History

• The 1970s saw the passage of the Education for all Handicapped Children Act. This was the first federal law guaranteeing public education for children with disabilities. The Air Carrier Access Act of 1986 required providers of air transport to ensure that persons with disabilities would have access to air transportation. The Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988 prohibited discrimination toward people with disabilities in the sale or rental of housing. On July 26, 1990, President Bush signed into law the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
  
  

Function

• The ADA has a broad range of implications. Areas included in the act are employment, transportation, public accommodation and telecommunications. Employers are prohibited from discriminating against qualified individuals with disabilities. The act also ensures that persons with disabilities have full access to private and public transportation. The ADA requires that public accommodations eliminate procedural, communicative and physical barriers that would make access impossible for the disabled. Telecommunications carriers are required to make accessible telecommunication relay services which allow the hearing or speech impaired to use the telephone.
  
  

Identification

• According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the definition of a person with a disability is an individual who has "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities," "has a record of such an impairment" or is "regarded as having such an impairment."
  
  

Considerations

• Employers are required to make reasonable accommodations for a person's disability if it will not impose an undue hardship on the employer's business operations. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission defines undue hardship as "an action requiring significant difficulty or expense when considered in light of factors such as an employer's size, financial resources, and the nature and structure of its operation."
  
  

Benefits

• Other than the benefits to the disabled, the ADA provides financial rewards to employers of disabled persons in the form of tax credits. Among these incentives is the Disabled Access Credit, which provides a non-refundable credit to those companies which have incurred expenses while providing access to persons with disabilities. The Architectural Barrier Removal Tax Deduction rewards employers who make structural changes to facilities to improve access for the disabled. The Work Opportunity Credit, according to the Internal Revenue Service, provides employers of the disabled with "a tax credit up to 40 percent of the first $6,000 of first-year wages of a new employee if the employee is part of a targeted group." An employee with disabilities is considered a member of a targeted group by the standards of the Work Opportunity Credit.