Event ID: 1200264
Event Started: 12/10/2008 8:00:00 PM
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 Please stand by for realtime captioning.
>> Hello, everyone, and welcome to part 1 of our two-part series of the American and disabilities act. This is Miranda Kennedy with NDI consulting Inc., the national technical assistance training provider for the VPN initiative, and I will be serving as today's host. To start off our session today, our presenter will be showing us the national DBTAC website. DBTAC sounds for disability business technical assistance center and will also be showing us how to access the DBTAC in your region and the services and supports available to disability program Navigators and One Stop career center staff, partners, other service providers, and employers through the DBTAC. 

>>> The rest of this presentation will be focused on providing Navigators with updates on the new amendments to the ADA and the implications of these changes for workforce professionals. In part 2 of our ADA webinar series tomorrow we'll be going through the ADA basics, a primer for workforce professionals. This information will be important for Navigators to share with staff and partners within the One Stop centers as it covers ADA issues such as providing reasonable accommodations and disclosure of disability status. Additionally, there is specific information on hiring, accomodating, and retaining employees with disabilities. The Navigators can share with their business services team staff at the One Stop career centers and in coordination with those team members share and employers and employer groups. Before we get started, I need to address a few logistical details with all of you in regard to the webinar platform we're using for today's presentation. If you have any documents open on your desktop such as internet sites or perhaps your outlook or e-mail, I recommend that you close those applications. This will help to prevent a delay in the way you see the webinar in front of you. If your computer has other applications open, it can take up memory and really slow down the way you're seeing the information we're presenting, and if your computer is older and doesn't have a lot of memory you might still experience some delay. 

>>> Also, you will note in the lower right-hand side of your screen that we have closed captioning available for participants who are deaf or hard of hearing. You can close this screen down if you don't wanted to see it by minimizing that window. Oyou can make the closed captioning window bigger by minimizing the windows above it such as the chat window, the Q&A window or the panelists window. When we leave the PowerPoint to share applications on the presenter's desktop, you will see the closed captioning on the right-hand side of your screen. I will let you know this webinar is being record and had will be posted next week on the D P Navigator.net training page. Also I will be spending that information out on the One Stop tool kill EVPN listserv on Friday with both sessions today and tomorrow and all of the material that is go with it, and we'll have the transcript and the PowerPoint and materials posted to that training page with the archived link as well on the DP  Navigator site, so you can find it there. 

>>> Now I would like to introduce you to our expert presenter from the DBTAC Rocky mountain ADA center. Jana Copeland is the directeddor of that center and will be presenting on today's call and also part 2 tomorrow. She is a national expert with a wealth of experience, researching and problem solving barriers to employment to people across the spectrum with disabilities. She has worked closely with the workforce investment stm and Navigators in her region and is very familiar with supportive of the work of this disability program Navigator initiative and we're very pleased to have her as our presenter here with us today. With that I would like to go ahead and hand it over to Jana to get us started. 
>> Thank you very much, Miranda, and welcome, everyone, to the first part of this webinar series on the Americans with disabilities disabilities act. For those of you with us last fall when we did a similar two-part session, welcome back. For the new Navigators that are out there, please accept my warm welcome to the initiatives and also to this training session and hopefully it will be beneficial for you. 

>>> As Miranda mentioned, we are going to do a couple of things today in the 90 minutes that we have together. The first thing I would like to do is I would like to introduce those of you who don't know about us to the National Network of ADA centers also known as the disability and business and technical assistance centers and let you know a little about who we are, who we do and how we can serve as a resource for Nav Navigators out in the field. After we take care of some of that introductory material I would like to chat with you a little bit about some of the upcoming updates and changes to the Americans with disabilities act that is literally hot off the burner and fresh from the presses so to speak. 

>>> So what I am going to actually do right now on line is go ahead and share with you my desktop so that you can take a look at a site that I wanted to share with you. As MRI Miranda said for those of you using captioning you will see that on your screen on the right-hand side. For those of you that aren't aware, I run one of ten centers that is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, national institute on disability rehabilitation research to provide information, materials and training on the Americans with disabilities act and that network is called the DBTAC or the disability business technical assistance centers, and as a whole we are ten regional centers that serve various size regions across the country and we are designed the mission of our program is to help individuals with rights and response responsibilities under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Americans and disabilities act by providing information, phone and e-mail-based technical assistance services, training, both distance and in person, and appropriate referrals to community resources that might be able to help you better than the regional ADA center. 

>>> I brought up for you the national website for our centers, and you will see that we try to provide a lot of information on our site, and in particular we have what's new section where we try to keep the public up to date on very new and innovative materials, and you will see obviously one of the topics we're trying to spend a lot of time with right now are the ADA amendments act of 2008 that we'll be talking about during our session today. 

>>> You will see that on the site there is a description of the centers as well as some of the services that we do, and you will also find the way that you can find your regional ADA center, so as Miranda mentioned, I am the direct why are for region 8 or the Rocky Mountain ADA center, and I always joke that we got the pretty part of the country. Not as many folks as some of hi other colleagues but definitely got the scenery, and we serve a six-state region that includes Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, and north and South Dakota. There are nine other centers that are very similar to us if not just like us that serve every state in our region and territory, so we've got the New England ADA center up in the Northeast. We have the Northeast ADA center that serves New Jersey and New York, the mid-atlantic ADA center along the eastern seaboard, our biggest region which is the southeast ADA center with their eight states, and we have the Great Lakes center headquartered in Illinois and Chicago, the southwest ADA center in Houston, serve the southwestern part of the country. The great plains dh takes the four states smack in the middle, the Rocky Mountain which is headquartered in Colorado springs, Colorado, the Pacific ADA center in California, and the northwest ADA center which gets  -- they actually claim they boast the largest geography because of Alaska. 

>>> If you are a Navigator, whether you are new to your position or have been in your position for awhile, there are a lot of services and opportunities that you can utilize through your regional DBTAC. Let me talk a little bit about some of the services that we offer. 

>>> Specifically for Navigators, one thing that we pride ourselves on is being very responsive to service providers who are out in the field and who are working one on one both with people with disabilities and job seekers with disabilities as well as service providers like workforce center staff as well as community service providers, and one-way that we are able to do that is by providing free materials or in some cases there may be a minimal charge to help recoup printing expenses, but we do provide an exhaustive library of free education and awareness materials to Navigators so that you can have them for the workforce center in the One Stop that you can make available to your staff as well as to the customers, both businesses and people with disabilities. 

>>> So in certain situations we've been able to provide materials that are put in the resource rooms at the One Stops, on brochure stands that go into the lobby or in the reception areas of the One Stop, or even with your One Stop center staff so that they can share materials with their customers as they're meeting with them. 

>>> The other thing we do is we also have a lot of multi-media resources, so we have your standard print bere sures and booklets, but also offer an extensive library of DVDs, CDs, posters, and various other kinds of multi-media products that will also help with that education and awareness material in your One Stop centers. 

>>> The other thing that we offer Navigators is the ability to request training from your regional ADA centers. This is just an example of one style of training we do which is our distance learning via the web, but we also have a variety of other opportunities for training, and we do one on one or face-to-face training where staff from our centers come out to your One Stop and either provide training for your staff or for an audience that you wanted to invite in and host a training for, whether that is employers, job seekers with disabilities, or community service provider partners that you have. 

>>> We also have a lot of distance learning opportunities. We do targeted trainings like this one for DPI, but we also do  -- I am sorry, NDI, but we also do training for  -- we have training available on line via web course like our ADA basics building block, or our Title II ADA training which is a new or a newer course that we have available and you can see is visit any of those courses by going to ADA course.org, and if you will go to your desktop, you will see that I am actually taking you there right now. 

>>> This is the training resource center for the ADA that our national network has put together, and you can see the wide variety of training opportunities that we have available for you. One of our newer services that we have that we're offering that I would like to point out is our new pod cast series called the disability law low down, and we have an English standard version as well as an American sign language video pod cast series we're doing, and we also have a few episodes that are available via Spanish that deal with rights and responsibilities under the ADA. 

>>> Some topics from recent episodes that are of interest to the Navigators potentially are accomodating employees with disabilities, Title II responsibilities for state and local government agencies, and an update on the ticket to work changes that have come about in recent months, so that's just a very short or a few examples of some of our episodeses, and with our pod casts those are available for free. 

>>> We also have an ADA audio conference series available, and I will take you there on your website as well. With our audio conference series this is held monthly, and it has a variety of topics. We have a four-part series on employment that we host every year as well as a few other episodes. There is one a month, and that schedule is available by clicking on the link on your website. We also have a new legal webinar series that deals with employment and the ADA. Those are available also monthly, and that schedule is available by clicking on the link, and then we have a seminar series on accessible technology both in an educational setting as well as the workplace setting. 

>>> As you will see, you can also see we have a disability law lowdown as well. These are just a few examples of training opportunities that are available to you as Navigators that you can utilize in the service provision that you're doing for your workforce center staff, and as well as for yourself to help keep up to speed on disability issues and disability law compliance issues. 

>>> I also want to take just a moment to show you our regional website because each of the DBTACs also host their own website, and this is an example of ours, and you will have to excuse the site being cut off but with captioning I had to minimize it a little bit. You will see just on our site that we have publications that are available for download. We have certain products again that we have available in our web store. We have resources and referrals on both national and regional level. We have a training page as well that gives you materials and sources related to training and planning accessible meetings and a variety of other things, and so I definitely encourage you if you're not in our region to take a moment, get to know your local DBTAC, and your regional DBTAC, introduce yourself if you haven't already, and talk with them a little bit about how they can support your efforts in the field whether it is through technical assistance, answering questions, via our hot line or e-mail, the other websites, whether it is providing training for you, your staff, or customers or even participating in some of our distance learning opportunities, so at this point I am actually going to stop sharing my website or my desk stop, excuse me, and return to the PowerPoint, and I will give it just a second for everyone to be able to catch up in case there is a lag at all. 

>>> What I want to go ahead and do now is jump right in and spend the rest of our time talking about some of the updates that we have that are coming out specifically dealing with the ADA amendments act of 2008. Before I go much further, I do have to give you a little bit of a disclaimer. I am not an attorney. Therefore anything that we talk about today is informal guidance only, and basically that means you can't go to court tomorrow and say Jana said because it won't do you any good. 

>>> What we're going to talk about today are just good strategies to get prepped and ready to go and be responsive to these changes that are coming through with the amendments act. So we're getting a lot of calls on our hot line at the ADA center, and we're getting a lot of calls that are basically saying I heard that there is some stuff going on with the ADA, and I have heard it is going to really change it and make it all different, and it is really radically making this ADA thing an even bigger burden for us, whether we're a service provider, an employer, or a person with a disability even, so before we get too far into our discussion, I want to give everyone a quick overview of the act, what it means, and then we'll talk a little about implications for you as Navigators out there in the field. 

>>> Before we go too much further in the statute itself, I want to give you a little bit of background on the ADA. Just to give you a little bit of a preview, tomorrow we will be spending our 90 minutes talking about the Americans with disabilities act, particularly in two areas. First looking at what you as Navigators and the One Stop centers are responsible for under Title II which are the provisions for state and local government agencies. Then we're going to talk a little bit about employment rights and responsibilities, particularly for sharing that information with job seekers who are using the workforce center for services as well as being able to share that with employers that your business services folks will be interacting with. Before we go into that, I wanted to give you a little background, and when the Americans with disability act was being written in the late 1980s, it was actually modeled after the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 1973 which of course granted nondiscrimination to individuals with disabilities in a variety of areas, particularly dealing with federal programs and agencies and those contractors and programs that were funded with federal dollars. 

>>> So in when the ADA was passed Congress actually took almost veer bated I am the definition of disability from the Rehabilitation Act and dropped it into the ADA with one exception. They basically updated the language and got rid of handicapped and changed it to individual with disability to make it more up to date and up to speed on proper terminology. 

>>> That was all fine and dandy, and we clicked along for a few years, but the nature of the civil rights statute is when complaints get filed and charges of discrimination are brought against an entity, it event eventually ends up in court, and ultimately if it goes through the appeals process, it ends up with the supreme court, and in 1999 the so 1999 supreme court started to narrow the definition of disability under the ADA in some unexpected ways, and alot of disability advocates and practitioners actually thought that it was to the detriment of the intent of the ADA. In particular there were two big court cases, actually a series of them, but two in particular I wanted to point out for today's discussion. 

>>> The first was a decision called Sutton versus United airlines. In that decision the cu supreme court said that employers could take into account what they termed mitigating measures when determining if someone has a disability. Specifically in this situation it was two employees who used corrective lenses for vision loss, and the court said that it was okay for employers to take into account any of those corrective devices, whether it is medication, hearing aids, prosthetic devices, anything like that in determining whether someone was a person with a disability or not. What resulted was that we had a huge group of people with a lot of different impairments who were essentially no longer covered under the ADA because of the Sutton decision. 

>>> The other piece that happened about a year later was another case called Toyota versus Williams, and in that case we had an individual who was doing a job and developed limitations because of an injury, and the Supreme court said she was not a person with a disability because she was not limited in her disability to do jobs across a very wide spectrum. 

>>> So as a result we had subsequent decisions under the ADA that basically said individuals who could do  -- who couldn't do their current job but could do other jobs weren't discovered under the ADA any more, so overall with the supreme court decision and the series of decisions, we ended up with a much more restrictive view of who was protected under the Americans with disabilities act. The way our federal government works is that the only branch of government that can overrule the supreme court so to speak is Congress, and based on a lot of analysis and a lot of advocacy on the part of the disability community as well as businesses, Congress decided that it was time for the ADA  -- we just celebrated the 18th anniversary, but they decided it was time the law needed to be amended so that we could see or so that we could start to talk about some of these changes that had happened because of the supreme court decisions. 

>>> The result of that was the Americans with disabilities acted or the ADA amendments act of 2008. This was actually signed into law by the second President Bush on September 25, 2008, and the law has several purposes. The first purpose is that it clarifies the definition of disability by rejecting the decisions of the supreme court in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It also rejects portions of the equal employment opportunity commission or the EEOC, their ADA regulation. They thought that there was some issues with definitions that they had offered back in 1992 that needed to be corrected.

>>> It goes a long way to help clarify the intent of to protect the rights of Americans with disabilities to the broadest extent possible. If you read the statute itself, Congress spent a lot of time talking about in both their findings and the purpose section that when the ADA was passed in 1990 they intended for the ADA to provide broad coverage to folks with disabilities, and the Supreme Court's decision narrowed that group buy I don't understand the intent of Congress, and they wanted to be able to protect people as broadly as possible to provide the civil rights. 

>>> The third primary purpose of the amendments act is to give EEOC the responsibility of revising their ADA regulations and specifically revising the definition of substantially limit, so in the big scheme of things talking about the amendments act almost primarily deals with who is covered by the ADA and who has protections under the law, so that is just a really brief overview. 

>>> There are a few major elements I want to mention, and then we're actually going to talk about these in a little bit more detail in just a moment, but there are two areas that the amendments act covers. From now on I will just call it the ADAAA. The definition of disability is the first primary area. There are a few sections or a few parts of the definition that the law covers. The first is talking about major life activities as well as episodic conditions, mitigating measures, the term substantially limits in the definition, and also the third prong of the definition of disability which is the regarded as, a person with a disability coverage. The second major element deals with the new regulations that are going to be required that are being drafted by the EEOC. 

>>> So the very first area where the amendments act deals with is with with this definition of disability, and Congress prefaced this definition with a desire that they would like broad coverage to the maximum extent permitted or possible for people with disabilities in our country, and therefore they define disability as this. The first is that an individual has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity. The second way that you're covered is that you have a record of that impairment. An example of that would be cancer that's in remission, that's basically the classic exarchal of a record of an impairment, and the third way that you're going to be protected is if you're being regarded by others as having a disability. You don't have an impairment, but other people think you do. There is three ways you will be covered under the ADA. 

>>> For those of you that have some baseline knowledge of the ADA or who are with me last fall when we did our two-part series, you're going to notice that this definition looks very, very familiar. There is a good reason for that. It is because this is the original definition of disability as it was put into the original ADA in 1990, and so essentially what the amendment act does is restore this three-prong definition. Beyond that it also offers clarification for us which for those of you who work at the ADA center is a huge relief because the monster that we have about the ADA is there is no black and white, it is all gray. Any clarification that Congress can offer us is greatly appreciated from us. 

>>> The first area where we qualify is give us some of that clarification is in the area of major life activities. We've seen a lot of court activity over the last 15 years dealing with is a person covered if they're limited in X activity? We have had case after case out there dealing with basically the two attorneys arguing about is this a major life activity or not? 

>>> So what Congress did in the amendments act is expand the definition by providing a non-exhaustive list, and there is two parts of that list. The first is the traditional major life activity that we're familiar with that we've been working with for the last 18 years, and I have included in the handouts for today a few examples of those. That would be activities like caring for once, any of your sensory activities like seeing and hearing, any of those kinds of self preservation activities like eating and sleeping, and then you've got your mobility kinds of activities like walking or standing or lifting, and then you have some of the other activities that are kind of self protection like breathing. Then you get the cognitive, the learning, the reading, the concentrating, thinking, all of those kinds of things, and finally you will notice I highlighted for the Navigators since you deal with the workforce center setting is that working is again included in that non-exhaustive list. Unfortunately I have bad news for you guys. We spend almost as adults we spend more time working than just about any other activity, and that's depressing thought, I know, but for ADA purposes it is considered a major life activity. 

>>> The other big area the amendments act has provided us regarding major life activities is that it also includes a category for operation of major bodily function, and I have given some examples here like the immune system, digestion, circulation, reech circulation, res pirtion and breathing and reproduction for individuals with HIV limited in reproduction, and immunity as well. So there is a lot more clarity to major life activity than there were in  -- than there was in the original statute, and that's kind of refreshing. The other clarification that the amendments act offered us is when you have an individual who is limited in one activity, they don't need to show that they're limited in other activities in order to be able to establish their disability. So if you're dealing with a customer in the workforce center, I am sorry, your staff in the workforce center is dealing with them, and they are limited in their ability to work, they don't have to be limited in other things. They can just be limited in work or they can just be limited in res pirtion and potentially be covered under the ADA, so it is very nice to have this kind of clarity at this stage in the game. The other area that the amendments act has offered us some clarification is dealing with conditions that are episodic in nature, and this is important for impairments that are episodic or in remission because for individuals who are able to med indicate like individuals with seizure disorders, if they're able to take their medication and be seizure free, they could still be considered a person with a disability because if their impairment would substantially limit a major life activity of theirs, when it is active, so when they're actually having seizures on an active basis, then they could be considered covered under the ADA because of this new clarification. Some examples of that, obviously seizure disorders, and we have cancer that can go in and out of remission, multiple sclerosis that can have symptoms that cycle, muscular dystrophy, a lot of fatigue based conditions like chronic fatigue syndrome, fibro myalgia, those kinds of an cans, so there is a lot of different example that is are episodic or in remission that would still be considered disabilities under the amendments act. 

>>> As I already mentioned, one of the big major areas that the amendments act offered us some clarification is in the area of mitigating measures, and I mentioned that Supreme Court decision under Sutton versus United airlines where employers were able to consider and also state and local government agencies were able to take into account those corrective devices and their use when determining if someone was a person with a disability or not. 

>>> What the amendments act does is basically reverse that decision. What it says is that effects of mitigating measures, and those corrective devices cannot be considered when determining an impairment. I have already listed a few examples. Obviously medication is a biggy. For individuals with psychiatric and mental health conditions able to manage their disability with that medication, individuals with seizure disorders, any kinds of medical supplies, like insulin administration supplies, catheters, those kinds of things, mobility devices like wheelchairs and canes and crumps, prosthetics, whether it is hands or legs or any other kind of prosthetic, hearing aids or other kinds of hearing devices like cochlear implants or even oxygen useage which is another type of medical supply.  It also includes assistive technology, so if you have an individual who is a wheelchair user who uses a sip and puff system you can't take into account the sip and puff system when determining if they're limited. It also includes aids and services like sign language or captioning, learned behavior or adaptive neuro modifications, cognitive or traumatic brain injury training someone has to allow them to be able to function in their independent life, or a variety of other things. There is also some argument that the use of service animals would fall under this category of assistive technologies to a certain degree because individuals are ale to use service animals, and function on a fairly average level. 

>>> The only exception to the consideration of mitigating measures and this is actually specifically included in the amendments act is that employers can still consider ordinary eye glasses or contacts to correct sort of typical vision loss. When you get into cases with severe blindness or vision loss that may use some of these corrective devices, that still comes into play, but ordinary eyeglasses and contacts individuals are if we consider those there would be a whole lot of us on the list with people with disabilities me included, and so that is excluded from coverage under the ADA still. 

>>> The other area that is being addressed by the amendments act is that area of substantial limitation. As I mentioned, in order for a person with a disability to be protected under the ADA, not only do they need to have an impairment, but the impairment has to substantially limit that major life activity, so not only do you have to have it, but there there is also a bit of a threshold that you have to pass or surpass to be able to be covered under the law. We always have been sort of stuck so to speak with this term substantial limitation. What the ADA amendments act and Congress alleges is that both the EEOC and the Supreme Court when they were interpreting this term they actually were doing it incorrectly, and they established a much greater degree of limitation for determining if someone is limited or not an Congress intended when the ADA was originally passed in 1990, and so what the amendments act has done is they  -- the Congress has charged the enforcement agencies and the court system to interpret more consistently this term substantially limits to allow for a greater degree of coverage for people with individuals with disabilities. While there is no definition offered in the statute itself in the amendments act, we are expecting that we will get some guidance and some additional definition from the EEOC and other federal agencies in the new regulations, and we'll talk about those regulations in just a second. 

>>> More to come. We'll get a little more clarification on this once the regulations come out. The other area, one of the last areas that the amendments act deals with is with that third prong or is that third part of the definition of disability which is that regarded as, and what the regarded as plane, when the ADA was originally passed, legislators recognized that for some individuals they had characteristics that were not necessarily an impairment. It wasn't necessarily that the individual was limited in their major life activities, but they had a condition that potentially other people might think was limiting and they would treat them differently or discriminate against them. We had individuals like I point to my mom as an example. My mom is a quadruple bypass survivor. She had a bypass nearly seven years ago, hard to believe, but nearly seven years ago they had a quadruple bypass when she was 54, and have had a chronic heart condition most of her life, and in her past life she has had employers who have not given her promotions or treated her differently or tried to have been protective of her because of her heart condition, and in her situation the regarded as prong of the ADA could protect her from some of that discrimination. While she doesn't feel she has any limitation because of her condition, other people were treating her like they did,  -- she did, and that was what the regarded as prong was designed to protect against, and so what the ADA amendments act does is it refiz that individuals that don't have a disability or impairment could still be subjected to discrimination because other people think they do based on an actual or a perceived impairment. So you could have somebody who has got emotional problems, going through the loss of a parent or the loss of a child, and they're grieving, and individuals at work could discriminate against them based on the assumption they have some kind of mental health condition, and even though it is a perceived impairment, there could still be protection there, and that protection is there regardless if the impairment limits a major life activity or not. 

>>> The one exception to the regarded as prong is if it is a trance tory and minor condition. If that's the case, then they're not going to be covered under the ADA. If you have someone who breaks a leg and is in a cast for six months or you have somebody let's say with a cold, or the flu you can't just discrimination if you get in trouble for missing too much work or something because of that illness. At least under the ADA you can't. 

>>> The ADA amendments act goes one step further. It says, yeah, individuals regarded as having a disability are protected and are offered rights to protect against discrimination and mal treatment in the workplace and any other kind of program or service, but employers and other covered entities like the workforce centers or the One Stop centers are not required to provide accommodations to those individuals who have  -- are being regarded as. 

>>> So let's say with my mom as an example, if she faces a situation where her employer knows about her heart condition and says, gosh, Joleen I am just not sure that I want you climbing up on that ladder and lifting those boxes because I don't want to you strain your heart and I don't want you to  -- I don't want it to get  -- I don't want to you get hurt, and there could be a case that they're regarding her as having limitations because of her heart condition, but that doesn't mean that they have to go the next step and start providing accommodations to my mom based on her heart condition unless she asks for them and it is a covered disability. 

>>> So there has been a lot of conversation in the court systems over the last ten years or so about whether employers are required to or not, and the ADA amendments act says, no, they're not required to provide accommodation. Some other miscellaneous provisions that I wanted to mention to you today while I have you as a captive audience so to speak, first of all, I wanted to mention that both employers and other covered entities do need to allow individuals to complete any tests and exams using vision correction devices. 

>>> Let's say you have a customer in the workforce center who is going to do a driving job, and is trying to find a driving position, and they're needing to do vision screening to be able to be qualified for that job. They wear glasses. Then the potential employer needs to make sure they're allowing that individual to wear their glasses while they do the test and exam and not test them with uncorrected vision. The amendments act also mentioned that the fact doesn't alter any state workers compensation laws or any other eligibility for other federal disability benefit programs. For those of you working closely with your benefits planners, within either the One Stop system or within the community, it is not going to impact SSI or SSDI. It is not. It doesn't extend that far. 

>>> The amendments act does not provide for  -- provide protection for reverse discrimination, and we do periodically get those calls where someone is trying to get a job and particularly like an organization that offers disability services. They don't have a disability, and they feel like they're being discriminated against because they're not getting a job because they don't have that disability. There is no protection under the ADA, sort of like with the age discrimination act there is no protection for us young folks getting discriminated against either. 

>>> That's pretty typical in the civil rights arena. The last thing the amendments act does is it does clarify that for covered entities, that includes employers of course. We're still allowed to deny reasonable accommodation or modification to a person with a disability if it results in a fundamental alteration to our program, service, or the nature of our operation or business. 

>>> Or also if it is an undue financial or administrative burden, so the amendments act doesn't change that key part of the ADA, and we'll talk a lot more about that tomorrow for those of you that I hope join me tomorrow.I am just checking. Melissa has a question. SheHer question is this, Melissa Williams asks is there any agency or group out there who will provide secret shopper type services to see how organizations and agencies comply with the ADA? In general, Melissaa, I don't know of any specific resource on a national level that will offer those type of services. However, I want to add a caveat to that. Often times your local independent living centers that are based in the communities where you're headquartered, they offer these type of services where they will send out consumers often times consumers with disabilities, who will do kind of on the fly covert audits of either Customer Service and/or facility accessibility, so I recommend that you go ahead and check with your local independent living center, and if you don't know that contact information, you can just go to your internet browser and whatever search engine you're using and type in independent living centers, and you can look it up locally. You can also use just the phone book and look it up and often times you can find it. Thee willThey'll be able to offer you services or at least get you referred to community resources who can do that. 

>>> Libby Sterling has a question. Actually it is from Eric, and his question is this. If any leg is in a cast temporarily and I am using a wheelchair, does the ADA require an employer to make a workplace accommodation for me?  The general answer to that question, Eric, is that when you're dealing with these temporary conditions and specifically the regulations talk about broken limbs as being temporary, that you're not entitled to traditional ADA ake accommodations under the statute because you're not considered a person with a disability. However, what I always recommend to employers is that if you do have something that is short-term, you want to make sure you're keeping your individual  -- the person you're working with as productive and as engaged in the workplace as possible, and it makes good business sense to accommodate that individual who is in the cast and using a wheelchair whether the law requires it or not because it just makes good business sense. You don't want to fire this person and have to bring somebody else on or you don't want them to be able to not be able to get to work because they can't get around the office space. While the ADA isn't going to come into place it definitely makes good business sense to go ahead and make those accommodations for anybody. 

>>> I hope that answered your questions, and if it didn't, type into the Q&A or chatted box and let he know if you need further clarification. 
>> Jana, this is MRI rand A I just want to add and remind everyone that we're going to have time for questions and answers at the end as well. We will open up the phone lines and be taking questions at the end of the presentation as well. 
>> Actually just pretty briefly in just about ten minutes or so we will have adequate time to do Q&A as well. Thanks, Miranda. I wanted to give everybody a few key dates regarding the amendments act and some of these upcoming changes. They do go into effect January 1, 2009, so just over two and a half weeks away which is exciting and scary all at the same time, I think, so it does go into effect on January 1, and however the way that the law making works is that we have the statute, but right now we don't necessarily have anything to do with  -- or how to use the statute. Right now it is just a law on the books, and the way that it works is that the agencies who are responsible for enforcement are also responsible for drafting regulations that dictate how covered entities are supposed to respond or who are supposed to behave keeping in mind all of the requirements under the statute, and in the case of the amendments act the EEOC is actually who is charged with the drafting the regulations, and as of last Friday I do know that the EEOC has an initial draft or regulation that they have submitted to OMB for approval. However, I will let you know that we are still awaiting the final version of those, and we're still awaiting on whether they will do an interim rule or full public comment before the regulations are released, so but more to come, stay in touch with your local DBTACs because we obviously are keeping our finger on the pulse of this topic, and we're getting information out to our constituent groups as quickly as it becomes available. Keep in mind that the EEOC is taking the lead on writing these regulations, and the other federal agencies also have regulatory responsibilities like the Department of Justice and the Department of Transportation, and they will have to do regulations as well, but they've already indicated that they are sort of feeding the major responsibility to the EEOC, this and they're going to follow suit once the EEOC gets their initial  -- once they're getting the initial regulations put out. 

>>> Let me go to the Q&A very quickly because lipped a, I hope I am not mutilating your name, Linda. If a person is permitted to use glasses to be tested please speak with hearing devices. Truck drivers need to be able to hear or whisper within a significant number of feet and they're not being allowed to use hearing aids in Southern California. Linda, in the case of the amendments act, it actually specifically talks about vision correction, so it does not address hearing correction, and the reason that individuals are not being able to use aids in Southern California, I would have to check into that. It is actually the Department of Transportation that determines the requirements for testing under the for driver's tests, and there are some restrictions that are legal in terms of the ADA that are placed on driving positions for public safety concerns. Similar kinds of things for like air traffic controllers, the FAA says you cannot have seizure disorder period because it is a public safety issue, but I would need to check with the DBTAC that's based in California because they have a better sense of state law than I do for California about the regulations that deal with hearing aids. If you would like, I can get you in touch with them, and that specific ADA center, and they would be happy to help you and give you a little more clarification. Madelyn Miller has a question, and  -- 
>> Jana, I am wondering, did you want to open up the phone lines so people can ask their questions on the line? 
>> Let me go ahead and do this one last question. 
>> Okay. 
>> From Madelyn. I will go ahead and forge through and get finished, but I don't want them to wait forever on me. 
>> Oh, yeah. 
>> Says that you mention that someone with cancer diagnosis in remission like someone who has been diagnosed with cancer and is successfully treated is considered to have a disability. You will notice, Madelyn, I am never going to say that someone is covered or not covered. You will never get me to say that definitively. However, in the case of an individual of cancer who is in remission, there is potential coverage in two different ways. There is potential coverage if they because of that new episodic condition clarification that the ADA amendments act has offered. There is also potential protection under the second prong of the disability  -- of the definition which is a record of an impairment, and I actually have had situations where I have had in particular I was working with a woman who was a breast cancer survivor who was turned down for a promotion because the employer was concerned that if her cancer came back she would miss a lot of work, she wouldn't be able to commit herself to the time requirements for the new supervisor position because it was a project management deadline driven kind of project, and that it might even exacerbate her health problems because of the stress related to the job, so in that situation she was covered under the ADA, and was ruled to be protected by the ADA because she had that record of an impairment, so there would actually be a couple of different ways someone who is in remission could be covered. 

>>> Just to finish up, I wanted to giver you a sense, keeping in mind these dates of January 1st, 2009, what does that mean for individuals who have  -- who filed claims or complaints under the ADA both pre-  and post amendments act? 

>>> For individuals who have filed a complaint pre  December 31st, they will fall under the existing Americans with disabilities act. ForAnd that also applies to individuals who have been discriminated against, the event of discrimination has happened before December 31st, even if they go and file a complaint on January 2nd, if they were discriminated against on December 1, 2008, they'll fall under the current eighth. The ADA amendments act will come into play January 1 or later if someone has been discriminated against and the event has occurred after the first of the year. That is when the ADA will come into play or the ADA amendments act will come into play. Just keep that minor distinction in mind. I know we're already starting to get questions particularly from employers who are concerned on how this will affect their liability. So all that being said, this is where we are on a ground level kind of way with the amendments act and the upcoming changes. What I would like to spend the next little bit of time talking about are implications of the amendments act on you as Navigators as well as on your center staff and other workforce professionals that you're interacting with. 

>>> What does the amendments act truly mean for you as professionals out there in the field working with folks with disabilities, in some cases, but also with service providers who are working with people with disabilities. What does it truly mean for you? I ask that you keep a few things in mind. Those of us who are covered entities, employers, state and local government agencies, public accommodations, places open to the public, those of us who are complying with the law and have been from day one or have got an our act together over the course of the last 18 years, we don't really have anything to worry about because we're doing what we should be doing, and we are holding up our end of the bargain so to speak, so the amendments act passage and its effectiveness on January 1 is really not going to have a huge implication for these covered entities, but also keep in mind that the amendments acted is offering a lot of clarification and a lot more detail than we've ever had before on who is cover and had who is not, and that's beneficial for covered entities and people with disabilities, so that's a huge thing to keep in mind. 

>>> A lot of business organizations and business professional associations were actually involved in the drafting and passage of the amendments act. Some examples of that are the society for human resource management, the U.S. chamber of commerce, the national federation for small business. A lot of these kinds of groups were involved in this negotiation process, and they determined before it even went to con Congress that most covered entities who have responsibilities under the ADA are not going to feel a significant financial or administrative impact, and that's a really good message to pass onto your business services folks who are interacting with the employers out in your communities because this is going to helpal lay a lot of fears that we're getting  -- we're not getting as many from businesses as we did with the original ADA, but we are still hearing some rumblings in the business community, and this is a really good piece to pass on. 

>>> I do want to mention, though, that there is a little bit of  -- there is clarification that needs offered because when the amendments act was originally passed, it was supposed to be a restoration, restore active act that put the definition of disability back into place, and there is an argument that could be made that it is actually going a little bit above and beyond. It is both restoring, but it also is expanding the definition to a certain ex extent, and I don't pull punches, guys. I am very fofert coming with  -- forth coming with information, and I work with employers as much as I work with service providers and people with disabilities, so we do need to recognize there is a little bit of expansion because it does give us some  -- the episodic conditions, the mitd gating measures go away, those kinds of things, but it is really important to keep in mind that it is not worth either employers that the workforce center is working with or workforce center staff to really spend a lot of time with someone who says they have a disability arguing back and forth about whether they're covered or not. The intent of the amendments act is really to get us beyond that first step of arguing about is this person cored or not and getting it down to the brass tacks of figuring out how can we accommodate this person, how can we get them working or keep them working, how can we get them using our services or not using our services, how can we get them utilizing the workforce centers and one stops who are not, and that's really what that act does is gets us past that. Even if it is a little bit expansive, the intent is good, in general. 

>>> Some recommendations for you as Navigators out there in the field who should be talking to your workforce center staff. The biggest thing I wanted to caution is please don't panic. Any time there is mairng major changes to federal statute that our knee jerk reaction is to throw our hands up and say, I just can't even keep track of people or what I am supposed to be doing in my own job. How am I supposed to keep track of all of these congressional and legislative changes? Don't panic. We're not talking about any major changes. We're just talking about clarification and restoration of the original intent of the law. 

>>> The biggest thing is to continue to participate in trainings like this one as well as reading up on some of the changes that are coming from the amendments act, and I have included some of those in the resource page that I will talk about in just a moment. The other 

>>> The other thing I recommend you do is provide training. This can be done on a couple of different levels. This is a real marketing opportunity for the VPN initiative  -- DPN initiative because disability often times and you realize this as professionals out there. It gets pushed to the background in the worse force center in one stop because there is so many other things going on, particularly in this economy, you know, when we're in recessionary times, the job market is tight, and job seekers are stressed out, and your staff is stressed out, and employers are stressed out, and disability really gets pushed to the back burner. 

>>> The amendments act is a unique marketing opportunity for the Navigator initiative because this is a new federal statute. It does market ( indiscernible ) the law and allows you to get out front and center ( indiscernible ) in a way you can capitalize on that is by providing training for them and whether it is within your community organizations or chamber, or your local HR organization, but you can targeted that training and employer that is your business services folks are working with and community partners about whether that is education providers, job development and job search and job coach providers as well as your job seekers with disabilities, so it really helps get the Navigator initiative out front and disability issue brings it up to the top of the pile instead of the bottom of the pile. I also recommend that if you're going to provide some training, really capitalize on it, and what we're doing with our training is if we're offering some of the this Navigator  -- I am sorry some of the this amendments acted training is we're using it as an opportunity to reintroduce some of the ADA basics that folks may have forgotten about over the last few years and we're also using it as an opportunity to include disability etd ket as part of the conversation. Tips for interacting with folks with disabilities, tips for integrating disability into organization, those kinds of things, so it is a real opportunity to really capitalize and get out there as an initiative and make increase your visibility as an initiative by putting you out there as experts in this area that can really help your staff and customers of the One Stops beyond the leading edge so to speak on the cutting edge. 

>>> In terms of service provision, for folks coming in who may or may not have a disability, I recommend a couple of different things. The amendments act really allows those of us that do service provision to return to the intent of the ADA and shift our focus back to the interactive process of negotiating what's going to work best for that person to get them using our services, and using what in your case is the One Stop centers have to ask, or have so offer, excuse me, so I recommend reviewing any of your existing policies and processes that you have in place and making sure that you're updating your handbooks, policies, and also your signage within the One Stop setting to indicate the services and things you have available for users with disabilities. It is really going to result for both you and your workforce staff in time freed up from extensive documentation of whether a customer has a disability or not who made the accommodation to actually being able to do the job that you've been hired to do and for your workforce staff help them get their job and get community services and get hooked up with employment opportunities. This is going to be actually I think in the long run this is going to be an opportunity for us to really get down to what the law intended to do and get people working and integrated into society and move on from there. 

>>> You will see on your website for those of that you can see the PowerPoint presentation I have included a list of resources for you that includes some publications, including the actual ADA amendments act, the bill itself, the notice that the EEOC has published that gives you a brief overview and timeline for the amendments act. I also included a couple of archives for you we as the dtd system put together over the last couple of months. We have a pod cast episode that gives you an overview of the amendments act. We have a webcast we did last month that was a 90-minute webcast available for you to take a look at, and we also have our legal webinar series archive available for you to take a look at where this was the topic of conversation. 

>>> I have also included a couple of website from both the American Association of People with Disabilities as well as Georgetown University's ADA archive that give you a little more background and resources regarding the amendments act. 

>>> I also suggest that you take a look, and I am switching over to  -- I am trying to switch over to the resource page, but it is not letting me go. I did include in the materials for today's session a pretty extensive resource page for you with links embedded so you can take a look and download  -- there it goes. I included some organizations as well as some on line training opportunities and some different publications dealing with the amendments act and the ADA in general for to you take a look at, and for tomorrow's session this will even be a more exhaustive list because we will talk about the resources ADA just in general, so I will go ahead and switch back to our presentation, and then I will turn it over to Miranda to giver us some guidance on how to get into queue to get a question. 
>> Thank you, Jana, for an excellent presentation covering quite a bit of ground and giving some great ideas to Navigators refreshing and updating all of our knowledge. We really appreciate you taking the time to be with us today and of course I am hoping that people will be submitting some questions. I have the directions here on the screen in front of you. If you have a question or comment you can click on that raised handy con on the right-hand side of your tool bar over here in this general area. On all of your screen it is might be different. You can find the little hand and raise your hand if you have a question and we can unhiewt your line and you can ask Jana directly or if you have a comment as well, we would love to hear from you, how you have been using your DBTACs, how you're going to be using them, any committees you have for Jan A you can also some of you have already discovered the Q&A function on the tool bar. You feel more comfortable writing your question in, we can answer those questions that way as well. I see we've got a couple of questions about sharing the PowerPoint and also that DPN resources document that Jana had developed that we went to briefly. We will be sending this information out on Friday on the One Stop tool kit DPN listserv. That information will also be posted on the training page of the DP  Navigator.net website, so it will be available to you absolutely. Of course you can also e-mail me and I will be happy to send it to you directly. 

>>> Let's see. Looks like we might have some more questions. Jana, I got an e-mail  -- I got a little note here from Denise Barnes from Michigan. She said "I got a packet from DBTAC Great Lakes, the partner on an outreach initiative to form the minority business community on ADA requirements. How are DPNs expected to collaborate on this initiative? ." 
>> Denise, I have to confess that I am not familiar with the Great Lakes minority business community outreach activity. What I would recommend is giving them a call directly. You can call just the 800 number, it is 800-949-4232, and chat with their staff, the directeddor, her name is Robin Jones or there is Peter Berg or there is a lot of folks that are there in the office who can give you a little bit more guidance on potential collaboration opportunities for Navigators to get involved with minority business outreach. 

>>> There is also another question that came in, Miranda, since I have the line, that a comment that Social Security has used the more restrictive definitions of ADA to deny disability cases. Now with the new rules will they stop telling people they can do another scwlob and are therefore denied benefits and this person offers an example of a person who is blind was getting Social Security, and then had surgery and before her vision returned her benefits were cut off. As I mentioned earlier, the ADA amendments act actually does not impact other federal disability benefitteds programs, specifically Social Security, and the Social Security administration has always used their own standards for determining if someone is covered, and of course it is based on restrictions of work, of being able to be gainfully employed, and that has always been the case. I don't think that's ever going to change quite honestly, and is so therefore as far as I know there have been no changes and not any on the horizon coming from the Social Security administration to change or discuss eligibility changes for people with disabilities to SSI or SSDI, so in this situation with the individual who is blind, you really just have to go through the Social Security admin to figure out what's going on. 

>>> Let me see. I will scroll and see if there is any other questions I missed. Looks like, MRI randa, I don't have any more in any queue that I can see. 
>> I don't see any others either which although I see that Laura Glen has a question, so let's go to Laura. 
>> Not a question. 
>> Or a comment. 
>> Many, many comments. 
>> Okay. 
>> Many, many comments. First, Jana, for those who are on the line who were not familiar with your DBTAC, I think you learned right away what you can do as we saw questions coming in during Jana's presentation. You see now the benefit of the nation at DBTAC, and I hope for those who weren't accessing them before you certainly will. Jana, just a great presentation, and really looking forward to tomorrow. I picked up on some things that you said that I think are really key for the Navigators. One at the beginning, certainly in this day and age but especially in this day and age when you hear anything that is free, that's a big plus, and to just see the educational resource materials that are available through the David DBTAC, it is just this wide array, not only are they material that is can be accessed as you said you have multi-media resources, but the fact that as a Navigator you have access to a representative from your regional DBTAC who can provide a training such as this, maybe come in person. You can access the on line training, and this training is so good, and I imagine equally the one tomorrow will be. This would be great. It seems to me for Navigators to possibly share with business services staff, so that they can see the archive, archive, but just a great example of what Navigators can do in connecting with their DBTACs. I did also want to say something to Melissa in Arizona about your question on the secret shopper, a very good one, and there have been some projects through the Navigator that have helped to implement the secret shopper, and Melissa if you want to learn more about it, you can send me an e-mail in particular Virginia, the state of Virginia, even before they became a DPN initiative implemented that kind of process, and so that's really good, so just wanted to again say to Jana, thank you. Just as you did last year and this year, the resources that you put together, we're going to share more widely even beyond the DPN initiative we send out a listserv that goes out to the workforce professional community to about 15,000 people, and just great resources to share with them and great to know that we have a national service like the DBTACs there, and, Miranda, thank you for making this available to the Navigators, and Navigator, I really hope you continue to tap in. You have seen a great idea of what you can use the DBTAC for and you will learn a lot more tomorrow. Thank you. 
>> Thank you very much. I appreciate that. 
>> Thank you, Laura, and for those of you on the line, I do see we have another question here. I will go to that in just a second. I have to say in the three years that I was a Navigator and two local workforce investment areas, I tapped into the DBTAC all the time, and Jana and her co-workers were just phenomenal in helping address so many different issues as you can see from the session today, and I hope those of you who aren't signed up for tomorrow, there is a couple of spaces available still on tomorrow's presentation, and we'll be getting more indepth into some of those, and it would be good information to share with your staff if you want to do bring them in with you and we're going to have it archived as well. If you're not available tomorrow, do tap into tomorrow's session, and the resources and information we're going to be presenting there, but I have to say that your folks at the DBTACs, they're a real natural ally and resource for you, can provide you with so much great material and information to take into your One Stop. They make you look really good as a Navigator, and can help problem solve a lot of issues and it is just a phenomenal resource and a lot of you as Navigators you might be out there on your own. This is another resource to tap into, a good ally, so I just wanted to put that plug in there. I am actually going to go ahead and unmute Scott Florence's line, and, Scott, can you let us know where you're calling in from and what your question is? 
>> I am Scott Florence in Spokane, Washington, and the question I had, you said DBTAC has multi-media things on DVD. 
>> Yes. 
>> Okay. And I can request those kind of things. Currently we are testing some new things, and our folks here at this One Stop are being trained beyond belief in several other things, but what I would like to do is find some materials where they can probably tech it out like a library and watch it in their spare time or in those few precious moments they get between working with customers. 
>> In shirr spare time, time, ha ha. 
>> Yes, and each region handles it a little differently. For the most part almost all of the DBTACs have a lending library available of materials where you can borrow things and check them out and use them for training or staff development or whatever, and you can do that  -- you can just give  -- use the 800 number I gave out earlier, 800-949-4232, and that will get you in touch with the ADA center up out of Seattle, and that's where they're headquartered out of University of Washington, and they can get you tooked tooked hooked up with multi-media. We also have some products if you want to have them for your resource library internally there are some available for purchase even if you want to go that far, and you can get in touch with them and find out about those as well. 
>> I am in Vista on a living stipend so I am not purchasing ( indiscernible ). 
>> Definitely give them a call. Like I said, I know here in our center we do quite a bit of lending, so we have disability etiquette resources. We've got accomodating or accommodation resources. We've got facility access and the ( indiscernible ), educational technology and accessible technology resources, so definitely give them a call and heck get you hooked up and let them know I referred you to them and that way if they have any questions they can give me a buzz directly, too. 
>> Thank you very much. 
>> You bet. 
>> All right. Great, Scott, good luck with all of that. I am sure you will be coming up with great resources for your staff as a result of this. We did have another comment from Sandra. She said great presentation, she will definitely check out the California regional DBTAC. She has a training scheduled for January and she is sure it will be a valuable resource, and looks like she will be joining us today. That's good. 
>> Which actually provides a nice Segway because I wanted for those of you left on the call, whether you're schedule to do join me tomorrow or not, I want to give you a real quick preview of what we're going to be talking about. I am always at a challenge when I do these two-part sessions because I have to figure out how to fill up my time, but I was even greater challenge with this presentation because I had done something so similar last year for the Navigator initiative, and you can take a look at those archives if you like on the DP  Navigator.net website under training to be able to view those archives, and I didn't want to repeat myself because I knew I would have folks out there who had been in on the calls last year, so the ADA amendments act offered a way to broach the subject and tomorrow as Miranda said we're going to get a lot more detail, a lot more knit I grit a things, and the first area we'll talk about is ADA responsibilities for state and local government agencies, and the impact or the implications for One Stop centers and what you guys  -- within your One Stops what responsibilities you have to provide services to customers with disabilities, whether that's communication, bl communication, whether that's programming, whether that's community referrals, you name, it we're going to talk about it tomorrow, and then the other major component we're going to talk about is and this is one area in particular that you can share with both your business services folks but also who can pass it onto both employers and job seekers is talking about the employment provisions of the ADA, and what does it mean to be  -- what does it mean to be protected in the workplace under the ADA? We're going to talk a little about that. In particular, we're going to talk about a little about disclosing disability because that when I talk with Navigators around my region, that is always a hot topic is working with job seekers who are trying to decide should I disclose to a potential employer, when should I do it, how should I do it, so we're going to talk about that tomorrow, and then we're going to do a real brief conversation about just some etiquette, disability etiquette and interacting with folks with disabilities, particularly with regards to the workforce center or the One Stop environment, and then again my big mantra is give you resources because it is not knowing all the answers. I don't know all the answers. It is just knowing where to go when you have questions, so we'll talk about a lot of the resources about the  -- that pertain to ADA and disability law compliance tomorrow, so I definitely encourage you if you vaned signed up, please join me tomorrow because we'll cover a lot of this ground, and for those of you already signed up, I do hope you can make sure to make it because we're going to talk about some good stuff, and hopefully we'll be able to help you guys in your position. 
>> Thank you so much, Jana, for wrapping us up like that. I think that's a great Segway into tomorrow. I am looking forward to the discussion tomorrow as well, and taking on those questions that you as Navigators have out in the field, and it should be just a wealth of information, so we look forward to those of you who will be joining us tomorrow, and those of you who can't, tap into those archives and thank you so much for sharing today, Jana, your wealth of information, and for those of you Navigators there is going to be a survey that will pop up as you're exiting out of today's presentation. We would love to know what you thought of this information and how you're going to be using that. Jana is available and so am I for any questions. Please do feel free to contact us, and of course join us tomorrow. Thank you so much. Have a good day, everyone. 
>> Thank you, guys. [  event concluded ]]