Michelle: Thanks for joining us for this final webinar in our series for the ATP examination. We are going to be addressing legislation today. In today's webinar, we will be discussing legislation and funding. While it is hard to make this topic terribly exciting, it is important that we are aware of this information as some is on the ATP examination. It helps to be generally aware of legislation so that we know of the resources and funding options available
Assistive Technology Professional (ATP) Certification
The ATP certification is offered through RESNA, and it is designed to demonstrate a basic level of competence in assistive technology. This series of courses includes information to help prepare you for this exam. Over 4,000 people hold that credential. The ATP certification requires certain prerequisites, and those can be found on the RESNA website. For occupational therapy practitioners, 1,000 hours of work experience is required over a six-year period of time.
Legislation
This is the legislation that we will be addressing in this course (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Different legislation related to assistive technology.
We are going review the Rehabilitation Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, Assistive Technology Act, also known as the Tech Act, and then finally, the Workforce Investment Act. I will now go over the individual acts and will bold key words to help you remember.
Rehabilitation Act
The Rehabilitation Act is our oldest pertinent legislation. This was passed back in 1973. The purpose of the Rehabilitation Act was to prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability, specifically in programs that were run by federal agencies. This included programs that received any federal financial assistance, in federal employment, and in the employment practices of federal contractors. Like most legislation, there are a number of pages of information, but the core of this is prohibiting discrimination based on disability, but was limited to anything was connected to federal agencies.
The Rehabilitation Act includes a number of titles as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Titles under the Rehabilitation Act.
These seven areas of the act all addressed specific features of this legislation. If you are a federal agency, you had to be quite aware of how you conducted your business. We are going to look at two specific titles.
