From the Chronicle of Higher Education (registration required):

New regulations proposed by the Justice Department limit accommodations that universities are required to provide under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The proposed regulations were published in the Federal Register.

Among the proposals is a reduction in the number of wheelchair-accessible seats that would be required in stadiums, in an amount roughly comparable to the terms of a recent settlement between the federal government and the University of Michigan. (Earlier posts here, here and here.) While the current ADA requirement stands at roughly one percent, U-M agreed to provide only 329 of its 107,000 seats — or about a third of a percent.

“That seems like a step backwards to me,” said L. Scott Lissner, who coordinates disability-law compliance for the Ohio State University system. “I don’t know of any past examples that actually reduced the standard of access.”

The proposed regulations also place limits on colleges’ responsibility to allow “emotional-support animals,” and permit colleges to bar “nonhuman primates,” as well as reptiles, farm animals, ferrets and amphibians.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 8:31 am and is filed under ADA, accessibility, wheelchair. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post