The Americans with Disabilities Act and Occupational Therapy

Editor’s note: This text-based course is a transcript of the webinar, The Americans with Disabilities Act and Occupational Therapy, presented by Jane Dressler, JD, OTR/L. Learning Objectives By the end of this course, the participant will be able to describe purpose, structure and enforcement of the ADA.By the end of this course, the participant will be able to recognize ways to facilitate employment for people with disabilities, using the ADA as a guide.By the end of this course, the participant will be able to identify ways to locate ADA resources.Hello. I’m here. Everyone can hear me? All right, that’s wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your interest in the Americans with Disability Act and occupational therapy. The tagline from the ada.gov website says: The Americans with Disability Act celebrates 25 years in 2015 of removing barriers and empowering people. That sounds very much like occupational therapy, as does much of the language of the law.The learning objectives for today is by the end of the course, participants will be able to describe the purpose, structure and enforcement of the ADA, recognize ways to facilitate employment for people with disabilities using the ADA as a guide, and understand ways, identify ways to locate ADA resources. Also, I’m hoping very much to ignite the advocate within you in that issues related to disability with employment in particular come to us frequently in our roles as occupational therapists. The Americans with Disability Act is a federal law. It means that it is the law of the land in all states. It originally was enacted in 1990. Then, in 2008, some major amendments were put in place, and those were enacted in 2009. The 2008 amendments are all good news for occupational therapists and people with disabilities, just making the provisions of the ADA better and broader with more protections for people with disabilities. I highlight that that in … If you're using any specific resource on the ADA, you want to make sure that it’s dated 2009 or later so that you get the most current information. The purpose of the ADA is to prevent discrimination against persons with disabilities by extending the same rights to people with disabilities that are in place for other groups, based on race, creed, gender, national origin and religion. The ADA provides comprehensive civil rights protection for persons with disabilities in these various areas: public accommodations, transportation, telecommunications, state and local government, and employment. Employment is underlined and asterisk there in that we will be spending a little more time on that area in our presentation today. Everything legal, every line in any law sounds straightforward until you realize that every term in every law has a legal definition. The ADA defines a disability as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits, you’ll note that’s in quotes, one or more major life activities. Also, someone is considered disabled if they have a history of such an impairment or are regarded as having such an impairment. The original law in 1990 had the definition of disability being a physical or mental impairment that severely or significantly limits one or more major life activities, but that language from severely or significantly limits was changed in the 2008 amendments to just substantially limits, which means that … That’s a good example of how those amendments broadened the protection in that substantially limits is an easier standard to reach. The definition of major life activities basically means a lot of things which is very good news for our clients. If there’s any impairment in one’s ability to care for themselves for manual tests in seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, walking, standing, lifting, bending, breathing, learning, reading, concentrate thinking, communicating and working. That’s a very, very broad definition which is good news for people with disabilities. Again, in the 2008 amendments, the language, the definition of major life activities is the same in both versions of the law, but in the 2008, the language was added: The definition of major life activities include all those items but are not limited to. That leaves the door open for other things to be considered in major life activities, which again is good news in that basically if a person feels like they’re disabled, they will be considered disabled. If they want to come on to the protection of this law, it’s very easy essentially to do so. The ADA has three titles. The Title 1 is employment, and we will come back to this. Title 2 is state and local government services. Title 3 is what they call public accommodations which now includes both public accommodations and private accommodations, any business whatsoever, any public or private enterprise, and telecommunication and transportation. People familiar with the 1990 version of the law might remember that it was originally structured in five titles. Now there’s only three, but everything that was in the original law is in the amended law, only broader. You will see from my slides that they’re very text heavy, and that’s because I intended them as a handout. Basically everything I’m saying today will be at your reference as a handout. What I wanted to say about … Remember, Title 1 employment we’re coming back to, but Title 2 state and local government services. What I wanted to highlight about that in that it basically states that it protects qualified individuals with disability from discrimination on the basis of disability in services and activities provided by state and local government entities. When it says qualified individuals, what it means here is people who meet the definition of disabled. Under Title 2, and this is the interesting part, state and local government entities that provide employment and vocational services to individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities must provide those services in the most integrated setting appropriate to the needs of persons with disability. I think this is really interesting in that the law just recognizes the phenomenon of people with intellectual disabilities and developmental disabilities, the long history of those people working in sheltered workshops. This law is saying no,...