H.R. 620: Amending the ADA of 1990

TOTAL DERAIL, PLEASE IGNORE! (Sorry mods) Damn straight I'm Canadian! (insert proudly waving Maple Leaf) We understand truth and right and virtue because we hung around Britain, letting them do the heavy lifting, civilization-wise:
We didn't have a 'Wild West'. Between the NWMP coming from the East, and the Royal Engineers coming from the West, the hardcore troublemakers stayed south of the undefined border. You got saloons and sheriff's offices, we got courthouses and bridges. We learned tolerance, (or at least ignoring) from our roots: French and English, loathing each other, side-by-side.
Yes, our history with our First Nations is pretty much as awful as yours, but we are learning, slowly.

Canada is an alternate America,
where the Loyalists to King George found refuge, when your 'patriots' were locking them up and burning their farms.
Where runaway slaves ran to.
Where the Sioux went after Little Big Horn.
Where the Nez Perce were headed.
Where, in WWI and WWII Americans went if they wanted to fight in Europe before their government committed.
And where the draft-dodgers and conscientious objectors of the Vietnam War era went when they didn't want to fight.

See, we're so 'nice' because we've been practicing on you guys. Thank you!
(Tl;dr - don't get me started!)
Okay, rant over.

frimble3 said:

Maybe not, but 'reasonable' is so open to interpretation, by both sides.

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It is, and which accommodations are "reasonable" has been the subject of much debate and back and forth in colleges and universities. Generally, administrators think asking faculty to work many more hours for no pay is reasonable, while faculty beg to differ. We think the administration coughing up to pay for expanded accommodations is reasonable. Negotiations usually result in some kind of compromise that may or may not be reasonable by the standards of the people requesting a given accommodation.

Accommodations aren't just about wheelchair ramps and doorway widths.

I've noticed things that don't always work for people, even within ADA rules. For instance, buildings on campus must be fitted with buttons to open outside doors. This is so people with certain disabilities can open a door to enter a building without assistance. But what if the building is locked on the weekend? Then the outside button doesn't work, and a faculty member coming in after hours must use a key that requires turning the lock and pulling directly on a rather heavy door to enter.

And the inside doorways don't have the buttons. One semester, one of the faculty had knee surgery that required her to use a little cart to transport herself around (it's hard to describe, but her bad leg was supported, in kneeling position while she propelled herself with her other foot). She needed human help to enter the bathroom, which had a traditional "pull handle" to open--something she couldn't manage with her cart. I think it would be hard to enter that bathroom in a wheelchair too. This building is just a few years old and built to the ADA specs. But evidently providing door open buttons for inside bathroom facilities isn't considered reasonable.

So I do see the frustrations people with disabilities face with regards to access. What seems like a minor thing to many of us--a heavy or sticky door that doesn't open easily, say--is a serious obstacle to some. How many such obstacles does a person with a mobility, pain, or strength issue face each day or week? I can't say, but it seems like they'd have to be writing a lot of letters with the proposed law.

blacbird said:

And your national curling squad ain't any good, neither.

caw

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They only lost so bad (aside from the more blatant mistakes) to make our hockey players feel better.

And, it's the hockey players that show our true greatness of spirit - the NHL spends years and $ coaching and training ice-hockey players from around the world, only to see them scamper back to their birth-nations as soon as someone shouts 'Olympics'! And yet we keep doing it, and losing some of 'our' finest players. We are proud to have provided the world so many fine players.
And innate modesty has saved us from the hubris of calling any combination of players - including Gretzky - the 'Dream Team'.

frimble3 said:

TOTAL DERAIL, PLEASE IGNORE! (Sorry mods) Damn straight I'm Canadian! (insert proudly waving Maple Leaf) We understand truth and right and virtue because we hung around Britain, letting them do the heavy lifting, civilization-wise:
We didn't have a 'Wild West'. Between the NWMP coming from the East, and the Royal Engineers coming from the West, the hardcore troublemakers stayed south of the undefined border. You got saloons and sheriff's offices, we got courthouses and bridges. We learned tolerance, (or at least ignoring) from our roots: French and English, loathing each other, side-by-side.
Yes, our history with our First Nations is pretty much as awful as yours, but we are learning, slowly.

Canada is an alternate America,
where the Loyalists to King George found refuge, when your 'patriots' were locking them up and burning their farms.
Where runaway slaves ran to.
Where the Sioux went after Little Big Horn.
Where the Nez Perce were headed.
Where, in WWI and WWII Americans went if they wanted to fight in Europe before their government committed.
And where the draft-dodgers and conscientious objectors of the Vietnam War era went when they didn't want to fight.

See, we're so 'nice' because we've been practicing on you guys. Thank you!
(Tl;dr - don't get me started!)
Okay, rant over.

Click to expand...

I'm learning so much on this thread! Like, namely that even when engaging in militant pro-Canadian rants, Frimble still manages to be really good-hearted and respectful.

Roxxsmom said:

It is, and which accommodations are "reasonable" has been the subject of much debate and back and forth in colleges and universities. Generally, administrators think asking faculty to work many more hours for no pay is reasonable, while faculty beg to differ. We think the administration coughing up to pay for expanded accommodations is reasonable. Negotiations usually result in some kind of compromise that may or may not be reasonable by the standards of the people requesting a given accommodation..

Click to expand...

It's the old story with negotiations: what is 'even' isn't always 'fair', and 'compromise' isn't the same as a solution.

Roxxsmom said:

I've noticed things that don't always work for people, even within ADA rules. For instance, buildings on campus must be fitted with buttons to open outside doors. This is so people with certain disabilities can open a door to enter a building without assistance. But what if the building is locked on the weekend? Then the outside button doesn't work, and a faculty member coming in after hours must use a key that requires turning the lock and pulling directly on a rather heavy door to enter. .

Click to expand...

Which in these days of high-tech, should be easy to solve: key-cards to open the doors instead of keys. And, not the 'swipe' cards, which might be tricky to use, but the 'proximity' ones. Then, not only would the outside button be useable, but it could be wired to automatically open when a card is swiped. (Also useful for the temporarily disabled, or those carrying lots of stuff)
But, ooh, retrofitting is expensive.

Roxxsmom said:

And the inside doorways don't have the buttons. One semester, one of the faculty had knee surgery that required her to use a little cart to transport herself around (it's hard to describe, but her bad leg was supported, in kneeling position while she propelled herself with her other foot). She needed human help to enter the bathroom, which had a traditional "pull handle" to open--something she couldn't manage with her cart. I think it would be hard to enter that bathroom in a wheelchair too. This building is just a few years old and built to the ADA specs. But evidently providing door open buttons for inside bathroom facilities isn't considered reasonable..

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I know those little carts! The neighbor had one after bunion surgery. Like a knee-scooter. Doors are also difficult if you have a cane or a crutch, and are carrying something in the other hand. Push-buttons or, for non-security doors, motion sensors. Some of the newer malls around here have eliminated doors to the washrooms (no, not the stall-doors) in favour of a semicircular entrance that blocks the view of the interior, but lets people with wheelchairs, walkers, strollers and shopping carts enter freely.

Roxxsmom said:

So I do see the frustrations people with disabilities face with regards to access. What seems like a minor thing to many of us--a heavy or sticky door that doesn't open easily, say--is a serious obstacle to some. How many such obstacles does a person with a mobility, pain, or strength issue face each day or week? I can't say, but it seems like they'd have to be writing a lot of letters with the proposed law.

Click to expand...

frimble3 said:

TOTAL DERAIL, PLEASE IGNORE! (Sorry mods) Damn straight I'm Canadian! (insert proudly waving Maple Leaf) We understand truth and right and virtue because we hung around Britain, letting them do the heavy lifting, civilization-wise:
We didn't have a 'Wild West'. Between the NWMP coming from the East, and the Royal Engineers coming from the West, the hardcore troublemakers stayed south of the undefined border. You got saloons and sheriff's offices, we got courthouses and bridges. We learned tolerance, (or at least ignoring) from our roots: French and English, loathing each other, side-by-side.
Yes, our history with our First Nations is pretty much as awful as yours, but we are learning, slowly.

Canada is an alternate America,
where the Loyalists to King George found refuge, when your 'patriots' were locking them up and burning their farms.
Where runaway slaves ran to.
Where the Sioux went after Little Big Horn.
Where the Nez Perce were headed.
Where, in WWI and WWII Americans went if they wanted to fight in Europe before their government committed.
And where the draft-dodgers and conscientious objectors of the Vietnam War era went when they didn't want to fight.

See, we're so 'nice' because we've been practicing on you guys. Thank you!
(Tl;dr - don't get me started!)
Okay, rant over.

Click to expand...

Canada's wild west was dominated by a dying fur trade and fur traders turning their traps into plows. It wasn't until the 1890s when British and Ontarioan immigrants started moving west. Canadians were also tardy in their development of railways past Ontario that there wasn't commitment to start building a trans-continental railroad until the late 1870s (see the scandals under MacDonald and Mackenzie). And this wasn't started until British Columbia hinged their admission into Confederation upon Canada agreeing to get the railroad there. When Canada decided to settle the west, Americans were already staking settlement claims in Canada.

The courthouses started appearing in the US Wild West before the courthouses started appearing in Canada's Wild West. A lot of the US's problems in politics comes out of the fact that the US was much richer than Canada for a long time. Having access to industrialists and nobility fleeing Europe allowed the US to set up extensive indsutrial networks that just couldn't happen in Canada. It was why in the first half of the 20th Century after Britain had decimated itself in the Great War that Canada get economically entwined with the USA to the point that it initiated legendary dark periods in Canadian history (Grande Noirceur). The reason Trudeau was so legendary Prime Ministers is because they started the processes that would break the colonialist feebleness of Canada using the postbellum boom to grow out of the dependency. And that meant carving a foreign policy that stood in stark contrast to the US.

I realize there are many cases of reasonable accommodation decisions that result in unhappiness on both sides depending on who wins what. It's never going to be perfect.

And there have been people taking advantage of the law filing suits that shouldn't be fileable. That should be addressed.

What I objected to and still object to is framing the ADA as some liberals' law that hurts the law abiding business owner burdening them with unreasonable demands. The pool lift example only applied to new construction and major remodeling.

Perhaps that requirement needs to be revisited. How often is a disabled person able to actually use a pool outside of a rehab facility given issues of catheters and bowel programs (for those with paralysis)? Is it enough people to warrant lifts?

I can see having such discussions about the ADA, and they are worth having. But that is no reason to frame the entire law as generally bad and nothing but a burden to businesspersons.

frimble3 said:

Which in these days of high-tech, should be easy to solve: key-cards to open the doors instead of keys. And, not the 'swipe' cards, which might be tricky to use, but the 'proximity' ones. Then, not only would the outside button be useable, but it could be wired to automatically open when a card is swiped. (Also useful for the temporarily disabled, or those carrying lots of stuff)
But, ooh, retrofitting is expensive.

Click to expand...

I think our new building is going to have some kind of keyless entries, once it's built. That's still a few years off. One reason we're getting a new building is because refitting the old one (which dates back to the post-WWII era) to modern ADA specs would be too costly and difficult.

Once you've seen a student or colleague in a wheelchair, or with some other physical disability, struggling to access a facility, you can't really unsee it.

What I have trouble with is knowing when something counts as a disability. Does a painful back count? How about plantar fascitis, which makes it painful to stand for long periods or to walk long distances. What about depression? What if the condition is intermittent? What if it doesn't prevent a person from doing their job but just makes it less pleasant?

I think 'less pleasant' can't really be a factor, or we'd all be disabled. In the end, they are called 'jobs' because they're not pleasant, not all the time or in whole.
The line has to be drawn, I think, somewhere around 'makes the job more difficult'.
I leave the definition of 'disability' to the experts: the people who have them.

Roxxsmom said:

I think our new building is going to have some kind of keyless entries, once it's built. That's still a few years off. One reason we're getting a new building is because refitting the old one (which dates back to the post-WWII era) to modern ADA specs would be too costly and difficult.

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Get to them before the plans are finalized. Persuade them that it's a good time to not only be ADA compliant, but a leader and innovator in barrier-free design.
Keyless doors, better washrooms, motion sensors, (do you have flashing lights synced to the fire alarms, so that a deaf person working alone in a lab knows there's something going on, without relying on a human coming by and telling them)?
And, a solution to the lab-exam problem.
Get to them early and talk up 'State of the art'.
Places get kudos and awards for 'ecological' or 'energy-saving' buildings, why not this?

frimble3 said:

I think 'less pleasant' can't really be a factor, or we'd all be disabled. In the end, they are called 'jobs' because they're not pleasant, not all the time or in whole.
The line has to be drawn, I think, somewhere around 'makes the job more difficult'.
I leave the definition of 'disability' to the experts: the people who have them.

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Sometimes the line needs to be drawn. Just look at all the emotional support dogs out there. Pretty sure all you need do is buy a vest for your dog and it can come in the restaurant. That I don't mind but just recently a support dog bit and severely injured the person in the next seat on a plane.

The courts can sort it out, the legislation can be strengthened, but we shouldn't judge the law by the abusers of it. The law has done tremendous good, in my opinion. Just try to get around with a baby stroller and you'll get a vague idea of what it's like to be in a wheelchair.

frimble3 said:

Get to them before the plans are finalized. Persuade them that it's a good time to not only be ADA compliant, but a leader and innovator in barrier-free design.
Keyless doors, better washrooms, motion sensors, (do you have flashing lights synced to the fire alarms, so that a deaf person working alone in a lab knows there's something going on, without relying on a human coming by and telling them)?
And, a solution to the lab-exam problem.
Get to them early and talk up 'State of the art'.
Places get kudos and awards for 'ecological' or 'energy-saving' buildings, why not this?

Click to expand...

Oh, they're very concerned that this building be functional for decades to come.

Unfortunately, there's been an issue with building design on our campus, not for ADA specs, but with regards to listening to the input and needs of the faculty. Sometimes the ADA has been invoked as a reason why they can't give the faculty what they want/need in terms of classroom design, but that's been exposed as a red herring. Still, they persist. That's another can of worms, though.

This kind of thing--falsely invoking the ADA as a reason for denying a requested design feature--is a great way to build resentment and resistance to it, however, and may be a reason why some are trying to weaken it.