Either you're summarizing and not fully explaining how it works, or your college is not implementing the rules correctly. Accommodations are only allowed for students who qualify, which requires official diagnostic documentation and registering through your college's accessibility services office. Your description made it sound as if the testing rules had been changed for all students, and I would really hate for anyone to read that and believe that's actually happening in colleges.
As far as I know the testing rules have not been changed. Students have to go to the accommodations center on campus to be tested and diagnosed. They show up with a slip during the first week or so of classes (ideally, though some do spring it on us right before an exam) that indicates their need for accommodations. The instructor then fills out the form with the particulars about the exam such as the amount of time the rest of the class gets, whether notes or calculators are allowed, whether students are usually allowed breaks, and if breaks are part of the accommodation, if they should be proctored. For lecture exams, the student gets to take the exam at the testing center, where they are given extra time, and possibly a distraction-free environment.
What has changed is that this now applies to lab exams as well as lecture exams. Lab exams are set up in the lab room and feature a series of timed stations where students must rotate through every 1-2 min (time allowed varies) to answer questions about class material (models, charts, specimens under microscopes, and possibly dissections or preserved material). These exams take hours to set up, and already involve instructors getting together outside their normal work hours to do so. The exams remain set up until all lab sections have taken it, then they must be cleared and put away so the next set of labs can resume.
There has never been any way to set them up at the testing center, so in the past, we've allowed every student 2 min per station (when it normally takes one minute to answer) and allow all students 15 min at the end to ask questions and revisit stations (with instructor supervision) if needed. If a student has special needs, we try to be flexible in allowing them to stay a bit longer after others have finished, but this was case by case, and limited by when the next class needed to come in and take their exam.
This is no longer acceptable. The administration decided that we should accommodate lab exams at the testing center. Except there's no way to do this, because we don't have the material, nor the time, to go set a duplicate exam up over there. They suggested that testing center staff could set up and proctor the lab exams after the others have finished, but that would be pretty hard or someone who doesn't teach the class and have knowledge of the materials and questions and would involve input and help from the faculty. Plus the students would be taking the exam after everyone else is finished and the exams are possibly being graded and returned. They suggested we take pictures of the exam and send them to the testing center, but that wouldn't be a fair or equivalent exam for the students taking it over there.
So then they said we just had to give the students as much extra time as the forms required (sometimes twice what the other students get or more), but that doesn't fit into the allotted class time, unless we make the exams much shorter. So they suggested we simply come in at 5 AM or stay past 10:30, or give the exams on weekends. That's when the union got involved, because of course contractual issues, and the administrators had no interest in paying for the extra time.
Throughout all of this, the overall tone was that they had no idea what lab practical exams were, why biology faculty consider them important, or how much time and work they already are to set up and administer. Nor did they care to know.
This is not the ADA's fault. I don't even know if the way the administration on our campus changed their interpretation of the rules was driven by an actual change or ruling re the ADA, a complaint from a student, or some other reason.
My point isn't to rail against the ADA, but to point out that it can be hard to determine what constitutes a reasonable accommodation, and it can make a lot more work for faculty to implement them, even when there is a testing center that is intended to administer the exams. There's also the issue of "invisible" disabilities, where the person in question doesn't fit most people's casual image of disabled, and it can be tempting to think that someone is gaming the system to get special testing conditions. This can create bad feelings by some people that lead to moves to neuter the ADA.
I don't think neutering the ADA is the answer. It would be great, however, if administrators and officials did a better job of listening to the instructors when they try to explain how testing works in their courses with the facilities and materials that are available.
My college has a separate testing center, which some courses use for testing in general, and can be utilized for students who require accommodations. So there is no problem of anyone staying late, instructors can just have students use the testing center. I had thought test proctoring was pretty standard, but if your college isn't doing this yet, that would be the solution.
We do have an accommodations center, and have for many years, but see the above explanation for why lab practical exams can't be administered there. It would cost tens of thousands of dollars, at least, to duplicate all the lab materials (microscopes, charts, models, specimens etc) to administer separate exams over there for starters...
Our guidelines also hold this caveat: accommodations may not change the fundamental nature of the expectations of the field (there is exact wording that I'm probably not getting quite right). So, for my own department, extended time for projects is not an allowable accommodation, because we are a deadline-driven business.
One interesting thing is that the nursing department does
not provide testing accommodations for their lab classes. Their rationale is that the expectations of the profession are that nurses have to work in time limited and distracting environments. So far it's held up. For whatever reason, similar assertions regarding the biology department's lab classes (many of which are pre-requisites for the nursing program) have not floated.
Again, I am not against the ADA, and I do
not want to see it weakened by the bill mentioned in the OP, or by any other. I just want to point out that it is complicated, and the way different institutions interpret and handle the rules can lead to some people becoming disillusioned or bitter about it.
I don't know what the answer is, but it's not de-fanging the ADA. Honestly, I think there are too many violations already, and it's already a lot of work for disabled people to gain access in many cases.