President George Bush signs the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.A Bush Administration proposal will update and rewrite federal standards for enforcement of the Americans With Disabilities Act, the landmark civil rights law passed in 1990, The New York Times reports June 16.
The new rules, which have been developed over four years, will be published in the Federal Register June 17 and will allow for 60 days of public comment. The Bush administration say the change is to accommodate the aging population and the growing number of disabled veterans.
John L. Wodatch, chief of the disability rights section of the Justice Department, said: “Disability is inherent in the human condition. The vast majority of individuals who are fortunate enough to reach an advanced age will benefit from the proposed requirements.”
By 2010, the department estimates, 2 percent of the adult population will use wheelchairs, and 4 percent will use crutches, canes, walkers or other mobility devices. In addition, it said, as the population ages, the number of people with hearing loss will increase.
(The NYT story mentions little about accommodations for people with visual impairments or other non-mobility impairments. It also says little about the growing inaccessibility of the Internet and other new technologies, such as lack of closed captioning in the new HD TVs. Here's hoping that disability groups look carefully at the details of the proposal to make sure these aspects are included.)
The NYT says the proposed rules try to clarify the meaning of the 1990 law. The 215,000-word proposal includes these new requirements:
- Courts would have to provide a lift or a ramp to ensure that people in wheelchairs could get into the witness stand, which is usually elevated from floor level.
- Auditoriums would have to provide a lift or a ramp so wheelchair users could “participate fully and equally in graduation exercises and other events” at which members of the audience have direct access to the stage.
- Any sports stadium with a seating capacity of 25,000 or more would have to provide safety and emergency information by posting written messages on scoreboards and video monitors. This would alert people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
- Theaters must provide specified numbers of seats for wheelchair users (at least five in a 300-seat facility). Viewing angles to the screen or stage must be “equivalent to or better than the average viewing angles provided to all other spectators.”
- Light switches in a hotel room could not be more than 48 inches high. The current maximum is 54 inches.
- Hotels must allow people with disabilities to reserve accessible guest rooms, and they must honor these reservations to the same degree they guarantee other room reservations.
- At least 25 percent of the railings at fishing piers would have to be no more than 34 inches high, so that a person in a wheelchair could fish over the railing.
- At least half of the holes on miniature golf courses must be accessible to people using wheelchairs, and these holes must be connected by a continuous, unobstructed path.
- A new swimming pool with a perimeter of more than 300 feet would have to provide “at least two accessible means of entry,” like a gentle sloping ramp or a chair lift.
- New playgrounds would have to provide access to slides, swings and other play equipment for children who use wheelchairs.
