Watertown Commission on Disability

On Thursday, September 25, 2008, the President signed into law: S. 3406, the “ADA Amendments Act of 2008,” which clarifies and broadens the definition of disability and expands the population eligible for protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The Act’s main goal is to clarify that the term “disability” should be construed broadly. To find out more about: S. 3406: ADA Amendments Act of 2008

The Act includes the following:

1. Mitigating measures – such as medication, prosthetics, and other aids used to ameliorate the effects of an impairment – may not be considered when determining whether a person has a disability. This supercedes the Supreme Court decisions that mitigating measures should be considered when determining whether a person’s impairment substantially limits a major life activity.

2. Ordinary glasses and contact lenses may be considered in determing whether a person has a disability. Employers may use a test or qualification standard based on an job applicant’s uncorrected vision only when it’s “job-related and consistent with business necessity.”

3. Major life activities include, but are not limited to, caring for oneself, performing manual tasks, seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, walking, standing, lifting, bending, speaking, breathing, learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, communicating, and working

4. Major life activities also include the operation of a major bodily functions, including but not limited to, functions of the immune system, normal cell growth, digestive, bowel, bladder, neurological, brain, respiratory, circulatory, endocrine, and reproductive functions

5. Impairments that are episodic or in remission are disabilities if they would substantially limit a major life activity when active.

6. Transitory impairments are impairments that lasts for six months or less – they do not qualify as a disability and are not covered by the ADA.

7. A person who is regarded as having a disability need not show that his or her employer believed that the impairment (whether actual or perceived) substantially limited a major life activity.

8. Reasonable accommodations are only required for people who have an impairment that substantially limits a major life activity, or a record of such impairment. Accommodations need not be provided to a person who is only “regarded as” having an impairment.

9. Language about discrimination against a person `with a disability because of the disability of such individual’ is replaced with `on the basis of disability.’