The Impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act on Employment Opportunity for People with Disabilities

Abstract

The impact of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) on employers and the workplace extends well beyond the provisions of the Act. Besides demanding an end to discrimination in the workplace against persons with disabilities, both the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act articulate the goals of equal opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency. They state clearly the right of each person to a full and meaningful life regardless of disability. Promoting those goals through employment requires thinking more broadly about the interaction between the individual with the disability, the workplace, and society. The employer is not the only participant. The individual with the disability plays an important role, as do the health care providers. An opportunity to align the goals of SSI and SSDI more closely with the ADA may lie in efforts to expand health care approaches to disability, based on the IOM Model of Disability, and link such practice with disability management efforts in the workplace.

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