Guest:  Todd Vaarwerk

Topic:  Americans with Disabilities Act 30th Anniversary is in 2020 - its provisions

Host:  Welcome to Independent Perspective, a public affairs presentation of Western New York Independent Living (WNYIL). Our guest today is Todd Vaarwerk, Chief Policy Officer of WNYIL, and your host is yours truly Ernie Churchwell. Welcome to the program Todd.

Guest:  Wonderful to be here.

Host:  Todd, since you are the agency's chief knowledgeable person about all things legal and political, I thought you would be the best person to talk as we approached the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2020. What do you think people would benefit from knowing about the ADA?

Guest:  Well, quite often I get a lot of calls in my office about what people's rights would be in individual situations. And what I find is that we don't talk about the basic layout of how the ADA works. And I'm not going to make anybody an ADA expert in five minutes, but we can talk about how the ADA is broken out so that you know when you're seeing something and you want to talk about whether or not you've been discriminated against, you know where to go. Remember that the ADA is broken up into five titles. Title One is employment. Title Two is public entities, that is state and local government entities that employ more than 50 people. Title Three is places of public accommodation, that's where most private business is conducted. Section Four is communication that's more about sign language interpretation and video description and closed captioning. And then there's Title Five, Title Five has miscellaneous provisions, but not a lot of people know this, all the rules about where paratransit operates in our community are located in Title Five.

Host:  For the benefit of people that aren't familiar with that term, could you explain what that is?

Guest:  Paratransit is curb to curb service for those people that by virtue of their disability can't use regular fixed route bus service.

Host:  I'm sure you're going to go into more detail about each of the five titles.

Guest:  Well, Title One is how the ADA kind of started, it started out as a full employment bill. So, Title One makes sure that a person with a disability isn't discriminated against in the benefits, privileges and responsibilities of employment. It guarantees that you've got the right to apply for a job and fight for a job and get a job and keep a job, provided that you are otherwise qualified to hold the job, and can perform the essential functions of that job, with or without a reasonable accommodation. Reasonable accommodations are things that will help you level the playing field, things like needing a stool at work if you need to sit down while other people are standing a lot, or needing flex time from work if you're a paratransit user.

Title Two basically takes the same laws that have applied to the federal government since 1973 and applies them to state government. You have to make sure that every program that a local government operates is accessible to people with disabilities. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean they have to build ramps in every building, they have to figure out a way for you to get access to the program. They do have to make sure the buildings that they build new, or put stuff on, later amend are accessible when they build them, but for existing structures owned by governments they really don't have to do anything unless it's the only way to make sure that you have access to that service. A great example of that is attending your town board meetings, got to make the chamber accessible if people with disabilities can attend their town board meetings, but it doesn't mean that you have to put a ramp on a building just so that someone can come and file their taxes, because you can do that by mail.

Title Three is making sure that private businesses provide accessibility to the public and they have to do everything that is readily achievable, that is easily accomplishable without much difficulty or expense. And that's a really complicated thing, but suffice to say if you're having trouble getting in or using a service from a private business, we would want to help you with that and that's because Title Three covers that.

Title Four is the thing that assures that effective communication is provided for people that have trouble seeing and listening and speaking. Effective communication is being able to make sure that you use the reasonable accommodation necessary so that the communication is effective. If you're having a five minute conversation with a police officer about the fact that you have a traffic ticket, it's completely different than going to the doctor and talking about whether or not you need surgery.

Host:  I'm sure people have questions; how can they reach you to ask them?

Guest:  They can always call me at 836-0822 extension 101 or ping someone at our Facebook page and let them know that you need to talk to me.

Host:  Thanks for being with us.

Guest:   Always a pleasure.

Host:  You've been listening to Independent Perspective, a public affairs presentation of WNYIL. Our guest today was Todd Vaarwerk, Chief Policy Officer of WNYIL, and your hosts was yours truly, Ernie Churchwell.