South Florida Personal Injury Blog

The Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted by Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush in 1990 after the lobbying efforts of dozens of disability rights groups. The law protects people with disabilities in various aspects of life, such as employment, public accommodations, public transportation, telecommunications, and other areas. Many commentators have likened its protections to the ones that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 granted against discrimination on the basis of sex, race, national origin, and religion. The enactment of the ADA represented a major victory for the disabled. The group of people protected under the ADA is broad.

The ADA does not enumerate specific groups of people who are protected – i.e., deaf people – instead defining the term ‘disabled’ on an individual basis. A person is disabled and thus entitled to ADA protections if he or she is has “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity.” The Amendments to the ADA, which became effective on January 1, 2009, offered more insight into this provision of the ADA by providing examples of “major life activities”: some “major bodily functions,” as well as "caring for oneself, performing manual tasks, seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, walking, standing, lifting, bending, speaking, breathing, learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, communicating, and working" and other functions. This can include, for example, people who use wheelchairs, those who have learning disabilities, the blind, and many other disabled people. Employers must make reasonable accommodations for employees (and job applicants) who are disabled. If an employer declined to hire a qualified applicant because she uses a wheelchair and the office has not installed a ramp from the parking lot onto the sidewalk by the building entrance, the job applicant could file a lawsuit against the employer for its failure to make reasonable accommodations – the ramp. Likewise, an employer who refused to make accommodations for a person who is hard of hearing – such as purchasing and installing a telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD or TTY) phone – could be held accountable in the same way. The basic principle is that disabled people should lead lives to the fullest extent possible, which includes engaging in the same life activities, like working, that all people do. Employers must make accommodations for disabled employees so long as they are not an “undue hardship.” That determination, according to Broward disability lawyer Andrew Alitowski , is made by examining factors such as the cost of the accommodation, the number of employees at the organization, and the total impact of making such an accommodation. A small local business with only three employees would not be able to make an accommodation that would cost a quarter million dollars, but it would be able to install smaller accommodations.

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