method for ensuring that voters with disabilities have an equal opportunity to vote by providing accessible voter registration locations and polling places and by training poll workers on the rights of persons with disabilities and the practical aspects of assuring those rights, and ensuring equal access to Niagra County's emergency management programs and services for persons with disabilities including preparation, notification, response and clean-up, and lastly, implementing a plan on accessibility of sidewalks and curbs cuts throughout the city.

Projects Civic Access was initiated to ensure that persons with disabilities have an equal opportunity to participate in civic life. As part of that project, Justice Department investigators, attorneys and architects conduct on-site surveys of state and local government programs and facilities for the purpose of identifying modifications needed for compliance with ADA requirements. This agreement contains a plan that sets out specific steps that a community will take to improve access for persons with disabilities.

But Niagara wasn't the only city that had an agreement with the DOJ. DOJ signed a similar agreement with the town of Lewisboro. After nineteen years of delays, and debates and derailments, the town of Lewisboro finally is ready to commit to following the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, so the town board told the Justice Department that it's ready to sign a voluntary agreement, it’s going to sign it on September first. It will end the Justice Department's grievance against the town and it commits the town to become fully compliant with the Act within the next two years.

The voluntary agreement would commit to town to revising its internal rules and regulations to be more disability friendly and to work to make all its facilities and services accessible. Within three months of signing the agreement the town would be required to assign an ADA coordinator to draft policies and procedures for dealing with people with disabilities and to provide communication aids for residents who are blind or have other disabilities. Within twelve months all essential employees must be trained in dealing with disability issues. For buildings in the town like the police station, the Town House, the library and three community houses, the town is required to create a plan which will be completed in six months for either making the buildings accessible or providing the services offered from those buildings in an alternate way. The entire plan is required to be completed within two years of the signing of the agreement.

If the town fails to comply with the agreement’s requirements, then the agreement contains a clause allowing the US attorney's office to file a lawsuit against the town. The town has been negotiating with the Justice Department ever since an inspection and a set of recommendations last year and this voluntary agreement was brought before the board of the town in March that proposals to become compliant with ADA had been under discussion since the Act was passed in 1990 and prior to this Justice Department inspection there was little progress made.

And now down to Atlanta. Already struggling to keep its financial house in order, the city of Atlanta faces a potential thirteen point eight million dollar problem in the Americans with Disabilities Act. This story is from the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The US Justice Department officials recently conducted a random inspection of fifty-six city buildings and found hundreds of violations of the federal law concerning access to people with disabilities. Problems included no wheelchair accessible seating in the city council chamber, signs at City Hall that are not in Braille, a lack of drinking fountains in the Atlanta Workforce Development Agency for people who have difficulty bending or stooping.

Justice Department officials and the city agreed to a deal that gives Atlanta three years to fix the problems. The work is estimated to cost thirteen point eight million, but city officials say they expect to spend less money to make the repairs. But several City Council members are disturbed about the situation particularly since the violations were found in twenty-five buildings that were constructed after 1992 when the Americans with Disabilities Act accessibility provisions went into effect. Councilman Howard Shook was asked what the city's legal department had done to investigate why so many of these buildings were constructed with violations of this federal law.

And the EEOC he has settled a lawsuit. A White Marsh, Maryland medical practice will pay a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars and furnish significant remedial relief to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit filed by the EEOC. The EEOC had charged that Medical Health Group, Incorporated refused to return an employee to work who had recovered from breast cancer surgery.

According to the EEOC suit, Medical Health Group violated the ADA when it discriminated against Barbara Metzger by firing her when she attempted to return to work after recovering from serious surgical complications. Metzger had been employed as a referral clerk for the practice for nearly twenty-five years. The practice was acquired by Medical Health Group in 2002. Metzger had been diagnosed with breast cancer in January of 2007. About one week before her approved a medical leave ended, Metzger was called in to work on May 31, 2007. She told her employer that she intended to work without interruption while undergoing her remaining chemotherapy sessions and radiation therapy for her cancer. The practice administrator then cited examples of people she knew whose cancer treatment made them too sick to work. At that meeting, Metzger was presented with a termination letter that stated she was being fired because she was, “currently unable to return to work on a full-time basis. Due to the seriousness of her illness and extended nature of treatment required, we must exercise our option to permanently fill your position.”

The ADA prohibits employers from making employment decisions based on assumptions and misinformation and generalizations about a person's medical condition. The EEOC filed suit after first attempting to reach a voluntary settlement. “A woman who is bravely battling breast cancer has enough of a challenge without having to lose her job because of unlawful discrimination,” said EEOC acting chairman Stuart J. Ishamaru. “The EEOC will stand up for the victims of that sort of bias.”

Now I want to tell you about a new website. For people with disabilities, web surfing can be extremely difficult and even though equal access to online content is a requirement under the ADA, there are still a lot of website publishers who aren’t sensitive to this trillion dollar market. “Over twenty million Americans have difficulty typing, moving a mouse or reading a screen,” says Simon Dermer, managing director for eSSENTIAL Accessibility. They can’t get online without expensive assistance technology. By featuring essential accessibility, organizations can reach out to this underserved community and help eliminate the digital divide. It's all part of online social responsibility initiative to make the web accessible to all. By fulfilling a commitment to building an inclusive society, progressive organizations can tap into this growing market in a cause-related, social marketing context.

Diversity, Inc. in partnership with eSSENTIAL Accessibility is making online content more accessible for people with vision impairments, dexterity limitations and reading difficulties. A new e-accessibility feature has been recently added and it's in the upper right hand corner of their home page. The concept is simple. By going to the icon at the top right hand corner of diversityinc.com's home page, users are redirected to www.essentialaccessibility.com where they can download assistive technology free of charge. The software is easily downloadable and is installed on any standard PC for people who have difficulty typing, moving a mouse or reading a web page.

This new feature also helps visitors input information using an onscreen keyboard with word prediction. It offers different cursor options to help those with dexterity impairments such as arthritis, fine motor limitation and even age-related factors. The site now also includes a page reader system for people who have difficulty reading such as those with dyslexia. The feature can be set to read any headline, blurb or link on the page allowed and is compatible with other voice recognition systems including ScanSoft, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and Microsoft's speech recognition. The read aloud option is really easy and a helpful addition to the site.

eSSENTIAL Accessibility is popular with retailers but diversityinc.com is the only media site to offer this service. In fact, media sites in general don’t do a good job with accessibility and it's great that Diversity Inc is helping to make news and knowledge more accessible to people with disabilities.

And, nineteen years almost to the day after the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law, the Department of Labor announced the renaming and and relaunching of one of its informational web sites. It used to be known as disabilityinfo.gov, but the new site, which is just disability.gov, includes social media tools and new ways to organize, share and receive information. Visitors can sign up for personalized news and updates, participate in online discussions and suggest resources for the site. New features include a Twitter feed, really simple syndication, which are called rss feeds , a blog, social bookmarking and a user-friendly way to obtain answers to questions on topics like finding employment and job accommodations. The agency says it expects to add additional tools to the site in the months ahead.

The new site, which integrates content from twenty-two federal agencies, is designed to meet the needs of anyone seeking disability related information such as the more than fifty million Americans with disabilities, their family members, veterans, employers, educators and caregivers. It will be managed by the Department of Labor. Kathleen Martinez, assistant secretary for the Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy, in the announcement said, “The Department of Labor is pleased to be the managing partner of disability.gov and to help advance the independence and full participation of people with disabilities in the workforce, the classroom and their communities.”

The site is organized into ten subject areas: benefits, civil rights, community life, education, emergency preparedness, employment, health, housing, technology and transportation. After selecting a category, visitors are directed to information on federal and state government programs and services as well as news and events, grants and funding opportunities and more and more stuff. The site contains thousands of links to reliable information from its federal agency partners as well as educational institutions, non-profit organizations and state and local government. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis said in a statement, “Far more than just a directory of federal resources, disability.gov is a meeting ground for Americans to learn, respond and communicate about a wealth of critically important disability related topics. The new site has been vastly enhanced to provide more information in as efficient and interactive setting as possible.”

The Census Bureau released some new facts and figures for Americans with disabilities. It says that forty-one point two million Americans over the age of five have a disability and by age it breaks down into about six percent of children ages five to fifteen, about twelve percent of people ages sixteen to sixty-four, and forty-one percent of adults age sixty five and older have disabilities. About fifteen percent of people who have disabilities are female and about fourteen percent are male. Eleven million people age six and older need personal assistance with everyday activities such as getting around inside the home, taking a bath or shower, preparing meals, performing light housework. Three point three million people age fifteen and over use a wheelchair and another ten point two million use an ambulatory aid like a cane or crutches or a walker. One point eight million adults age fifteen and over report being unable to see printed words at all or are blind. One million people aged fifteen or older are reported being deaf or being unable to hear conversations. Two point five million people age fifteen and over have some difficulty having their speech understood by others. Sixteen point one million have limitations in cognitive functioning, have mental or emotional illnesses that interfere with daily activities and that includes people who have Alzheimer's disease as well as mental retardation. This group comprises seven percent of the population ages fifteen and older and this includes eight point four million people with one or more problems that interfere with daily activities such as frequently being depressed or anxious, trouble getting along with others, trouble concentrating and trouble coping with stress. Thirteen point three million Americans age sixteen to sixty-four reported a medical condition that makes it difficult for them to find a job or remain employed and they comprise seven percent of the population of that age.

Lastly, the United States International Council on Disabilities, it’s called the USICD, representing a broad constituency of Americans with disabilities and disability organization praised President Barak Obama’s signing of the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, CRPD. Marca Bristo, president of the United States International Council on Disabilities said, “President Obama committed to sign the Convention during his campaign and we applaud his leadership. This treaty is good for America, good for people with disabilities and good for the world. By signing this treaty, the US is reaffirming its commitment to basic human rights of all people with disabilities and positioning as to better contribute our expertise on the global level.” The President's signature indicates the country's interest in joining the treaty and begins a process in which the Senate will review and provide advice and consent for ratification. The drafting process was notable for the inclusion of people with disabilities on official delegations and as participants in advocacy groups with a rallying slogan of “Nothing about us without us.”

The United Nations estimates that there are six hundred and fifty million people with disabilities globally. The CRPD addresses barriers that impede the full participation of people with disabilities in their communities on all aspects of daily life. The treaty enhances opportunities for community access, employment and entrepreneurship, international exchange and the attainment of an adequate standard of living for all individuals, children and families affected by disability. The United States International Council on Disabilities is a federation of US based nongovernmental organizations, government agencies and individuals committed to international disability concerns.

I hope you have enjoyed this sort of catch up and round up of disability law news. Be sure to tune in next time. Thanks.

[music]

The Disability Law Lowdown is brought to you by the Disability Business Technical Assistance Centers which are a network of ADA centers that provide training, technical assistance and materials on the ADA and other disability related laws. Funding for the Centers is provided by a grant from NIDRR, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. You can subscribe to the Disability Law Lowdown at our website at disabilitylawlowdown.com or on iTunes.





The Southwest and Rocky Mountain ADA Centers are part of a program of Independent Living Research Utilization at TIRR - Memorial Hermann in Houston, Texas, and is funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. If you have questions about disability law or would like to request materials or training, please call 1-800-949-4232. This podcast is protected by the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivative-Works 2.5 License. For more information and transcripts, visit www.ada-podcast.com.