Open for business: what the new disabilities act requires.

• Author: Smith, Cheryl
• Position: Impact on Utah businesses

Open for Business What the New Disabilities Act Requires

People who have had a broken leg or another disability - temporary or permanent - know that simple tasks like pulling open a door and hurrying through it before it slams shut can be difficult and frustrating. Imagine being denied admittance to your local movie theatre or cafe because you are considered to be a fire hazard when you sit in the aisle in your wheelchair. Or perhaps you can't go to your neigborhood travel agency, bakery, or beauty parlor, because you can't get up the four steps to the entrance.

Accommodating All Customers

The Public Accommodations Title of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) states that, effective January 26, 1992, all public places and private businesses cannot discriminate against any person with a disability who is otherwise eligible to receive the establishment's services or privileges or to purchase its goods. And it requires that no criteria limit an individual's participation or segregates people, by imposing special requirements or restrictions that are not imposed on others. An amusement park, for example, cannot require chaperones for wheelchair users. And a restaurant cannot force them to sit in designated areas. Nothing in the bill, however, forces an entity to accommodate an individual if it poses a direct threat to the health and safety of others.

Further, a business must take necessary steps to provide auxilliary aids and services to make its goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations open equally to persons with disabilities of all kinds. Such aids must be provided only if it will not result in an undue burden on the business. A restaurant, for example, doesn't have to print its menus in braile for blind patrons, if the waiter is willing to read the menu to the customer. A clothing store would not need brailled price tags if sales personnel can relay the price verbally. A retail shop need not lower its shelves if a salesperson is available to reach merchandise for customers in wheelchairs.

The law, called "powerful in its simplicity" by President Bush, allows the entity to choose among various alternatives as long as the result is effective communication to all patrons.

"It's difficult to find someone who doesn't know someone with a disability. It's not a |we and they' situation," said Sherry Repscher, executive director of the Utah Governor's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, a position she's held for 11 years. "Businesses can use common sense, and we can design and plan public spaces to include people, not exclude them."

Repscher said...