Disability Services
Klump Academic Center, Rm. 148 · (570) 320-5225
The Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 1990
There are two major pieces of legislation that impact students with disabilities in the college setting. They are the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 1990. Of direct importance is Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act that states: "No otherwise qualified person with a disability in the United States... shall, solely on the basis of a disability be denied access to, or the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity provided by any institution receiving federal financial assistance."
With the passage of the ADA, this mandate from the Rehab Act was expanded to include any public or private institution. Subpart E of the Rehab Act requires an institution to be prepared to make reasonable academic adjustments and accommodations. This would allow students with disabilities full participation in the same programs and activities available to students without disabilities. The ADA further reinforces these statutes. With relation to the college setting, a qualified person with a disability is one who meets the academic and technical standards required for admission or participation in the institution’s educational programs or activities.
The following requirements of the laws are of major importance to students:
- Institutions must ensure accessibility of programs and activities to students with disabilities. Architectural barriers must be removed where the program is not accessible by other means. Students with disabilities are entitled to equal access in the selection of courses and majors.
- Tests must not discriminate against a person with a disability. Tests must be selected and administered to measure the student’s aptitude or achievement levels unless that is the skill the test is designed to measure.
- Students with a disability must be provided with auxiliary aids and reasonable accommodations in their academic activities. Auxiliary aids and accommodations may include interpreters or other effective methods of making orally delivered material available to students with hearing impairments; taped texts; classroom equipment for use by students with mobility impairments; and other similar actions or accommodations. Colleges and Universities need not provide personal attendants, individually prescribed devices, readers for personal use or study, or other devices or accommodations of a personal nature.
- Reasonable modifications must be made where necessary in nonessential academic requirements to ensure full educational opportunity for students with disabilities. Such modifications include the extension of time for completing degree requirements, substitutions of courses in nonessential degree requirements, permission to tape record lectures, and the use of assistance animals on campus.
Overall, modifications need not be made for academic requirements that can be demonstrated to be “essential to the program of instruction” being pursued or to any directly related licensing requirement.
Definitions under the Rehab Act and the ADA
There are three prongs of the definition to disability under the ADA. The first prong defines a person with a disability as an individual with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. Some examples of disabling conditions may include, but are not limited to:
- Blindness/Visual Impairments
- Cancer
- ADHD/ADD
- Cerebral Palsy
- Deafness/Hearing Impairments
- Epilepsy
- Diabetes
- Learning Disabilities
- AIDS/HIV infection
- Multiple Sclerosis
- Speech Impairments
- Mobility Impairments
- Psychological disabilities
- Brain Injury
Major life activities include, but are not limited to self care, manual tasks, walking, seeing, hearing, speaking, breathing, learning, and working.
The second prong of the definition of disability under the ADA is an individual who has a record of a substantially limiting condition. An example of this would be a former cancer patient is protected from discrimination based on his or her prior medical history.
The third prong of the definition of disability under the ADA is an individual who is regarded as substantially limited. This would include individuals who have one of the following:
- a physical or mental impairment that does not substantially limit major life activities but is treated by a covered entity as constituting such an impairment,
- has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits major life activities only as a result of the attitudes of others toward such an impairment, and
- has none of the impairments defined but is treated by a covered entity as having a substantially limiting impairment.