Plan Seeks More Access for Disabled
By
ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is about to propose
far-reaching new rules that would give people with disabilities
greater access to tens of thousands of courtrooms, swimming pools,
golf courses, stadiums, theaters, hotels and retail stores.
The proposal would substantially update and rewrite federal
standards for enforcement of the Americans With Disabilities Act, a
landmark civil rights law passed with strong bipartisan support in
1990. The new rules would set more stringent requirements in many
areas and address some issues for the first time, in an effort to
meet the needs of an aging population and growing numbers of
disabled war veterans.
More than seven million businesses and all state and local
government agencies would be affected. The proposal includes some
exemptions for parts of existing buildings, but any new construction
or renovations would have to comply.
The new standards would affect everything from the location of
light switches to the height of retail service counters, to the use
of monkeys as “service animals” for people with disabilities, which
would be forbidden.
The White House approved the proposal in May after a five-month
review. It is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on
Tuesday, with 60 days for public comment. After considering those
comments, the government would issue final rules with the force of
law.
Already, the proposal is stirring concern. The United States
Chamber of Commerce says it would be onerous and costly, while
advocates for disabled Americans say it does not go far enough.
Since the disability law was signed by the first President Bush,
advances in technology have made services more available to people
with disabilities. But Justice Department officials said they were
still receiving large numbers of complaints. In recent months, the
federal government has settled lawsuits securing more seats for
disabled fans at Madison Square Garden in New York and at the
nation’s largest college football stadium, at the
University of Michigan.
The
Census Bureau says more than 51 million Americans have some kind
of disability, with nearly two-thirds of them reporting severe
impairments.
The proposed rules, under development for more than four years,
flesh out the meaning of the 1990 law, which set forth broad
objectives. 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.
The Justice Department acknowledged that some of the changes
would have significant costs. But over all, it said, the value of
the public benefits, estimated at $54 billion, exceeds the expected
costs of $23 billion.
In an economic analysis of the proposed rules, the Justice
Department said the need for an accessible environment was greater
than ever because the Iraq war was “creating a new generation of
young men and women with disabilities.”
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. Likewise, it said, as the
population ages, the number of people with
hearing loss will increase.
Under the 1990 law, businesses are supposed to remove barriers to
people with disabilities if the changes are “readily achievable,”
meaning they can be “carried out without much difficulty or
expense.”
The Bush administration is proposing a safe harbor for small
businesses. They could meet their obligations in a given year if, in
the prior year, they had spent at least 1 percent of their gross
revenues to remove barriers.
Curtis L. Decker, executive director of the National Disability
Rights Network, a coalition of legal advocates, said: “Safe harbors
make us very nervous. A small business could spend the requisite
amount of money and still not be accessible.”
Randel K. Johnson, a vice president of the United States Chamber
of Commerce, said the proposed rules “are so long and technically
complex that even the best-intentioned small business could be found
out of compliance by a clever lawyer looking to force a settlement.”
The Justice Department cited the “monetary cost cap” as one of
several steps it was taking to limit the rules’ impact on small
businesses. But Mr. Johnson said he feared that courts would view
the ceiling as a floor and tell businesses they should spend 1
percent of their revenues on removing barriers.
The proposed rules affirm the right of people with disabilities
to use guide dogs and other service animals in public places, but
they tighten the definition to exclude certain species.
When the existing rules were adopted in the early 1990s, the
Justice Department said, few people anticipated the current trend
toward “the use of wild, exotic or unusual species” as service
animals.
The proposed rules define a service animal as “any dog or other
common domestic animal individually trained to do work or perform
tasks” for a person with a physical or mental disability.
Under this definition, the administration says, monkeys could not
qualify as service animals, nor would reptiles; amphibians; rabbits,
ferrets and rodents; or most farm animals.
Under the rules, a hotel, restaurant, theater, store or public
park could ask a person with a disability to remove a service animal
if the animal was out of control or not housebroken, or if it posed
a direct threat to the health or safety of others.
By way of example, the rules say that a theater could exclude a
dog that disrupted a live performance by repeated barking.
The rules confirm that people with disabilities can use
traditional wheelchairs, power wheelchairs and electric scooters in
any public areas open to pedestrians.
But shopping centers, amusement parks and other public places
could impose reasonable restrictions on two-wheeled Segway vehicles,
golf carts and “other power-driven mobility devices” used by those
with disabilities.
-Article from the New York Times (link).