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Heim / Albúm / Merki mental disabilities
+ deaf 2
ADAPT (535)
USA Today Friday March 16, 1990 USA Today USA TODAY hopes to serve as a forum for better understanding and unity to help make the USA truly one nation." —Allen H. Nouharth, Founder, Sept.15,1982 Peter S. Prichard, Editor John Seigenthaler, Editorial Director Cathleen Black, Publisher Thomas Curley, President DEBATE The USA's disabled deserve simple justice Jennifer Keelan is an 8-year-old who knows how to get where she wants to go. Afflicted with cerebral palsy, Jennifer has trouble moving around. But Monday afternoon in Washington, she crawled hand-over-hand up the 83 steps leading to the U.S. Capitol, eventually reaching the top. No members of Congress threw obstacles in her path. None stood in her way. But in the eyes of Jennifer and about 60 others who abandoned their wheelchairs to make the Capitol climb, they might just as well have. By failing to protect the disabled from discrimination, they say, Congress is allowing others to throw obstacles in their path every day. They want Congress to stop yakking and start voting on the Americans with Disabilities Act, sweeping legislation that would do for the disabled what the civil rights legislation of the 1960s did for minorities and women. The legislation passed the Senate last year. It has the support of the president. But the House of Representatives, lobbied hard by business interests that fear the bill's costs, just can't seem to get its part of the job done. Justice demands that the stalling end. Today, people in wheelchairs lose job opportunities because they can’t get to work on public transportation. The deaf are often shut off from society because telephones aren't properly equipped. People with mental disabilities are denied jobs by employers who wrongly assume they can't do them. Too often, the only response is: What do they expect? Society can't make them well again. The disabilities act has a better, more sensitive response: * lt bans discrimination against both the mentally and physically disabled. * It requires employers to make “reasonable accommodations" for the handicapped. * It ensures access to bus and rail systems. * It mandates full telephone access for the deaf. * It demands that public accommodations, ranging from hotels to coffee shops to bowling alleys, try to provide equal access for the disabled. Those goals cannot be achieved easily or cheaply. As you can read across this page, they will mean new costs and inconveniences for businesses. New equipment may be needed. Structural alterations may be required. Plans for new building may be altered. Those concerns deserve consideration. But they are not adequate reasons to delay any longer. The legislation specifies that employers not be forced to endure undue hardship. It says the only changes that are required are those that are readily achievable. It affords time to make changes — as long as 30 years in some cases. Every day that Congress delays is another day that obstacles can be thrown in Jennifer Keelan's path. And she, just like the rest of us, deserves every opportunity to reach the top. CARTOON (by David Seavey, USA Today): Little person in an old manual wheelchair on a long scroll of paper with "Access Laws" written on it. Scroll makes a kind of ramp up a set of stairs to a large fancy building that looks like a government building. QUOTELINES "What am l required to do if I have three employees with different disabilities and six customers come into my business who are hearing-impaired, all of whom need sign-language interpreters?" -- Kenneth Lewis, disabled accounting-firm owner "What we did for civil rights in the '60s. we forgot to do for people with disabilities." -- Rep. Pat Schroeder, D-Colo. "Yes. there are costs associated with this bill, but these costs are manageable." — Rep. Norman Mineta, D-Calif. “lt will reach the floor, we will have a conference with the Senate, and it will become law." -— House Speaker Thomas Foley, D-Wash.
ADAPT (601)
THE DENVER POST / NATIONAL Friday: September 9, 1989 [Headline] Senate approves bill to guarantee rights of disabled By Knight-Rldder News Service WASHINGTON — An estimated 43 million America with disabilities won a major victory last night as the Senate approved a landmark bill aimed at moving them into the nation’s social and economic mainstream. The Senate, on a 76-to-8 vote, passed legislation that would extend for the first time sweeping civil rights protections to persons with hearing impairments, epilepsy, AIDS and dozens of other physical and mental disabilities. The measure, which now goes to the House for expected approval, would ban discrimination in the hiring of the disabled; require businesses, shops and transit systems to make their facilities more accessible to the wheelchair-bound; and force telephone companies to provide special operators for the deaf. The bill was endorsed last month by President Bush, and administration lobbyists joined advocates for the disabled yesterday in opposing efforts to modify the legislation to meet business objections that it will be too costly to small firms. Business leaders warned that the measure could put some employers out of business if.they were required to make expensive structural changes in their buildings to accommodate disabled customers and workers. Critics also said the compliance provisions of the bill were vague and would result in years of litigation in federal courts over what constituted discrimination against the disabled. Major provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act would: * Prohibit employers from discriminating against qualified job applicants with disabilities. Changes to accommodate the disabled in the workplace would be required unless they would cause an “undue hardship," a term critics say is too vague. * Require new business establishments to be accessible to the disabled and require existing establishments be made accessible if the alterations are “readily achievable." * Require new buses and trains to be equipped with wheelchair lifts. * Require telephone companies to provide operators who could relay messages from the deaf to hearing individuals. Deaf persons can communicate with each other by telephone now by using Telecommunications Devices for the Deaf (TDDs), but can't communicate with people who don't have the TDDs. “We’re not asking for special treatment," said Pat Wright, government affairs director of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund Inc. “Whether it’s putting a ramp in or providing a reasonable accommodation in employment, it makes you equal, not special." The bill, as originally written, would have exempted Congress from its provisions — but that exemption was deleted during debate. And in another concession to the intense interest of the disabled in the measure, the Senate for the first time allowed an interpreter using sign language to translate the televised proceedings of the floor debate so that the deaf and hearing impaired could follow the action. Extending civil rights protections to people with AIDS or the AIDS virus had been recommended by a Reagan administration commission on AIDS, but was opposed by President Reagan himself. Bush, however, has supported the protection. The bill bars employment discrimination against persons with AIDS but does permit employers to deny jobs if the employee poses a significant risk of transmitting the infection to others. However, homosexuals are not covered by the legislation. They can still be discriminated against solely on the basis of their sexuality. After an inquiry by Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., sponsors agreed to delete transvestites from nation protections. Helms also raised questions about providing protection to schizophrenics, manic-depressives and psychotics, but their status remained intact in the measure.