Americans With Disabilities Act Essay

The passage of the Americans with disabilities Act changed the lives of people nationwide. The ADA gave disabled people the right to pursue happiness and the right to simply live the life they want to live (Gold, 2011). In reality, the ADA did not prevent discrimination, but only gave disabled the ability to fight back at the discriminators and it gave disabled people a new hope. When the law was passed in 1990, it affected around 43 million Americans,which at the time was more than a sixth of America’s population, and this number continues to grow today. Since then, things have slowly been changing for the better, but still only 32% of disabled Americans have jobs, yet that was expected to be 50% by now. The rest of the people say they have

The ADA applies to anyone who meets the definition of “disabled” (Civil Rights Lawyers, 2017). A person is considered “disabled” if they have a physical or mental impairment that limits what the ADA calls a “major life activity”. Some examples of disabilities that limit a major life activity include, wheelchair confinement, blindness, deafness, mental learning abilities, and other mental illnesses. The ADA does not mention all the disabilities it protects, but it still helps a multitude of disabled people obtain jobs even though they have an

This title was made in 1934 to “provide telephone and television access for people who are hearing or speech impaired” (Jasper, 2008, p. 39). This Communications Act required telephone companies to create telecommunication relay services on a 24 hour basis. People with speech or hearing impairments could purchase a text telephone or a TDD, this phone allowed them to type a message to send, and it also changed speech from the other end of the line into text. For this service to work correctly, it required a specially trained communication assistant to relay the messages. This title helped disabled people, but at the same time, it provided more jobs for people that helped the