Introduction
The Americans with Disabilities Act also called the ADA was signed into law in the year 1990. The act serves the purposes of protecting the civil rights of Americans with disabilities who are more that 50 million individuals in number. It further purposes to ensure that the disabled Americans are presented with the same opportunities in the social, political, and economic context as everyone else so that they can fully participate in public life. The act prohibits discrimination in all areas of life that include; employment, services in the state and local governments, public accommodations, telecommunications, education, as well as access to health care services (Thompson Para. 4). This essay debates the merits and demerits of the current status of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the potential challenges for the future regarding its ability to protect the rights of people living with disabilities.
When the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in the year 1990, it was a representation of a significant achievement in achieving fair consideration and equality for all the people who are disabled in the United States of America. The law was meant to introduce a transformation in the manner in which physically challenged individuals went through the system of education and how their rights granted as both citizens and consumers in need of good and services. The act also aimed at ensuring fairness in the treatement received by the people living with disabilities at the place of work (Greenberg and Carlos Para. 1). With such objective, it is evident that the act represented the world’s first comprehensive law that openly declared equality for people living with various disabilities in the United States of America.
Individuals got optimistic that the law would prove effective given the fact that other such acts were already in existence. Such acts that preceded the ADA include The Rehabilitation Act (1973), The Education for all Handicapped Children Act (1975) and the Fair Housing Amendments Act (1988). Analytically, the introduction of more laws to cater for the needs of the individuals who are deprived concerning certain aspects of life meant that the previous enactments were not as effective as the initial intention desired. This, therefore, implied that further laws would indeed solve the issue of inequality and serve better that previous laws.
The Initial Impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act
The Americans with Disabilities act’s primary goal was to protect the desperate groups that were a minority in the United States of America by making in unlawful to discriminate people by physical disability (Harris et al. Para. 1). The act, however, failed to offer a clear definition of the meaning of an individual getting physically challenged, which means that whereas it was a good piece of legislation, it would eventually fail because of the lack of precision on who it purposed to protect. It would also be difficult for individuals to prove the nature of their disability for claims to be instituted in case of lawsuits being filed because of discriminatory practices. For example, it is a challenge to differentiate physical disability from natural occurrences and disability occurring as a result of accidents and medical conditions and who therefore qualifies to be termed as “rightfully disabled”.
Therefore, such initial challenges called for the amendment of the act because of the need for the clarification of ambiguities that were existent in the original law and also offer a comprehensive description of the term “disability” (Harris et al. Para. 4). However, the revision of the law needed clear insight that could go beyond the unclear definitions. Such insight should have included the challenges of scheduling work for the physically challenged individuals, the legal implication of the term impairment, the coverage and protection of particular disabilities, and the framework for the provision of sufficient evidence that a disability exists.
Apart from the challenges of the implementation of the act, there also existed challenges for the assessment of the effectiveness of this law (Harris et al. Para. 4). Implementation challenges had to do with the society’s general perception that disability represents inability. Assessment challenges, on the other hand, included the lack of studies and surveys to monitor the social, political, and economic arenas concerning how the disabled accessed satisfactory services in the domains as mentioned above.
The Current Status
Various studies provide information that is not constant regarding what happens to the wage and rates of employment of people living with disabilities in the United States of America (Burris and Moss 7). However, even with the lack of adequate data on the effectiveness of the Americans with Disabilities Act, it is a first understanding that it aims at eliminating discriminatory practices against people living with disabilities. The significance of the act, therefore, represents its nature of a social policy that aims at the provision of structures that are comprehensive in nature for the advancement of civil rights of disabled individuals in the United States. This phenomenon therefore means that the act has to a large extent aimed at significantly reshaping the system of rights as a great social change symbol.
However, challenges are still ongoing and include barriers to health care for people with disabilities that are recurrent, discrimination in the making of decisions about health care and limited health insurance coverage for the physically challenged. Additionally, the United States of America has not fully achieved the full consideration of the individuals living with disabilities in the workplaces. Such challenges mean that there is a lack of frameworks to monitor how the Americans with Disabilities Act is being implemented that results in recurrent disparities concerning equity for the physically challenged. Such challenges further mean that the law has veered off the course of trying to protect the people with actual or perceived disabilities from discrimination (Anderson Para.1).
Such discriminations are however existent in select parts of the society because evidently, the society’s view on physically challenged people has undergone a significant revolution albeit with a slow pace. The process of designing products, buildings, and spaces for public access has adopted a course of making the outcomes usable and convenient for physically challenged people.
Forecast for the Future
As various sections start to experience problems associated with their health, they will shortly require laws that protect them from practices that are discriminatory in nature such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (Gillian Para. 1). This means that it will be necessary for populations to have sufficient bargaining power to make it possible to affect laws related to the workplace. The fundamental function of the ADA is to ensure that the integration of physically challenged individuals into all facets of the society is achieved, including access to equitable health care and opportunities for employment. Going forward, the law faces the challenge of full implementation given the compound nature of the interaction between federal and state legislation and issues relating to healthcare and employment both in the public and private sectors.
Furthermore, cases that may be presented to the courts regarding workplace discrimination may not achieve hearing that favors both the plaintiff and the complainant. Such is because of the apparent ambiguous nature of the definition of what disability or physical impairment entails. Therefore, the future calls for the amendment of the American with Disability Act so that the language used in the law is understood by the whole society. Additionally, the act in itself can be viewed as discriminatory in itself since it only protects “qualified individuals with disabilities” (Gillian Para. 5).
There is the need for the law to be expanded such that it caters for both employment discrimination as well as other spheres of life for every physically challenged person to be included. Besides, a reflection on this piece of legislation provides an understanding of the impact that the law has had on improving accessibility to social amenities. Also, the law has the potential to shape attitudes and perceptions concerning individuals with disabilities, and how the process of altering perceptions might shape the future.
Conclusion
The Americans with Disabilities Act was made a law in the year 1990 in the United States of America. It is a law that aims at prohibiting discriminatory acts against the people who be disabled in all spheres that relate to public life. Such areas include employment, education, transportation, health care, and all places that are both public and private. Currently, attempts to fully implement the law have been met with various challenges that facilitate the persistence of discrimination against individuals living with disabilities. Further, the law may not be protective in the future if ambiguities contained were not clarified for the purpose of inclusivism.
Works cited
Anderson, Jill C. "Just Semantics: The Lost Readings of the Americans with Disabilities Act". The Yale Law Journal 117.6 (2008): n. pag. Print.
Burris, Scott and Kathryn Moss. "The Employment Discrimination Provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act: Implementation and Impact." Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal 25.1 (2007): 1-33. Print.
Gillian, Flynn. "Predictions about the Future of Employment Law" By Flynn, Gillian - Workforce, Vol. 79, Issue 1, January 2000 | Online Research Library: Questia". Questia.com. N.P., 2016. Web. 17 May 2016.
Greenberg, Benjamin, and Megan, Carlos. "The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) At 25 Years Precedent, Impact and Implications for Psychological Practice.” The American Psychological Association (2015): n. pag. Print.
Harris, Sarah Parker et al. "Scoping Review of the Americans with Disabilities Act: What Research Exists, and Where Do We Go From Here?” Disability Quarterly Studies 34.3 (2014): n. pag. Print.
Thompson, Amy E. "The Americans With Disabilities Act". The Journal of the American Medical Association 313.22 (2015): n. pag. Web. 17 May 2016.
