Search

The article discusses the court case Rokita v. Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, wherein the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ruled in favor of the inmate's claim of relief for Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT). It provides a background of MAT, filing claims and alleged violations of rights under the Eighth Amendment and the Americans With Disabilities Act. It reviews the dissenting opinion regarding the use of MAT in the prison system.

The article focuses on the implications of the Cummings v. Premier Rehab Keller decision for Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). It mentions emotional distress damages under disability discrimination laws like Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Topics include the historical and legal context of these statutes, the Court's reasoning in Cummings and the potential impact on future disability discrimination.

In the article, the author discusses website accessibility law issues under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 and how to address them. ADA aims to eliminate discrimination based on disabilities. Also cited are the rapid rise of federal lawsuits due to violations of ADA's Title III and the efforts by foreign governments and standard-setting organizations like the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to ensure internet accessibilityfor all users.

Purpose: This review of federal statutes, regulations, administrative directions, and case law related to special education, disabilities, and school nutrition is designed to provide speech-language pathologists (SLPs) with information essential for determining eligibility children with pediatric feeding disorder (PFD). Despite the absence of mention of dysphagia or PFD in federal statutes and regulations, special education, disability, and school food service requirements provide direction for serving children with health care needs, which include children with dysphagia. The federal requirements, court cases, and policy interpretations are detailed to provide guidance to SLPs and their school teams when working with children with PFDs. Method: Federal statutes and regulations, administrative directions, and case law were reviewed. This review details the application of federal statutes and regulations for children with PFDs. Furthermore, administrative direction and case law identify the importance of attending to the safety of children with dysphagia. Results: As a result of this review, sections of the various federal statutes and regulations that support provision of services to children with PFD are identified. In addition, information from case law and administrative reviews further highlights the importance of attending to the rights and needs of children with PFD. Conclusions: The rights of all children with disabilities are established through statutes, regulations, and case law, and children with PFDs benefit from these rights. These requirements can guide SLPs in working with school teams, so that children with dysphagia can be found eligible for and receive school-based services for dysphagia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the accessibility challenges faced by visually impaired individuals, particularly at street intersections, and the role of Accessible Pedestrian Signals (APS) in addressing these challenges. It discusses the legal framework provided by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and related statutes, examines relevant court cases, and advocates for the implementation of APS as a solution to enhance the independent navigation of blind and low-vision pedestrians.

The overall aim of this study was to describe experiences of discrimination due to inaccessibility among people using mobility devices. We conducted a thematic qualitative analysis of 88 complaints about wheeled mobility device use, inaccessibility, and discrimination submitted to the Swedish Equality Ombudsman (DO) during 2015 and 2016. The analysis resulted in three themes: instigating change by invoking laws and regulations and highlighting lack of compliance; demanding to be recognised, understood, and listened to; and struggling for equal access and social participation. Regulations and treaties were invoked as the basis for complaints by people using mobility devices regarding their lack of access to physical environments and impediments to their enjoyment of their full right to participate in and contribute to society. The complaints described feelings of discrimination, the disadvantages and exclusion due to physical inaccessibility, and experiences of being prevented from living one's life as others do. Complaints filed by people using mobility devices showed that they were denied access to a wide range of contexts, including offices, theatres, restaurants, schools, and public transportation, though they desired to live an active and social life outside their homes. Filing a complaint was a way to take action, highlight present inaccessibility, and express a hope for change. Difficulties experienced by people using wheeled mobility devices can reveal knowledge important for revising existing design and renovation standards for housing and public buildings. Documenting facilitators and barriers in different environments is important for giving voice to the needs of wheeled mobility device users and revealing standards that need to be strongly enforced or revised. People using wheeled mobility devices should be supported in finding solutions in inaccessible environments, both to fulfil their wishes and to enable their participation in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying ADA accessibility at library websites of top universities selected from the U.S. News and World Report, the authors used WAVE and AChecker to assess data in compliance with WCAG 2.0 standards. Almost 8 out of 10 public university academic libraries reported accessibility errors as one of the major findings. Low color contrast was becoming a more commonly occurring accessibility issue, making it difficult for people with vision impairments to perceive the color of the image. The outcomes of the study suggest that academic libraries around the world should continue improving their website accessibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires employers to reasonably accommodate the sincerely held religious beliefs, observances, and practices of their employees unless to do so would pose an undue hardship. In 1977, in Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, the Supreme Court held that "undue hardship" meant more than a de minimis burden. Practically, this has allowed employers to reject religious accommodations that impose more than trivial costs or burdens. Subsequent federal statutes, including the Americans with Disabilities Act, also require employers to provide accommodations absent undue hardship, but they apply a much more stringent meaning to the term--only allowing employers to reject accommodations that would require "significant difficulty or expense." Although justices, academics, political figures, and others criticized Hardison's gloss on "undue hardship" over the years, it endured for nearly a half century. However, in 2023, the Court returned to reconsider the matter in Groff v. DeJoy, ultimately clarifying that undue hardship means substantial costs or expenditures in the overall context of an employer's business. But fixing undue hardship is only the most glaring of the problems with religious accommodation in employment. Two other elements of such claims--that the belief or practice to be accommodated must be "religious" and "sincerely held"--also require comprehensive reexamination and revision. Groff's reinvention of Hardison leaves undisturbed these and other longstanding issues that impact Title VII religious accommodation litigation. For decades, employees and employers frequently presumed that the beliefs and practices employees sought to have accommodated were both religious in nature and sincerely held. This approach was mutually beneficial in Hardison's de minimis paradigm. Employees avoided uncomfortable questions about the particulars of their beliefs, including whether they were genuinely religious--and not, for example, political or sociological--or whether the individual actually believed them. Likewise, employers were quick to bypass these awkward topics and focus on the more objective subject of costs and burdens. The low threshold of the de minimis analysis allowed them to reject many non-trivial accommodations. The federal reporters are rife with decades of decisions where religious beliefs or practices were accommodated or denied, based solely (or nearly so) on courts' assessment of accommodations' burdensomeness--regardless of whether the underlying beliefs and practices were, in fact, religious or sincerely held. Groff did not address the current framework for analyzing whether a belief or practice is religious or sincerely held for purposes of Title VII. And, without the de minimis test, employers will not be able to rely upon it to the extent its low threshold allowed and encouraged. They will be more likely, and often compelled, to challenge the religiosity and sincerity of beliefs and practices--and, ultimately, accommodate more of them and, perhaps, to a greater extent under Groff. While this will aid employees' attempts to obtain accommodations, it also makes the road more uncomfortable for everyone. Plaintiffs will face increased scrutiny regarding whether proffered beliefs and practices are religious and held sincerely. In recent years, even before Groff, both employers and employees were increasingly litigating religiosity and sincerity, as demonstrated in COVID-19 vaccination litigation. In many of these cases, employers challenged the religious nature and sincerity of employees' anti-vaccination beliefs. The ugliness of some of these disputes reveals that the problems in Title VII religious accommodation cases extend beyond the meaning of undue hardship. It also portends that these problems remain even after the demise of de minimis. This article delves into the religion and sincerity tests under Title VII. It proposes changes to resolve the shortcomings of both inquiries--problems that will become even more apparent after Groff. In Part I, the article outlines the constitutional foundation for Title VII's statutory framework: the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Part II traces the development of religious accommodation under Title VII, originating with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's (EEOC or Commission) regulations in 1966 and 1967 before being codified by Congress in 1972, to the Supreme Court's decision in Hardison and other cases, to how the lower courts applied the elements of religious accommodation cases, including religiosity and sincerity. Finally, Part III details new frameworks for courts and practitioners evaluating religiosity and sincerity in Title VII religious accommodation cases in the new Groff world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article performs a historical corrective, documenting representations of disability in popular U.S. television sitcoms of the 1990s. While these shows did not center disability, they often featured strikingly similar episodic narratives involving disability, using the framework of romantic dates with a main character. This article analyzes these episodes as a microgenre, referred to as "disability dates." This microgenre represents a fleeting subgenre of the sitcom that used similar strategies to represent disability and to reproduce popular discourses that opposed or undermined the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars, policymakers, and the media acknowledge that surveillance can threaten privacy and increase the risk of discrimination. Surveillance of people with disabilities, however, is positioned as being a convenient way of averting a host of problems: It can be seen as a way to protect people with disabilities from abuse and neglect, to prevent Medicaid fraud, and to proactively protect school communities from mass shootings. Increasingly, as surveillance systems become more sophisticated, state and federal laws have begun sanctioning, and occasionally mandating, the surveillance of people with disabilities for these purposes. This Essay interrogates narratives that justify the increased surveillance of people with disabilities by analyzing them through the lens of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and its integration mandate. The ADA expresses a clear goal of preventing the unnecessary segregation and isolation of people with disabilities. To achieve this aim, states must provide services, programs, and activities in the most integrated setting possible. Looking at laws and policies that mandate surveillance through the lens of integration draws attention to their oppressive and isolating effects. This Essay breaks new ground by centering disability discrimination in its analysis of surveillance. It is the first to demonstrate how ostensibly benevolent surveillance systems embed punitive, carceral practices within therapeutic and community-based settings. It yields new insights about how surveillance systems deployed within a community can result in a constrained and superficial, rather than expansive, idea of integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's society, major arts organizations and other large-scale public venues are making additional accommodations for persons with disabilities beyond those under Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Often termed "sensory-friendly," this approach makes it easier for individuals with sensory sensitivities to participate in social activities and community events. However, we rarely see similar efforts occurring in school-based music performances. Therefore, we set out to create an inclusive concert experience that welcomes all persons to attend regardless of their sensory, mobility, or other needs to benefit everyone—the students, the families, the school, and the community. During our journey, we realized several components were essential to the overall success of our concerts. In this article, we share five tips that may help you feel more confident implementing something similar in your school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Service animals can play an integral role in the lives and education of students with disabilities. In addition to assisting with physical tasks, service animals can improve confidence, independence and quality of life for students, as well as help them to meet their educational goals. Teachers, coaches and administrators should have the knowledge and skills necessary to support and collaborate with students as they engage with their service animals in and outside of school. The purpose of this article is to educate school personnel about service animals and to help facilitate the successful integration of service animals into schools. Specifically, the article defines service animals and outlines the rights of students with disabilities and their service animals. It also provides recommendations for teachers and coaches to help promote inclusion in physical education and athletics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is helpful to think about the needs of patients with moderate to severe brain injury through the lens of disability law. However, there are limitations to current disability law that contribute to ongoing segregation and marginalization of individuals with severe brain injury. Indeed, one of the paradoxes of American jurisprudence is that more clear constitutional protections accrue to those who have definitively immutable conditions. Thus, as neuroscience brings new therapies to those with brain injury, they may become less protected by the constitutional elements of disability law because their conditions have changed and become mutable. This is the clinical progress that brain injury professionals all seek to achieve, but ironically these advances could potentially degrade the legal protections of patients who benefit from emerging treatments. In this paper, we will critically examine this paradox at the interface of medicine and the law and suggest that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) could be nicely complemented by legislation we have named the Americans with Abilities Act (AWAA). Instead of focusing on disabilities that need protection, the AWAA seeks to sustain and foster newfound abilities made possible by the fruits of medicine and neuroscience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the disproportionate rates of youth with disabilities who experience exclusionary discipline in schools, it is important to consider the involvement of law enforcement officers in the discipline of these students and the students' right to an equitable education. One recent case of concern was Wilson v. City of Southlake, which clarified that police can be sued for disability discrimination based on their response to a student with a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act or Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 where life-threatening circumstances are not present. This finding has implications for schools that involve school resource officers in responding to children who are protected under either of these provisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This JAMA Insights article reviews Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) rules for patients, visitors, and other members of the public bringing service animals into health care settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When paratransit riders book their travels, operators have the flexibility to adjust the requested pickup time within a predetermined limit for efficiency purposes in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations. This practice, known as schedule negotiation, is widely adopted across the United States (U.S.). However, the existing paratransit literature lacks optimization methods to support decision-making in this context. To address this research gap, we propose a new mathematical formulation, enabling an operator to simultaneously determine how a new travel request can be accommodated and how incentives can be designed to maximize the operator's payoff (revenues minus total costs). In addition, to enhance the realism of behavioral modeling in the paratransit literature, we explicitly consider the privately held value of time information for riders, which results in probabilistic responses. Eventually, the formulation is a nonconvex mixed-integer nonlinear program (MINLP). We thus design a decomposition-based fix-and-optimize algorithm that ensures global optimality despite the nonconvexity. We validate and evaluate our proposed method through synthetic analyses and real-world case studies, which demonstrate substantial advantages of schedule negotiation in improving paratransit operational efficiency. We also highlight the efficiency of the proposed solution approach relative to a benchmark approach based on complete enumeration. The proposed optimization method is thus expected to advance the state of the practice in pickup time negotiation in paratransit and other related mobility services. • Investigates schedule negotiation between a paratransit operator and a rider under rider uncertainty. • Formulates a mixed-integer nonlinear program for the Negotiable Booking Confirmation Problem. • Proposes a fix-and-optimize algorithm for solving the nonconvex optimization problem optimally. • Validates high effectiveness of schedule negotiation and efficiency of the decomposition approach. • Generates managerial insights in schedule negotiation practice based on real-world case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Progress towards development of accessible pedestrian networks for people with disabilities has been slow, perpetuating social exclusion in many cities world-wide. There is increased pressure to develop and implement plans for barrier-removal, such as Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) transition plans. Limited research has examined the elements for effectively developing and implementing plans in a comprehensive way that identifies the role of individual, organizational, and cultural factors. To better understand the factors influencing effective planning, we interviewed municipal planners with high-quality plans about their experiences and perceptions. We analyzed the interview data using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) to better understand how well the data aligned with established constructs of effective implementation. Our results suggest that planners of high-quality plans were supported by factors that were both internal to the city, such as technology, training, and interdepartmental relationships; and/or external, such as connections with other organizations or being accountable to their state transportation offices. Several interviewees described the need for organizational and cultural change around planning for more accessible pedestrian networks. The lessons learned from effective planning can be used to improve barrier-removal planning in cities in and outside of the U.S. • Progress towards removing pedestrian barriers for disabled citizens is slow. • High-quality barrier removal planning can be studied using implementation science tools. • Planning processes are adaptable to local government resources and capacities. • High quality plans are nurtured by interdepartmental, inter-city, and state relationships. • Communication and public engagement support buy-in from stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]