ommodations and commercial facilities. Such accommodations and facilities include restaurants, office buildings, medical establishments, grocery stores, etc. The law applies to existing facilities, new construction, and major renovations.
Title IV of ADA requires telephone and television companies to provide services to people with hearing and speech impairments. Persons with disabilities must be provided with the same opportunities as the general population. This requirement applies to both interstate and intrastate communication services. Acknowledging the diversity of the handicapped population, the ADA defines disability by three general criteria. First, a person is considered to have a disability if he or she has a mental or physical impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. Mental or physical impairment includes mental retardation, behavior disorders, cerebral palsy, cancer, diabetes, HIV virus, etc. Major life activities include walking, hearing, working, or caring for oneself. Second, a person is considered to have a disability if he or she has a record or history of such an impairment. Third, a person is considered to have a disability if he or she is perceived by others as having an impairment.
The Civil Rights Act, passed in 1964, made discrimination based on color, religion, national origin and gender illegal. The disabled community fought an unsuccessful battle to have disability discrimination added to the Civil Rights Act. Supporters of the legislation believed that amending the Civil Rights Act to cover discrimination against the disabled would have given opponents of the law an opportunity to weaken it (Doggett and George, 1993, p. 1).
Legislation for the disabled continued to be enacted in a piecemeal fashion throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The result was the following series of laws:
* Education of All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (amended in 1986...