Disabled Customers

Related Terms: Americans with Disabilities Act

According to 2000 Census data published by the U.S. Census Bureau (available in tabular format on http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/disability/disabstat2k/table1.html), in that year, by actual total tally of the population, 49.7 million people (19.3 percent of the population aged 5 or over) had some kind of disability. A further subdivision showed that 5.8 percent of those aged 5 to 15, 18.6 percent of those 16 through 64, and 41.9 percent of those aged 65 and over had some disability. The census provided four distinct categories of disability. Those with physical disabilities were 8.2 percent of the population aged 5 or older (21.2 million physically handicapped); mentally disabled were 4.8 percent of population (12.4 million), those with sensory handicaps were 3.6 percent (9.3 million), and those unable to provide self-care 2.6 percent of the total population (6.8 million actual cases).

In 1990 the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) aimed to provide better access for this segment of the population to employment and services. The U.S. Department of Justice, the principal administrator of this law, sums up the aims and intentions of the ADA in one of its Questions and Answers pages on its home page as follows: Barriers to employment, transportation, public accommodations, public services, and telecommunications have imposed staggering economic and social costs on American society and have undermined our well-intentioned efforts to educate, rehabilitate, and employ individuals with disabilities. By breaking down these barriers, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) will enable society to benefit from the skills and talents of individuals with disabilities, will allow us all to gain from their increased purchasing power and ability to use it, and will lead to fuller, more productive lives for all Americans."

The portion of the Americans with Disabilities Act that most directly relates to disabled customers is Title III dealing with public accommodations. Title III requires that private businesses open to the public—including retail establishments, restaurants, and hotels and motels—give individuals with disabilities the same access to their goods and services that non-disabled customers enjoy. This section of the ADA also required that all future construction of commercial facilities, including office buildings, factories, and warehouses, as well as places of public accommodation, be constructed so that the building is accessible to individuals with disabilities.

BUSINESS OBLIGATIONS UNDER ADA

ADA places Title III requirements on businesses of all sizes. These, principally, are 1) to modify policies and practices that discriminate against the disabled, 2) to comply with access design standards when modifying existing or building new structures, 3) to remove existing barriers in existing structures where easily achievable, and 4) to provide auxiliary aids and service to ensure effective communication with those who have hearing, sight, or speech impairments.

Modified Policies

Examples of a policies that might require change is to accommodate guide dogs in stores that would not otherwise permit pets or always to keep open checkout counters capable of handling wheelchairs. The law specifically mentions specialist in diseases who in the past, evidently, refused to treat disabled persons with those diseases; now such selectivity is prohibited as a policy.

Access Standards

Many people still believe that the central issue of ADA is access to buildings. That is certain an important element of the law, but not the only one. Since 1992 building modification has been promulgated as the ADA Standards for Accessible Design, a 92 page document which clearly describes accommodations to newly built or altered buildings. The first 58 pages deal in detail with external facilities such as parking accommodations and internal access and accommodation matters applicable to any facilities, such a walkways, support rails, access to shelving, toilet facilities, communications devices, and many more areas of contact between people and structural facets; the remaining pages specify requirements unique to restaurants and cafeterias, medical care facilities, business and mercantile structures, libraries, accessible transient lodgings, and transportation facilities.

Removal of Barriers

A public accommodation is required to remove architectural barriers in existing facilities, including communication barriers that are structural in nature, where the removal is readily achievable, i.e., it can be accomplishable easily and able to be carried out without much difficulty or expense. The law lists 20 examples, as follows:

1. Installing ramps;
2. Making curb cuts in sidewalks and entrances;
3. Repositioning shelves;
4. Rearranging tables, chairs, vending machines, display racks, and other furniture;
5. Repositioning telephones;
6. Adding raised markings on elevator control buttons;
7. Installing flashing alarm lights;
8. Widening doors;
9. Installing offset hinges to widen doorways;
10. Eliminating a turnstile or providing an alternative accessible path;
11. Installing accessible door hardware;
12. Installing grab bars in toilet stalls;
13. Rearranging toilet partitions to increase maneuvering space;
14. Insulating lavatory pipes under sinks to prevent burns;
15. Installing a raised toilet seat;
16. Installing a full-length bathroom mirror;
17. Repositioning the paper towel dispenser in a bathroom;
18. Creating designated accessible parking spaces;
19. Installing an accessible paper cup dispenser at an existing inaccessible water fountain;
20. Removing high pile, low density carpeting; or
21. Installing vehicle hand controls.

Where such accommodations are difficult to achieve, work-arounds are permissible. Examples are to provide help for reaching shelves or, in multi-screen theaters where access to all screens is not possible to provide, the movie theater can meet the law by rotating the films shown so that each appears on one of the screens accessible to wheelchair-bound customers.

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