Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Rehabilitation Research and
Employment Policy for
Persons with Disability
The
Implementation Issues
and
What's Next?
10:00 to 12:00
CART Services Provided By
Realtime Reporter:
Sherry C. Knox, CBC, CCP
>> SUSANNE BRUYERE: Okay.
We would like to get started.
We may have a few other people
joining us, but we want to get going here.
Welcome to our -- I believe it's
our 14th or a 15th policy forum and this one is entitled the ADA Amendments
Act: Implementation Issues and What's
Next?
And I want to acknowledge that
this is a jointly-organized event always that has been occurring. We're now starting our fifth year as a
partnership under the Employment Policy for People With Disabilities,
Rehabilitation, Research and
NIDRR has been funding
I also want to acknowledge and,
Andy, I'll have you advance the slide, that this is very much a collaborative
effort. This employment policy, RRTC,
has been a collaboration not only with the American Association of People With
Disabilities and Andy Imparato has been my ally in these policy forums and I'll
be introducing Andy in a second, but also two entities within Cornell
University, the Employment and Disability Institute, which is where I'm
from. My name is Susanne Bruyère. I failed to introduce myself. I'm the Director of the Employment Disability
Institute, which is in the
We also are aligned with
Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., David Stapleton and Bonnie O'Day -- there
she is -- and David are here, are my partners as well as other -- several other
researchers at Mathematica who have been instrumental in turning out some of
the research that you have seen demonstrated or spoken about across these 15
policy forums and also Rutgers University, School of Management and Labor Relations,
The Program for Disability Research, John Burton is another colleague who is a
supporter and collaborator on this.
So with that, I think I would
like to move along and let Andy Imparato who is the CEO of AAPD tell you a
little bit more about our speakers today and maybe a bit more about your own
background as you do that because you know this is an area that you and I met
on initially many years ago, our common interest in employment,
nondiscrimination and improving employment outcomes for people with
disabilities was the spark that lit us and that sustained.
So I'll turn this over to you,
Andy.
>> ANDY IMPARATO: Thank you, Susanne. Let me just ask, anybody in the audience need
a sign language interpreter right now?
Okay. So -- yeah, I didn't want you to have to
interpret -- and then if somebody comes in, obviously, we're ready to go.
We also have CART, so if anybody
needs realtime captioning, unfortunately, we don't have our projector, so come
sit up in the front and you can follow along if you need the captioning.
So the topic for this forum is
the ADA Amendments Act: Implementation
Issues and What's Next?
This was an exciting year for
the disability coalition and the broader civil rights coalition that had worked
on the ADA Amendments Act. Some of the
folks in the room were very involved with that. President Bush signed the bill into law on
September 25th of this year and the law takes effect on January 1st.
So, you know, as we were
thinking about a topic, a timely topic, we thought it would make sense to look
at what are some of the implementation issues around our new civil rights
law?
And what are some other issues
related to civil rights and employment that weren't necessarily addressed in
the ADA Amendments Act, but that are on the agenda for the next Congress and
the next administration and obviously with the transition activities going on,
this is a topic that is also timely. We
have had a number of meetings with the transition team and they're looking for
things, priorities from the disability community that they can pursue in the
next administration.
So I think we have four
excellent speakers and the way we structure our time in these forums, we try to
keep the presentations, you know, to 10, 10 to 15 minutes so that there's
plenty of time for Q & A and we're happy in the Q and A to get into civil
right issues beyond what anybody mentions.
So if people came here with a particular passion or something you want
to talk about and you don't hear it in the presentations, don't be shy about
bringing it up and that goes for the people online as well. We're going to try to get some questions
online, I guess, through your technology and you can type your question into
the box and we have got somebody in the room who's monitoring that and will let
us know.
So I'm going to go ahead and
introduce all four speakers now and then we'll just dig into the
presentations.
The first speaker is
Commissioner Christine Griffin, who was sworn in on January 3, 2006 as a Commissioner
at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She was nominated by President Bush to a
democratic position on the Commission.
And before coming to the Commission, she was the Executive Director of
the
The next speaker is Jennifer
Mathis. Jennifer was kind of the core
team that worked on the ADA Amendments Act with Bloomfield from the Georgetown
clinic, the Epilepsy Foundation, National Council On Independent living, AAPD
and then the broader coalition that we worked with, including the Consortium
Disability Task Force. Jennifer works on
a variety of civil rights issues for the
The next speaker is Jenifer Simpson
who works at AAPD. She is our Senior Director
for Telecommunications and Technology Policy.
And she has found a relatively new coalition that she'll talk about,
called the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology or COAT, which
is working on a major piece of federal legislation that was introduced in the
last Congress and we were hoping we'll pass in the next Congress, called the
21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. So she'll be talking about that and some
other COAT priorities as they relate to improving employment outcomes for
people with disabilities.
And then finally we have Day
Al-Mohamed. Day is the Senior Legislative
and Federal Affairs Officer at the American Psychological Association and she
is on the board of directors of the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities
and is the co-chair of the CCD Rights Task Force, which looks at civil rights
issues across the board as they affect people with disabilities.
So without further adieu, please
join me in welcoming Commissioner Christine Griffin.
>> CHRISTINE
( Laughter )
>> SUSANNE BRUYERE: Yes, they can.
>> CHRISTINE
>> SUSANNE BRUYERE: We'll get you a new updated one.
>> CHRISTINE
Hi, folks. Thanks for being here, thanks for taking the
time. Thanks to those of you who are
joining us across the country. I think
we're on the a brink of an exciting new time in this country for people with
disabilities. We have a president-elect
who has committed not only during his campaign, but throughout his transition,
that he is going to change employment opportunities for people with
disabilities in this country. And as
Andy said, I've been spearheading an initiative at the EEOC called LEAD,
Leadership for the Employment of Americans with Disabilities focusing entirely
on the federal government and trying to make the federal government become the
model employer they are required to be.
And one of the things that we have seen and we have talked about at
earlier policy forums is the drastic decline in employment opportunities for
people with disabilities in the federal government and we are now at a very low
of .92% of people with severe disabilities working in our federal
government. Out of 2.6 million, that
is. And so that's really bad. So although I've been frustrated in the last
two and a half years working on that initiative, thinking, you know, we're not
making any changes, I now look at it differently and I now say, what we were
doing for two and a half years was really building a foundation for a president
like Obama to come in and actually change things and be able to hit the ground
running with employment for people with disabilities in the federal
government. So I'm very excited about
that.
He actually has a full agenda at
change.gov related to people with disabilities.
People should check that out if they haven't. A more comprehensive plan was developed for
his campaign, which you can still get access to and you should read that as
well.
But as Andy said, some of the
things that he talked about is increasing funding for enforcement for
employment for people with disabilities, supporting the genetic information
nondiscrimination act, ensuring affordable, accessible health care and
improving mental health care, all of these things tied together with some of
his other promises about issuing an executive order for employment of people
with disabilities in the federal government as well as enforcing contractors
requirement to employ people with disabilities when they get federal
contracts.
All of that combined, you know,
once done, can really create powerful change for people with disabilities in
this country.
And I won't go into detail, but
he goes on to talk about what he would do in the private sector as well, with
tax. Tax incentives and other things
regarding accommodations for private employers.
So people should really take a look at that because it is really
exciting and again, I'm now rationalizing everything I have done for the past
two and a half years as the foundation for this president to come in and hit
the ground running and us hit the ground running on the issue of employment.
So I am very excited about
that. And the genetic information on
discrimination act, just to give people an update of where it is, the EEOC has
written regulations. They then go
through a process, an interagency process that's spearheaded by the Office of Management
and Budget. That has already been
underway for some time. Other agencies
will give us comments. We look at those
and we're in the process of doing that now.
If those comments make substantive changes, they have to actually come
back to the commission for a vote. If
they don't, the regs can be issued as a notice of proposed rulemaking with a
60-day comment period. So within the
next I'd say month or two, you're going to see that go out as an NPRM and give
everyone a chance to comment on those regulations and if changes are made, or even if it
actually comes back to the commission for a final vote on a final rule. So that's the process and it's well underway
so people can look forward to seeing that.
And then of course the most
important thing that we're working on is the Americans with Disabilities Act
Amendments Act. And that particular, you
know, the details about that particular -- I think Jennifer is going to go into
in more detail. But let me just tell
you a couple of key things that's happened at the EEOC.
We are charged with writing the
regulations with regard to the employment piece of people with disabilities and
Congress, I think, was very explicit in telling us, not only to rewrite our
regs. They mentioned certain words that
we had in our regs that they would like to see taken out. But the big message for me and should be for
everyone to look at when we're writing regs, is the overarching message was
that this should be brought, coverage and the definition of employment --
definition of disability should be broad enough that people with disabilities get in the
courthouse door and actually get to discuss whether discrimination occurred or
not.
And that is the big message,
that we should be writing regulations that make it far less onerous than it's
ever been for people with disabilities to be able to get coverage and I think
the more interesting thing that Congress was saying is that -- and they said
explicitly, we don't need statistical analysis.
We don't need, you know, a big, heavy burden for a person with a
disability to prove that they have a disability and I don't think we have to go
into much detail about what's happened over the last 18 years with the whole
catch-22 and that you could be having a disability but then you didn't have one
when you were actually, you know, trying to get coverage under the Americans
with Disabilities Act. So we're very
excited about what's happened.
We have been looking at
regulations that have been drafted by our office of legal counsel and in my
opinion and in the opinion of my fellow democratic commissioner, Stewart. We don't believe that they're ready to go out
yet and we want to be extremely careful.
We have 18 years of erosion of the definition of disability that we have
to make sure doesn't happen again. So I
think we have a very, very high sense of duty and obligation to make sure that
the regs we put out reflect what the congressional intent actually is and was
when they wrote the Amendments Act and the reports that come with it.
So we are looking very carefully
at this.
Unfortunately, and some of you
may know this, we had a commission meeting last week that -- I'm not quite sure
why we were having the meeting because there weren't votes to actually get this
out, given that we have four commissioners at the EEOC. So when there is a 2-2 vote, whatever you're
voting for. If there are two votes and
it fails, it doesn't go out. Our
republican colleagues did not have our votes and yet held a meeting on this
very topic. And read the draft regs as
they would like to have seen them go out into the record.
We tried to prevent that from
happening. We were not successful. They read it into the record anyway, and I
think if anyone will eventually have a transcript of that meeting and if anyone
wants to take a look at it and you are a person with a disability or an
advocate for people with disabilities, it will be clear to see why we thought
it wasn't ready and we really are trying to prevent another 18, 20, however
many years of bad luck around this issue.
And so for us, it's very
important that we put out something that reflects what Congress asked us to do
and that, again, gets us to talking about discrimination and whether it
occurred or not and not whether someone with diabetes really has a disability
or somebody with epilepsy really has, you know, epilepsy or enough of epilepsy
to actually get in the door. We
shouldn't even be having those discussions.
So we're working diligently on that and, again, at that meeting, the
vote failed. So it doesn't go out. But there will be this record of what
colleagues wanted to get out the door.
Their argument is that we have
to have something in place by January 1st because that's when the law becomes
effective and my experience is -- if Congress wanted something by that date,
they would have said so. Because this
law was only signed in the end of September, I don't think anyone expected that
we would really have regs ready to go and that this isn't the time to do
something in haste. This is the time to
actually be very careful and deliberative about what words we say in those regs
and what the consequences might be for people with disabilities when those
words are interpreted by lawyers and courts.
So we are in the process of keeping
going. We worked with our office of
legal counsel before that meeting and we did make, you know, some very good
changes, I think. But a lot more needs
to be done and we'll be working on that.
And I can assure you that when we are done, this will go out as a
notice-of-proposed rulemaking and everyone will get to see what we have written
and be able to comment and I assure you that I think there are lots of great
minds out there in this country that will comment on our regulations and will
probably help us make them even better once we see their comments and we will
take the comments very seriously. This
will not be an instance where we think we're smarter more than everybody else
in the country.
We want peoples' comments and we
want to make this the best it can be.
So the two big issues that I
think we're still at a little bit of a stalemate over and the other two big
issues is, you know, how do you define major life activity?
How do you define that and how
do you make sure that not only regulations are clear but that the guidance is
clear so that we again are not back in the same situation we were in before the
law was passed?
So that's not easy, not an easy
task. Congress in some respects sort of
said this to us on this issue and that's reason to take it very seriously. You know, they wanted to get this law passed
and so they said we trust EEOC to come up with really good regs on this and I
want to make sure we deliver.
The other big issue that we're
at some disagreement over and why this didn't go out as a whole issue of the
major life activity of working...there have been serious problems with that and
a variety of decisions -- I don't know if Jennifer is going to talk a little
bit about the decisions. All right
then. But just know that it's a very
problematic area and it's the one major life activity that EEOC extracted out
of the list of major life activities and spent considerable time defining it
and then developing factors around it.
And some of that is based on earlier Rehab Act cases and some is, you
know, I don't know, I think an attempt to be helpful when in fact it
wasn't. It actually was very
harmful.
So we're in the process of
trying to look at that a little more expansively and not -- again, not get us
into the same situation we have been in.
But those are the really big issues.
I can go into a lot more detail about changes. I think Jennifer is going to do some of
that. But some really important great
things and Andy and Jennifer next to me and a lot of other people have worked
on getting this done, you know, mitigating -- that clear is a bell. We have been saying that from the beginning
of time. Should not look at anyone with
regard to mitigating measures and that alone for me I thought was a huge, huge
win for the disability community and that will make serious changes in and of
itself, but we need to get all of it right and I'm going to end there and we'll
have lots of time for questions.
Thanks.
>> ANDY IMPARATO: Thank you, Commissioner Griffin. Just to clarify, you said the first issue was
around the definition of major life activities.
Is part of that also how you're defining substantially limits?
>> CHRISTINE
I guess, you're right. I don't want anyone to think that we don't
have the nonexhaustive list that are there and one of them in this law we
actually expand that. It's really around
how does a major life -- how is it substantially limited in order for someone
to be covered as a person with a disability?
And that's really where the
problems are, around those words, substantially limited. How do you define it?
How do you interpret it, your
definition?
Thank you.
>> ANDY IMPARATO: Okay.
And we'll hold questions until we have got through the speakers and now
we'll have Jennifer Mathis from the
>> JENNIFER MATHIS: I'm going to talk a little bit about sort of
an overview of the key things that the ADA Amendments Act does and how it will
impact people in the courts, how it will impact people on the ground and I'm
not going to get into a lot of detail, but just sort of go through some of the
major -- the major points and you all can ask questions at the end.
And building on Chris' theme of
sort of laying foundations, I think the idea behind this law was really to lay
a foundation for the courts and for employers and other people covered by the
ADA to sort of think at things differently, to think about disability in a
different way than they have been and we can't control what the courts will
do. Obviously, things won't be perfect
under the new law but I think the idea was this was sort of laying the foundation
to send a message that we're looking at disability in a new way and not as, you
know, something that creates complete dysfunction for somebody. That, you know, the idea of being that people
with disabilities can work, can be productive citizens and the idea that the
ADA was intended to sort of get people into the workforce. Not to protect only people who have so many
difficulties that they can't work and that they can't do anything. And so the idea is sort of reversing the
stereotype notions that have -- (Indicating) -- made it so difficult for people
to get protection from the
The second thing is around major
life activities. The
Secondly, it created a
nonexhaustive list in the statute, which wasn't in the statute before of things
that Congress was saying are major life activities an it's not limited to those
things, but they are just this list is more expansive than the list that we had
previously from the EEOC and actually specifically gets at some things which
the courts were struggling with a little bit.
Some of the issues around mental disabilities but weren't in the EEOC's
original list, concentrating, thinking, communicating and also things like
standing and lifting, sleeping, eating, bending, which I think, you know, some
courts recognized were major life activities, others didn't. And so, you know, it's an expanded list which
is helpful. It also very significantly
clarifies the major bodily functions can be major life activities and it lists
some bodily functions. Again, it's a
nonexhaustive list like your immune system function, endocrine function, normal
cell growth, bowel, bladder function, brain function. You know, the impetus, I think the original
impetus behind this clarification was really to get at some conditions that
where people often had trouble pointing to major life activities that they were
limited and like people with cancer often had trouble. They could be very sick and very impacted by
the disability, but they couldn't always point to major life activities that
they were substantially limited in and this was trying to get at the idea that,
you know, if you can show that a major bodily function is substantially
limited, that's sufficient. That is a
major life activity and some of the courts had recognized that and some hadn't
and so this was an effort to clarify that.
I think what it also did, though, is it gave everybody a much more
direct route to show that they have a disability. So a lot of folks can now sort of rely on --
they have alternate routes. They can
show that they are substantially limited, say, an endocrine function, if they
have diabetes as opposed to showing or in addition to showing that they are
substantially limited in particular major life activities and that's I think
helpful for people because it's more direct, it's clear in many cases. It's less personal. It requires the person to get less into the
details of their personal life. And, you
know, it's easier, I think, sometimes for courts to understand. It's more direct. I'm not saying that it's the only avenue for
people, but I think it's a good additional avenue for people to use.
And then thirdly, there is the
fix for episodic conditions. People with
epilepsy, people with PTSD, bipolar disorder, depression and a number of other
impairments had a lot of trouble getting covered under the original ADA because
their impairments sort of flared up episodically. And the courts would say, well, you're not
seizing 24 hours a day and so, gosh, you know, you only have a seizure the last
15 minutes once a week, that couldn't possibly be substantially limiting
you. And so, you know, this fixes
that. Obviously that wasn't the intent
to say that nobody with epilepsy would be covered because they're not having a
constant seizure or that somebody with PTSD is not covered because they're not
having a traumatic episode 24-7. So this
basically says you look at the impairment when it's in its active state and if
it's substantially limiting when it's in its active state, it's covered. Same thing for impairments in remission. This is true for cancer. There is a particularly sad case with a woman
with breast cancer where the court found that she wasn't substantially
limited. The breast cancer was currently
in remission. Four months after the
decision, she's dead but yet, the court said I don't think she's really
substantially limited. So it just sort
of showed that I think the ridiculous nature of this analysis. And so episodic conditions should now be
covered much more easily. And then the
fourth thing is the fix that Chris alluded to with the definition of
substantially limited. I used to call
this the substantially limited fix because it really just -- it doesn't create
a new term. It doesn't specifically say
a new thing. It keeps the same language,
substantially limited in a major life activity, but what it does is clarify
that substantially limited has been interpreted too stringently by the courts
and by the EEOC. It's a lower standard
than the courts have been applying, and it's to be interpreted broadly, to cover, you know, a
broad group of people and I think while, you know, I think it's confusing for
people because they look at this law and they see, you know, well it doesn't
exactly say what you do. It just says
that substantially limited is a lower standard than the courts have been
applying. But actually I think this is
probably the most significant fix because it's really about tone. It's about attitude. It sets the tone for how courts look at
disability and in most of these problematic cases where people are losing in
the courts unfairly, one of the first things the court does is talk about
Finally, the regarded as prong
was made significantly easier to use because it had become almost impossible
for people to use. You had to
demonstrate that an employer or another covered entity believed that you were
substantially limited in a major life activity
and of course employers would always say, well, I thought she had
diabetes, but I didn't think that she was substantially limited in any major
life activity and so now it sort of takes away some of that ability to use
subjective views and it just says if you have got an impairment, an actual or a
perceived impairment and you're discriminated against based on that impairment,
then you're covered so the real issue is now causation, did you discriminate
based on an actual or perceived impairment?
And it gets us away from this
whole notion of where you are on a spectrum of severity and I think that's a
very helpful thing. The regarded as
prong is somewhat limited, it doesn't have accommodations under it. So if you're covered only under that prong,
you couldn't get accommodation. So
people who are challenging firings or non-selection or any number of other
things where they don't need an accommodation, you would expect to be going
under this prong because really then they just need to talk about
causation. They just need to show causation
and they don't have to worry about showing the severity of their disability and
whether it's severe enough.
Now, on the ground, I think this
really has as much impact as it has in the courts. I think it will create a major shift in
attitude about disability. You know,
it's sending a signal, again, to sort of look at disability differently. This is not -- this has not been just a
litigation issue. I think on the ground
and it's fascinating to me seeing employers respond to requests for
accommodations. You see case law sort of
dribbling into what people have to do just when they ask for a simple
accommodation. They have to fill out
lots of paperwork and they go back and forth and back and forth with employers
about the nature of their disability and how are you substantially limited and
what major life activities are you substantially limited in?
And are you really substantially
limited?
And it's very clear, I think,
that there is this perception in the employment world that, you know, very few
people are covered and that it's a very strict standard and I think the
trainings that have been going on already since the ADA Amendment passed have
really been sending a message to the HR world, to the employment world, that --
and this is a lower standard that, you know, many more people will be covered
and that you really need to stop focusing so much on peoples' disabilities
themselves and how severe they are and to start focusing more on
discrimination. Because that's going to
be where the courts are going to be focusing and that's where you're going to
need to worry about.
I think also it sends a message
that Congress is watching what the courts are doing. This has been sort of a battle between
Congress and the courts on a number of fronts around how to interpret
Congress's laws and also whether Congress had the power to pass laws. And I think for a long time we have seen
courts basically beating up on Congress and sort of saying what they do doesn't
matter we're going to construe it the way we want to and this is Congress
basically talking back and saying, no, we do care. We're watching what you're doing and if you
diverge too much from what we intended to do, we're going to go back and fix
it. And so we're going to keep doing
that until you get it right.
It's also not just an employment
issue. I think the ADA has ratifications
for other areas and one of the most notable is schools, people with learning
disabilities seeking accommodations in education, lower education, higher
education and there's some language in the committee reports actually about
learning disabilities and sort of responding to the courts making it extremely
difficult for them to qualify people with disabilities under the current law
because, gee, they have gotten through college or they have gotten through medical
school and, you know, if they need an accommodation, well, you know, they are
not a person with a disability because they have gotten this far and they have
had academic success and the ADA Amendments actually says in the legislative
history in a number of places, no, just because somebody's had academic success
doesn't mean they can't have a learning disability and in fact the education
community I think saw some of these changes and got very nervous about it and
so ended up getting involved in the discussions around the bill. And there were some concessions to the
education community and so what we have I think affects a broad range of -- a broad range of various not just
employment. And the final thing I would
say is just that I think people need to be very careful about the early cases
that people are bringing to the courts.
We should all be talking to each other.
This is really important that, you know, people bring good cases with
strong facts if they are going to go to court and, you know, we can all help
each other sort of figure out how to do this and how to craft these things
carefully because as I said, the early cases will set the tone for what happens
with this law and so they are extremely important.
And that's it for me.
>> ANDY IMPARATO: All right.
Thank you, Jennifer.
The next presenter is Jenifer
Simpson from the American Association of People with Disabilities.
Welcome, Jenifer.
>> JENIFER SIMPSON: I think I'm the what's next in many ways from
the program. And really isn't
specifically to the Americans with Disabilities Act. This is about ensuring electronic
communication is accessible and usable for people with disabilities. This is about all of that stuff that we use
in the office, everywhere that people with disabilities use and it needs to
work for them.
What I did think I should
mention a little bit of the relationship to the
The workplace, which we have
talked about a lot already, include lots of devices like cell phones, BlackBerrys,
all kinds of machinery for communication purposes and people with sensory
disabilities, hearing and vision -- I guess that's a substantial -- I really
don't know ADA that well. I just know
this stuff better. They clearly have run
into problems in the workplace when the employer expects them to be able to use
cell phones and they have a hearing aid and it doesn't work, things like
that.
Clearly in education entities
should be very alert to the fact that any of the communication technologies they
use may exclude or create barriers for students with disabilities.
Title 4 of
And that's where I think we come
in with the next generation of communications technology. It's all about what's going on with the
internet and how phone systems are now passing through the internet. Television passes through the internet and
all of the things that we have gained so far for accessibility such as in
television and telephones, are basically not getting carried forward when the
internet is there. So when we talk about
communications, electronic communication that is occurring anywhere, everywhere
for people with disabilities and the proposal that we're looking at is
something that would literally modernize the communications act for people with
disabilities so that all this stuff we have already gained like hearing aid
compatibility of phone, like closed captioning on television, accessible and
usable telephones, once it involves the internet or internet protocols, that
those things also are subject to the same requirements that were
previously.
So the proposal has been put
forward by an organization and Andy mentioned it earlier, the Coalition of
Organizations for Accessible Technology.
We call ourselves COAT and when new affiliates join, we say welcome,
thank you for getting your coat on because they now understand the agenda and
they have signed on to this agenda around accessible communications. We have grown rapidly, 221 affiliates in 43
states. We have formed in March of '07
and we just grew so fast. We could not
believe it. It was a steering committee
of three or four national organizations.
American Council of the Blind, American Foundation of the Blind, AAPD,
communication services of the Deaf, National Association of the Deaf. So that's the steering committee. But clearly we are much bigger than that
steering committee. The steering
committee the ones that ends up doing some of the negotiations with the
legislators on this proposal that we now have called the 21st Century Communications
and Video Accessibility Act. We worked
very hard during the past year and a half to get real legislative language to
reflect the agenda that we were talking about and that became H.R. 6320, which
was introduced last June after a fabulous hearing. We had a star-studded hearing in May with
some folks who came in and testified about the need for blind people, people
who are deaf, and their family members and others with other disabilities
needing to have accessible communications.
So let me just summarize what is
in H.R. 6320. It amends and updates
existing sections of the communications act.
It covers television, telephones and is sort of now moving into the
internet just a little bit.
H.R. 6320 is divided -- divided
into two sections, title 1 communication, that's basically phone stuff. Title 2 is video programming and television
stuff. So I'm going to go into both of
those now. Title 1 communications, this
is exactly our shopping list that we went to and required in the bill requiring
access to phone-type equipment and service used over the internet. So you have a phone over the internet, our
question is it hearing aid compatible or usable by a person with a physical
disability?
We're asking for improved
accountability and enforcement measures for accessibility, does the existing
requirements we already have under section 255, we say that needs better
enforcement. We're asking for a
clearinghouse of information about accessibility measures so the phone
companies, the manufacturers and the devices know what's out there and can talk
to each other in sort of a forum. We're
also asking for better reporting obligations by providers of phone services and
manufacturers of devices. This is so
that they can report to Congress or to the FCC exactly what they have done
because right now it's a bit of a black box.
You can't find out what they have actually done.
Like I said, we require phone
products used with the internet to be hearing aid compatible. I mean, that's a real check on whether a
manufacturer has actually done what the current law requires, is the phone
device they are selling, the apple iPhone, whatever, do they work with hearing
aids?
We're asking for the use of the
lifeline and link up universal service fund to be used with broadband
services. Universal service fund is
something that the FCC -- well, they manage it through another entity but in your
phone bill, you're chipping in basically a small tax to the fund. That fund is used to make sure everybody in
We're also asking internet-based
service providers to contribute to the interstate relay fund that would provide
more money into the interstate relay fund to fund better the relay services
that we're expecting and already occurring.
Because of the internet, there's a lot more happening.
Title 2 of H.R. 6320 is the
video programming with TV. Provisions
that we're asking for, we're asking for decoder sixty rein all -- circuitry in
all video programming devices. Right
now, the TV set with a screen bigger than 38 inches diameter or whatever it is,
I don't know. It's required to have decoder
circuitry and right now you can receive television I think on little devices as
small as this. Tiny little screens and
we're saying, well, if it's got the captioning in it and you're receiving T V,
why can't it be displayed?
The kinds of software out there,
those can be displayed so why leave out a form of accessibility that's actually
technologically possible?
We're asking for an extension
for the closed captioning for any programming that would be distributed over
the internet. I mean, I'm sure most of
you are aware that you can go up to the internet and see your favorite show,
CSI, Law and Order, I don't know, whatever, via the internet. Does it have the captioning?
Maybe, maybe not. But we're saying it should because it was
already there to begin with. And we're
saying if it already was expected to be captioned when it was distributed by a
TV programmer or a TV distributor, and then goes on the internet, well, we want
that captioning in there.
We're asking for easy access to
TV closed captions via remote control, on-screen menus, audio outputs or
assistive technology. One of the biggest
complaints we hear from our communities is that you can't find the closed
captioning on a television and I challenge everybody in this room when they're
in a hotel to see if they can turn on the captions.
And also how do you get to any
bit of description that might be available used by blind people. Try and find out how to turn that on your
television. There is very often a button
or a menu but we're saying raise those accessibility modalities to a higher
level on the selection menu so you can get to it much faster.
>> FEMALE AUDIENCE: It's embedded. It's so embedded that you cannot find it,
especially if you can't read -- sorry, it's just a personal pet peeve. If you can't read the screen on the TV, then
you cannot find how to turn on the audio description.
>> JENIFER SIMPSON: Absolutely.
And it may be there. You know, we
have had stories where people call the hotel manager to come down and call the
engineer in to turn on the captions on their televisions and things like
that. So totally ridiculous. It needs to be fixed and this is how to do
it.
We're asking for easy access by
blind people to television controls and program selection menus. I mean, are most of you familiar with the TV
guide that's on your television service.
I have direct TV. There is this
big, blue screen that comes up. If I was
blind, I couldn't see it. We're saying
why not figure out a way to do audio output.
Well, television, is that really to be accessible?
Yes, it does. Television is important to our culture. It's how we learn about information and
news.
>> FEMALE AUDIENCE: It may be a major life activity.
( Laughter )
>> CHRISTINE
>> JENIFER SIMPSON: One of the things we're asking is the
restoration for the video description rules.
The FCC in 2002 implemented and issued rules for video description that
was about four hours a week on the major channels. The industry challenged that and we lost
those rules in August of 2002. So it was
an 8-month period where we had rules.
There was video description available and you could actually get it but
it was overturned in a court decision and the court decision basically said the
FCC didn't have the authority to promulgate those rules. So we're going back and saying, you know, get
the FCC authority to promulgate the rules and by the way, do it in the context
of the new environment of digital television because back then we only had
analog television. We're now at digital
television pretty much. So we're saying
restore them, update them, give it back to us.
We're also requiring access to
televised emergency programming for people who are blind who have low
vision. The current rules for emergency
information basically just require television broadcasters when they have emergency
information, you know, that little crawl across the screen. That crawl across the bottom that contains
emergency information and text coming out.
They're just required to do beep-beep first so that a blind person or a
vision disability knows that something is occurring on the television that has
to do with emergency. But then it
doesn't really -- that's it. They're
supposed to then what, go turn on the radio or go ask a friend what the
emergency information is. We're saying
that also can be audio output. So that's
what we're asking for.
The status and outlook for
this...like I said, we had the bill introduced in June with two cosponsors, a
republican and democrat and we have 15 cosponsors and we're expecting the same,
at least representative Ed Markey to introduce this bill again in January. We're not sure who the cosponsors are going
to be. We're working on that on the
republican side. The committees will
have to work with the two commerce committees.
That's the house, the commerce committee now chaired by Mr. Waxman
and on the senate side that would be the senate commerce transportation
committee who I think Jay Rockefeller is now the chairman of that. So those are the two committees that we
primarily focus on as advocates. The
COAT coalition targets them.
Also the telecommunications sub
com committee and we had our hearings and we look at those representatives to
pretty much lead on the house side of what this bill will look like.
We're in intensive discussions
all the time with industry representatives.
This week, for instance, we'll
be meeting with the motion picture for
Ongoing we have been meeting
with the phone companies,
And they're extremely well
funded and, you know, we go in as disability advocate, you know, four, five,
six of us with our little facts and figures and our dream and ask them for this
stuff and they go, no usually and then we say, well, why not?
And then we start talking and
explaining and they start to get it and so we have this incredible educational
campaign going with people in the industry have the time on this stuff. So that's how we're going to get there and
working with industry, working with Congress and hopefully working with all of
you to help support us with this because we're looking to the ADA community
generally to help advance this agenda and this bill if we can. Yes.
So if you're interested in helping us, please contact the
coalition. And we have
info@codeaccess.org. We have our own
website, www.coataccess.org. We try to
be more interactive. We want more people
to be involved and you can see who our affiliates are. We have deaf and hard of hearing of
The other point I want to make
is when we do make it accessible to people who are deaf, blind, deaf-blind or a
sensory disability, you end up ultimately making it accessible for everyone
else too because that's what they have to take into account. For the first time a company is actually
thinking about customers who are not 25 years old with 20/20 vision who like to
do this -- (Indicating) -- the whole time.
So, you know, this is a very important agenda from that
perspective. It also impacts our elderly
community which is expanding all the time and who needs to have more accessible
electronics communications.
Thank you.
>> ANDY IMPARATO: Thank you, Jenifer. And our last speaker is Day Al-Mohamed and I
also neglected to mention she's a relatively new board member for AAPD as
well. So please join me welcoming Day
Al-Mohamed.
>> DAY AL-MOHAMED: Thank you.
I actually wanted to go at this from a slightly different route and
since I was coming at the end, I thought I'd see what I can do to kind of pull
things together a little bit. But I
would also like to begin everything with a story, so I'm going to -- hopefully
you'll bear with me through that and I think I have just one photo which is in
the right order.
Yep, after my picture. And one of the things I thought would be a
great place to start just as a little story would be -- it's a picture of a
very, very famous piece of art. It's
William Hogart's, regs progress from 1735 and as you will note, the very, very
well-known piece of art from the 18th century and the reason I bring it up is
because it's an image of a story by a man named Thomas Rakeheld and how he ends
up in the hospital which is more commonly known as the asylum and it's the
first and oldest institution to provide care for the mentally ill and what
happened is historically conditions that were consistently dreadful, the care
amed to little more than restraint. A
quote from the time, it's so hideous and so great that they were able to drive
a man that half his wits rather out of him because the noise was so awful. People were chained to the floor and innocent
people with mental disabilities, like any disability, it just became
warehousing. And part of what I want to
do is just talk a little bit about what does that mean?
Why is that such a -- how does
that play into this?
And just, you know, part of it
is I want people to get an idea of this is what it was like. This is the way people were treated and in
the back if you look there, there are these women there and they were laughing
and giggling and it was very, very popular.
For one penny you could go in and see the freaks at the show of Becklam
and they had about 96,000 people go in in one year and it was very, very popular. I mean, we have got museums today that don't
get that kind of attention. Now, why
didn't anybody do anything about it?
We're working on legislation and
policy to impact the lives of people with disabilities and this is asylum that
was first set in the 1270s but it started being active in the institutions in
let's say 1600s. In 1620, some of the
inmates and they were called inmates at the time, had a petition to the
government. It's called the petition of
poor and distracted people. Nothing
happened. 80 years later, in the 1700s,
the government finally got around to a response, and that was a definitional
change. They are going to now use the
term "patients" and divided up between curable and incurable but when
it came to conditions, nothing changed.
In 1958, a doctor wrote a book, the treaties on this and it was a
lengthy book on the treatment of mental illness and saying there are things
that can be done. These are the changes
that need to be made. Nothing
happened. About that time, there were a
couple of gentlemen in
You know, and so they got a
physician with another individual.
1796, the
>> JENNIFER MATHIS: We're still working on it now.
( Laughter )
>> DAY AL-MOHAMED: But one of the reasons I bring that up and I
wanted to point out is that it didn't just languish. I mentioned the physician, the businessman, I
mentioned the actual patients, nothing happened. And one of the things I wanted to bring that
up and what makes the bills -- the ADA Amendments Act and what makes the 21st
century act unique in some ways is that they are changing the way -- not the
product, but the process. If you think
about it, a lot of legislative things, these changes are the end of
product. But one of the things also I
think merit study is the process. How
are we going about changing things?
And so 200 years of no change
because it was thought of as individually and one of the things that we saw
here is that these aren't just disability organizations or just the consumers
who are seeking change. It's actually
collaborating, partnering outside of that that's actually effecting change and
these two bills are actually a great example of that kind of paradigm shift
that we're seeing. I think the
I know Jenifer talked about some
of her meetings for this 21st Century Telecommunications, it's not just pushing
the bill through. It was we're going to
talk to industry about it. She talked
about talking to the telecommunication, the other industry folks and the fact
is that's what making these move. That's
what making it happen. The subject
matter in these bills- it is not new.
You know, these are changes we have been advocating for many, many
years. What's changing is how we're
going about it and that's what's enacting some of the change.
For the ADA Amendments Act, you
know, the language of it has been around for a little bit but the actual final
language and changes took place and for passage between July and the end of
September. That's what, three
months. That's frightening how quickly
that happened and the only reason that happened, I would put forward and it's
my opinion there, would be because it had that kind of momentum behind it of
this kind of shared way of thinking outside of disability.
It's a new way in moving
legislation, shifting beyond that traditional paradigm. We have always talk about medical models and
social models of disability and have been addressing environmental disabilities
and barriers and if you ever talk about thinking differently, think about
disability in a different way. And so
part of that isn't just saying, you know, well, this is how we're going to
think about disability, but as far as policy, it's maybe how to impact that
kind of a change. What does it take for
disability to be better integrated into the whole?
That means when you're trying to
effect -- what does it take to effect policy change?
And to be -- I hate to say
effect, but to be effective, it's going to mean reaching beyond that.
And one of the examples that's
been used since then was -- goodness, I think it was in 2000 and I'm going to
use the example of
Not a lot. There's not been buy-in. Why?
Because they didn't have the
consumers be a part of it. In other
parts of the world you'll see we had the consumers being pushed with the
convention of the rights and they are going at it from a rights perspective but
not getting buy-in from the professionals or government agencies and so what
you end up needing is this kind of cross-group collaboration to actually be
effective and what does it take to give buy-in?
There's some studies going on in
What we need is one person this
organization who is your disability go-to guy.
If anyone has an issue, concern, question and they're your expert, go to
them. But what's found to be more
effective not if you go, no, I don't do disability employment, you need to go
talk to that guy in HR or that guy in IT about the information access. But the trick is if you get everyone to
believe that it's a part of their job or, you know, whether it's industry,
business, whether it's the HR person or the guy who's building his portion of
his organizational website or it's the piece of industry that says, you know,
hey, these are going to be our customers too, if they all believe that kind of
buy-in, then you're going to be much more effective. That's a lot of talk and a lot of stuff that
we have been talking about, but when it comes to actual out reach and doing
that effectively, these pieces of legislation is what I would say our first
very successful steps at doing that.
Now, of course nothing's
perfect. I don't have roses through a
colored glass. These are brown. If you think about it, it's still divisive
and every organization and group is still going to have their own agenda. And a lot of people say, when you
collaborate, you compromise. When you
compromise, does that mean you get less?
If you get less, does that mean
we're still losing?
The idea is if there's only so
much pie, how do you get a bigger piece of it?
And so that would be the big
problem to be addressed as a part of that and so the question comes at what
point do you want to say I want to work with you on this to get it to pass
because I don't want to wait 200 years, like from this painting, to effect
positive change or is it -- or do I not want to compromise because I am giving
away too much of my rights.
And so what I wanted to just
bring forward and this is -- I think mine is going to be the shortest here is
because I think as a point of discussion especially since it's about the ADA
Amendments Act and what's next, is talking about the process and how we can
maybe harness the process and move it forward and take the successes from it or
how can we take what we didn't think was so successful and make sure it works
better in the future. So that actually
is pretty much it for me.
>> ANDY IMPARATO: Thank you.
Well, let's hear it for all the presenters.
( Applause )
>> ANDY IMPARATO: So now we are into the Q and A part of the
agenda and I want to remind those folks online, that if you have questions,
please submit them on your online forum and we have somebody in the room who
will raise them on your behalf and get you answers.
Does anybody want to kick off a
question?
In the red and then Carol.
>> FEMALE AUDIENCE: Good morning.
My name is -- I'm the Director for the
Also and I believe under -- I'm
not quite sure where the funding source is.
If it's through IDEA or if it's through No Child Left Behind or
somewhere, there is funding for public schools for technology. Integrated technology services and part of
that funding is to make sure schools are up to speed on the internet.
It would seem to me that as they
are coming to capacity in internet functionality, that this piece should
dovetail the work that they are doing. I
throw that out as a possibility and ask if you have been aware of considered coordinating
between the different laws and of course as they were mentioning, across the
communities to bring our children into hopefully a career and community
living.
>> JENIFER SIMPSON: Thanks.
You make a really good point. You
know, the schools when they need equipment that's accessible for their
students, they basically go on the demand side of the equation. What we're working on is basically the supply
side. We're making sure that the
companies and the service providers have the stuff in the marketplace that is
accessible so that those schools can in fact buy it. We're not covering everything that you
mentioned. I know IDEA has some really
good requirements that should be driving demand to a greater level and I do
work in that area, too. But very often
the solutions are much more around assistive technology than they are around
what we call infrastructure issues. The
television distribution network is an infrastructure in this country. The phone system is an infrastructure and all
those providers are in the main stream and those are the guys we're going after
because we know that they can do this.
They can have a great deal of effect.
Obviously a school system should
be purchasing systems that are accessible.
Very often they get away with not doing it because they could say
there's nothing in the marketplace. So
all they didn't explore and all they didn't realize, there was a
requirement. I know there is something
particular around phone, interactive voice mail systems. Nobody is buying them. Even some of the federal agencies who are
required under section 504 and 508 to in fact buy accessible phone systems that
actually buy ones that are in the marketplace already and that is a complaint
around -- from our perspective -- around how things don't work the way we
expect them to work, even when we pass the laws and implementation doesn't
come. But let me take a look at what the
NEMAS thing you pointed out. Maybe we
can borrow something from that.
Thank you very much.
>> ANDY IMPARATO: Any other comments from the panel?
>> DAY AL-MOHAMED: This is Day.
It's national instructional materials is what it's about and I think
what Jenifer said got it and what the NEMAS tends to work at is this is what
the student needs and let's get it but a lot of times it goes back to the
producer and saying we need this in accessible format. And the schools are good at demanding that
and you think about what the elementary schools are using and that's as far as
it goes and it's actually limited and what the 21st century bill does is move
beyond that. You know, all of this stuff
out there, it should be accessible and in some ways NEMAS was set up as a
catch-all to take care of it. It's not a
true integrated system where you can say this stuff is available that's put out
in general. That way these kids can
access it. So basically what this is
trying to -- the 21st century bill is trying to take a step back and make it
bigger and broader because one of the problems is and it's been a push now to
try and take that to higher education and there's been a lot of resistance to
that because it's a lot more textbooks and a lot more materials. But if you can get the suppliers and get them
saying, you know, we're going to start doing this automatically as a part of
it, then it actually makes the jobs for those bills within the education system
much, much easier. So it really is
building infrastructure so we don't have to do the catch-up game.
>> ANDY IMPARATO: All right.
Carol Boyer had a question or comment.
And then there's one on the internet I see.
>> FEMALE AUDIENCE: Carol Boyer, office of employment policy at
the Department of Labor.
We all know this from the
disability community that it's always segregated and when you mentioned
everybody needs to be on the same plan.
You can't just have, well, this is our disability go-to guy at our
company or industry or at our agency and it has to be broad and this is what
we're proposing at ODEP. It has to be
universal strategies across the board and this is what we all need to work on,
is showing that the disability examples have universal applications and it's
not something that you segregate in this division or that division and even in
the education field, I don't think we should even have something called special
education. It should be, you know, the
budget should be across the board. And
one other thing, I know we don't have HI here and someone is on your panel, but
HI is working on the work space flexible 2010 and national council on disability
noted that in their July report on update.
I can't remember which report it was, Mike. Sorry.
But I read all of your reports and they are quite good, about the movement
toward workplace flexibility in the arena is something that the disability
mandate. And so many more companies are
doing that and we want to move that forward and you say look at the successes Day,
move the process forward and utilize that.
I wish we didn't have -- I agree with our assistant secretary, Neil
Romano, I wished we didn't have the term "reasonable accommodation."
He likes to call it productivity enhancers and everyone needs those in their
jobs whether they have a disability or not and it's not just teleworking, it's
not just flexible schedules, flexible workplaces. It's flexibility around what you need to do
for your job and everybody can contribute.
And I have one last comment with COAT, Jenifer, have you looked a this
new device last week called
So it's the new device and it's
making great waves across the buying power of the internet.
So you might want to check that
out with the distributors and the new device called
Thank you.
>> ANDY IMPARATO: Well, Carol, this is Andy. I want to thank you for raising the workplace
flexibility issue. I think it's worth
noting that we have had a -- we did do a policy forum focused on that, that had
a thing that
>> CHRISTINE
>> JENNIFER MATHIS: And I would add in the education world too, a
lot of the advocates are moving toward sort of school wide strategies instead
of focusing on just special ed as a special system or entity and behavior
supports and sort of moving out of things like OSERS and into a more sort of
general Department of Ed-wide strategies.
>> ANDY IMPARATO: So I think we have a couple of questions
from the internet.
>> MALE AUDIENCE: Yeah, we do.
Thank you. Let's see. The first one is from Kelly York and she asks
for Commissioner Griffin, when do you expect the NPRM to be published under the
regs?
>> CHRISTINE
>> MALE AUDIENCE: Great.
Thank you. And we also have a question
from Linda Longbyell from
And her question, she actually
has two. Can you tell about the working
major life activity issue?
And second, what did business
gain from the ADAAA and what does it mean for working with businesses going
forward?
>> JENNIFER MATHIS: Yeah.
With respect to working --
>> ANDY IMPARATO: And this is Jennifer speaking. I don't know if it's clear for the folks on
the internet. So just say your
name.
>> JENNIFER MATHIS: Sure.
Jennifer Mathis.
The working major life activity,
working as a major life activity issue is that there have been, I think, some
changes that the ADA Amendments made that would impact how you're supposed to
look at working as a major life activity.
Certainly under the regarded as
prong, the most significant change and what the Supreme Court had done is
to say that -- to set up essentially an
extremely difficult task that few people could ever need to show that you were
regarded as or treated as substantially limited in working because with respect
to working, the EEOC has a standard that says you're substantially limited in
working only if you can't do a broad class of jobs -- a broad range of jobs or
a class of jobs, and so the Supreme Court said so if somebody is treating you
as substantially limited and working, you have to show that the employer
believed not only that you couldn't do the job that you're doing, but the employer
believed that you also would not be able to do a whole range of other jobs,
which really became sort of impossible for people to prove; that the employer
believed that you were -- that other employers would not hire you either. So now with the ADA Amendment Act, new take
on the third prong, the regarded as prong, you no longer get into this issue of
what it takes to be substantially limited and working or any other
activity. The only question is do you
have an impairment?
Do you have an actual or perceived
impairment and were you treated adversely or discriminated against based on
that impairment?
And so it's no longer relevant
whether you are limited in a broad class of jobs, a range of jobs. You just have to show that the employer took
an action against you based on an impairment or perceiving that you have an
impairment. End of story.
The question remains with
respect to people who aren't proceeding under the regarded as prong, but
proceeding under the prong -- I mean, actual disability or a history of
disability to show they are substantially limited in working, does that broad
range of jobs or class of jobs analysis continue to apply. And there are some statements in the
legislative history. For example, from
Representative Nadler suggesting that actually given what Congress did to the
definition of substantially limits in making it a lower standard, that actually
that would impact that analysis and that, you know, you wouldn't have to show
this broad class job, range of jobs, you know, that it would be sufficient to
say that you couldn't do, you know, one particular job you're doing. So that is sort of -- I think that's an area
of debate that is causing some consternation at the agency.
>> CHRISTINE
>> ANDY IMPARATO: And then Linda's second question had to do
with what did the employer community gain from the compromise as it worked its
way through the legislative process and basically given that they were
supporting it, what does all that mean towards working with employers moving
forward?
Does anybody want to tackle that
first question?
>> JENNIFER MATHIS: I can say a couple of things. I mean, for me, for one, I think it was the
reason that the employer community sat down at the table to negotiate a bill
was because they wanted certainty. They
wanted to do something this year. Nobody
really knew what was going to happen with the election. You know, they had some concerns that after
the election, given, you know, who was in the White House, given what Congress
would look like, that they would actually rather have a bill done before the
election rather than after. And, you
know, sort of that things would essentially come out in a way that they would
be happier with and, you know, just wanted to get it done and everybody has
other priorities now for the coming year and so I think, you know, that's one
thing that I think they gained if everybody very much wanted to do a bill last
year -- this past year and not wait and there are actually a number of things
in the bill that were compromises, that very much reflects the desires of folks
from the business community, including the elimination of reasonable
accommodations under the third prong and that's something they pushed very hard
for and I think this is a significant thing.
There are a lot of HR manuals right now that all say "you may have
to provide accommodations to people, even if they have regarded as
disabilities" and that has changed.
That's something they were very interested in doing, you know, as a
trade-off. And so I think they got
certainty. They got some other
things. They got some limits on a bill
that might have been significantly more expansive, you know, in a different
Congress. And I think we have developed
actually a pretty good relationship with the business community and the process
between business community and disability community and some mutual
understanding and hopefully can build on that in the future.
>> CHRISTINE GRIFFIN: And I think what was encouraging, we actually
met with before the draft regs were even circulated within the commission, so
before any of us saw anything in writing, we actually brought in the team of
employers and people with disabilities that negotiated the law to actually
hear, you know, what they collaborated on and what they agreed on. And so that we had a full understanding of
what was going on and the thing I found really encouraging that was that you
had representatives from the Society of Human Resource Management, the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, a variety of other employer-based groups that were saying
the thing that they really were telling all of their members and HR folks is
that this didn't really change everything.
That they should have been operating under these types of rules already;
that it should be broad when you're looking at whether a person is covered
under the law or whether they have a disability or not. And so this was for now a lot of them
reinforcing what they hoped their employers were already doing. And I thought that was very encouraging.
>> ANDY IMPARATO: This is Andy. I guess I would just add on the question of
what does this mean for our relationship with the employer community moving
forward, and this goes back to the broader topic of these forums. We're trying to come up with policies and
practices that ultimately improve employment outcomes for people with
disabilities.
When the bill was originally
introduced in July of '07, a lot of the group that are out there talking to
employers about the ADA had the problem with the bill, it was the society of
human management, U.S. commerce and others, it doesn't help us as we're trying
to get a new law implemented to have the groups sort of viewed as the
employers, as the experts so we're in a different position now.
And we're on the same message
that this is good for business but this was something that was broadly
supported. It's basically a mid-courts
correction, that the courts got it wrong and we're back to making
And certainly for the technology
bill that Jenifer talked about, there is a big market argument there
particularly with an aging population.
So from my perspective, this is an opportunity to do this in partnership
with the business community if we really want to move employment outcomes and I
don't see how we do that without doing it in partnership with the business
community. So I see it as a
positive.
>> We do have a another
online question.
>> ANDY IMPARATO: Sure.
Let me see if there's anybody in the room.
>> MALE AUDIENCE: Thank you.
This is a question from Carl Marshall and it's for Chris and he asks,
how do we guide individuals with disabilities, employers and others about the
dilemma that the ADA Amendments Act is effective January 1st '09, but there are
not written regulations to follow?
>> CHRISTINE
And we all know the court
systems and our own system doesn't work all that quickly and sometimes
unfortunately if the law becomes effective that date and there are regulations,
I'm not sure that all that many people will be harmed. But I rationalize and think to myself, if
somebody does get harmed by us not having regs out by January 1st and at the
end of the day we're going to have better regs and protect millions of people
with disabilities, somehow, I can live with that. I can sleep better as a result of that. But I really, again, knowing how quickly a
complaint goes through our process, our administrative process and then, you
know, actually gets to court, I can almost, depending on whether we get a third
republican into the commission, I can almost guarantee we'll have regs out
before somebody gets through that process.
>> ANDY IMPARATO: This is Andy. I just want to say, I think given the very
broad bipartisan support for the statute and what Chris talked about in terms
of to a large degree the employer representatives and disability
representatives that worked on and have a similar perspective on the
regulations, I'm hoping that when this thing does ultimately get issued, that
it has unanimous support from the commission.
I mean, to me that's our best-case scenario and that's what we should be
shooting for. But I think when you rush
a process, it's hard to get that support.
>> CHRISTINE
>> ANDY IMPARATO: I wanted to raise a question for anybody on
the panel. There's going to be a lot of
attention, obviously, at the beginning of the next administration on an
economic stimulus package and we know that President-elect Obama has talked
about broadband deployment as part of what he wants to do around infrastructure
in the economic stimulus. I'm wondering
if people see opportunities to advance our civil rights agenda as part of a
stimulus package and if that's, you know, something that people were thinking
about?
>> CHRISTINE GRIFFIN: Well, you know, I personally -- you know, I
have this whole view that, you know, employment of people with disabilities is,
you know, the thing that's going to change society's views about people with
disabilities. So I have always seen
employment as really one of the most important issues for people with
disabilities because it is where we really do change peoples' views about who
we are and what we want out of life. And
frankly, it's the same thing everyone else wants. But a lot of times we don't get that view put
forth until working side by side with people.
So employment, I think, is key to changing all of society's views about
people with disabilities.
And, so to that end, I'm always
talking about employment and when I think about the stimulus plan, it certainly
is a piece that we cannot be left out of.
And when we think about the economy and unemployment and all that, I
don't think -- I don't think it's the right time to sit back and actually say,
oh, well, now, you know, it's never going to happen for us because we have
these great years of employment and yet we weren't getting the jobs and we saw
our unemployment and all the nonparticipation rate of people with disabilities
in the workforce at major highs which they are still there.
So I think it's very, very
important that we are in there saying that we need to be a piece of the
economic stimulus plan and we need to be enforcing the whole issue around
employment in the federal government and the private sector; that because
people are losing their jobs, it isn't a time to say oh, well, we need to sit
back and I think that's what we have traditionally done. To say, oh, this isn't the time to include
people with disabilities.
I think we just say, you know,
there's never been a right time to date and now is the time and we now have a
president that's saying it, supporting it and we just need to make sure it
happens.
>> JENIFER SIMPSON: I just wanted to say something about the
broadband. I think there's going to be
two areas for people with disabilities to be looking at around the broadband
issues. One is exactly what you said,
Chris, the employment issues but particularly around how people with
disabilities use the internet. I mean, I
think we need to be looking at maybe discounts in terms of either affordable
issues as well as accessibility issues for people with disabilities and that's
something we look at in terms of the policy direction. The universal service fund is clearly an area
where we can see some discounts for certain populations so they can access
broadband, you know, cheaper than others.
But the other area and I think we haven't talked about it here and I
believe it's employment related is the health information technology agenda. This is a huge agenda where basically our
health care system is going to be tied to the health care policy agenda, I
believe. Is where more and more we're
going to see information technology as a means to, you know, cut the costs and
deal with the problems that we see in health care service delivery.
This has issues of people with
disabilities in terms of control over their record, their privacy issues and
fundamentally in terms of accessibility and usability of those records because,
you know, privacy is one of the concerns I've been looking at but it's also
about if you're an employee of a health care service delivery and you need to
access some of that information technology and you have a vision disability,
how are you going to get to it?
You know, if it requires a phone
system in order to sort of tap into the system, how are employers with hearing
disabilities going to be able to be able to use those new health information
systems. Plus we have a huge population
of people with disabilities using public health care systems, Medicaid,
Medicare. So as the states look to cut
costs through information technology, you know, we have this issue is care
going to be contingent on using information technology systems. So there is a lot to dialogue about in our
community around broadband and how it's going to be used generally in our
society as we move forward. So I'm
pointing to health care as an area that we need to examine deeply as well as
the employment specifics, like how you access it. How you get to the broadband, how you use it
as a consumer with a disability. So I
just wanted to point to the two areas where I think that we have got something
in broadband where we really need to grab it and run away with it.
>> JENNIFER MATHIS: And the Medicaid issue is certainly a big
one. I think a lot of folks in the
disability community are hoping that Medicaid will be part of -- Medicaid
changes will be part of the stimulus package.
You have a number of governors now calling on the federal government to
do that because they're forced to cut Medicaid in ways that I think will make
it more difficult for people with disabilities to remain productive and remain
in the workforce and certainly, you know, may even result in greater Medicaid
expenditures on the other end, you know, and people sort of lose their ail to
function in the community and end up in institutional settings, so, you know,
certainly I think this is an environment where there is a lot of support for
doing something with respect to Medicaid and the stimulus package.
>> DAY AL-MOHAMED: This actually goes back to what I was talking
about very much so because if we think about it, the two bills where we talked
about previously are where we invited people from the disability community to
come into because they had a benefit.
The stimulus package is the reverse of that, where the community went to
general legislation and said you need to pay attention to the disability
perspective as a part of this whole. It
gets shoveled further down. The same
thing, ethnic minorities used to get abused and so some extent still are. So playing an active role in that is
absolutely critical or else we're going to end up left behind. I'm listed as working for the American
psychological association. It's a
professional association. They cover --
yeah, they do address some mental health conditions, but I'm working for them
because it's a disability. There are
psychologists with disabilities, they work with people with disabilities, not
necessarily about their disability. But
it's something that's an issue of importance and so it became something that
they wanted to do. And so by the same
argument, economic stimulus, health care reform, you know, broadband, all of
these -- these general things instead of disability specific bills, we need to
push that a disability perspective is included because otherwise that
integrated change that we're talking about or integration is not going to
happen. Lawsuits are where legislation
fails, so if we're not as a part of legislation to begin with, then we're going
to end up in the lawsuits area.
>> ANDY IMPARATO: Ken?
>> MALE AUDIENCE: This is Ken Morris.
I just want to add, I mean, I
think another partner would be AARP. I
mean, you may probably are partnering with them but a lot of things we have
been talking about just on the broadband technology, AARP is a perfect partner
for this and a powerful partner.
>> ANDY IMPARATO: And they have a key partner on the coalition
that worked on the ADA Amendments Act getting it passed and they're now working
on the regulatory side of it. Dan
Coreman who is one of their litigators, is also very engaged with the American Diabetes
Association, the National Employment Association and was a bridge between a lot
of different constituents but I think AARP in general is getting more and more
interested in disability policy and being a leader on these issues and it's
something that, you know, as I see happening across a lot of policy areas. Any other questions or comments from anybody
in the room?
>> SUSANNE BRUYERE: I want to thank our panel on behalf of
( Applause )