[AUDIO DESCRIPTION]
Understanding the Americans with Disabilities Act: Keys to Being the Best Advocate for Yourself and Others 

Presented by GDB Client Jim Ramnaraine

This presentation was recorded via Zoom and is hosted by Theresa Stern, GDB’s Vice President of Interdisciplinary Client Services and Engagement. Both Theresa and Jim are shown on screen when they are speaking. 

[THERESA]
All right. All right. Well, welcome everyone. We have a great presentation coming up from Guide Dog grad Jim Ramnaraine. And Jim was the head of the -- how do you say it -- Heming, Henning? 

[JIM]
Hennepin.

[THERESA]
Hennepin. Hennepin County ADA. He was a coordin-, coordinator. Sorry. I'm like tripping over myself. So and today he's going to talk to us about the ADA, understanding the ADA. And also give us a little bit of -- you have an impressive background, and I have a terrible time reading bios out loud to people. So if you want to give a little bit of your background, Jim, and then dive in. 

And one other thing, Jim has given me some great bullet points, and that document -- it's a Word document. It's posted on our reunion website, guidedogs.com/reunion. So you can, if you want to refer back to some of the stuff that Jim's going to tell us about today, you can do that.

So without further ado, I will pass it over to you, Jim.

[JIM]
Thank you. Yeah. My bio, I can certainly go over that, but it's -- I think I'd rather just jump in and talk about the topic.

[THERESA]
Okay.

[JIM]
And probably the most important part of the notes that I sent out is my email address, which is at the top of the document, Word document. So anybody who wants to send me a note with questions, concerns, or if you just want to network or something around the topic, I'm happy to do that.
	
I'm aware of the time. It's, on the west coast, it's 4:00, which to me is symbolic of happy hour. So being aware of that, recognizing this isn't exactly the happiest of topics, talking about the law and ADA, but so I'm going to try to keep this lively and tell stories as much as I can to fill in things. 

But I want people to be aware of because the law tends to be a bit daunting for some people, the purpose of doing something like this for a casual crowd is because all of us either have a disability or are advocating for or supporting somebody with a disability. And for that reason, it's important that we at least have some basics in terms of understanding what the ADA and the Americans with Disabilities Act is all about.

If we have Canadian folks here, I apologize because I don't pretend to be an expert on the Canadian side of things. I know a little bit about what's going - I didn't have business up in Canada, so I can't speak to the similarities and the differences between the two laws. So for the most part I'm going to be talking strictly about federal law with some side comments about state law that might apply to certain topics. 

So just to run through, I've got five topics to talk about. The ADA basics, we're going to talk about the employment side of ADA and the public service side, specifically on the employment side reasonable accommodations, which is sort of the heart of the employment aspect of ADA. We're going to talk about some examples of what are reasonable accommodations and how to get an accommodation. And the finally, the last topic is to talk about how would you file a complaint or a grievance if you have a dispute and what sort of resources are available for advocacy because that's, again, a real big topic that I wanted to make sure that everybody understands. 

[Background voice from computer] 

[JIM]
All right. Hold on a sec. I have these wonderful notes, and then as I was miking up, I turned on another app so I lost my notes. 

So I want to start out with a story. And since this is reunion week, and I'm thrilled to be participating in that, I want to talk about George Shearing who some of you may know because he was a famous individual. But he's also a graduate of the school, the Guide Dog school. He was a famous jazz pianist. Actually his title is Sir George Shearing because he was actually knighted in 1994 by the Queen of England. 

So George was hopping back and forth a lot of times between the US and London, which was his hometown. He was getting on a flight in London and flying first class. He was one of the first passengers to board. The captain actually noticed him and walked over and said, "Sir George, it's such a great honor to have you hear as one of the folks on our airline. Is there anything I can do for you before we get going?" And George actually said, "You know, I just ran out the door and got here in the nick of time. And if you wouldn't mind, would you mind taking my guide dog for a quick walk?" And just so you know, George had a guide dog named Lee, beautiful golden retriever, and he did a lot of advocacy for Guide Dogs for the Blind. I bet he even raised some money for you guys.

[THERESA]
Yes, he did. And his wife still supports us, yes. 

[JIM]
Oh, that's awesome. 

[THERESA]
Hm-mmm.

[JIM]
The captain and Lee, the guide dog, left. But 10 minutes later there was a mad rush for the officers at the gate. People wanted to change their tickets. They wanted to switch flights, cancel their flights, et cetera, because they'd seen the pilot with his dark aviator glasses and this guide dog walking down the gateway and thought for sure that they had a blind pilot.

[THERESA]
Oh my gosh. That's hysterical.

[JIM]
So it's a great story. I have to say I use that story because it really helps us to get into the whole issue of why the ADA is so important. For many of us, we understand that the biggest challenge for many people with disabilities are the assumptions that people make. And sometimes just seeing somebody with a guide dog doesn't necessarily mean they're blind, but it might be something else. And it's a great segue into what we're going to be talking about today. 

Let me just get into another topic which is the whole topic of what is a disability because there's a lot of confusion about the term disability. If you're as old as I am, the term handicapped was used for many years up until the '60s and '70s. And disability has never really been the greatest of terms because of the concept of disability. 

I actually met a gentleman who was one of the founders of a program for people with developmental disabilities, the Special Olympic program. And he was advocating for the use of a term diffability, D-I-F-F ability, which never really caught on probably because saying diffability it almost sounds like you have a lisp or something. It's like it doesn't really work. But there's all s-, -- differently abled when around for about an hour and a half. I think -- I can't remember who came up with that one. But it's -- there's all sorts of terminology. 

But the point I'm trying to make is that there is a legal definition of the term disability, and then there are social and personal definitions. We all have an idea of what a person with a disability looks like or acts like or behaves like, and society has a definition of disability. In some of my longer classes I spend about half an hour -- I don't have time today to do this -- with an exercise talking about the social model of disability versus the medical model. 

And suffice to say that most of us, probably all of us, are familiar with the medical disability model because it's the one we grew up and we were programmed with as kids and young adults. And it basically looks at people with disabilities as essentially the problem, a medical problem to be addressed. Doctors are there to find a cure. And there are all sorts of other baggage around that definition of disability.

So let me talk a little about the ICD survey which was probably the largest comprehensive survey of people with disabilities. It was taken about 20 years ago. And that survey actually found that the majority of people who are protected by disability law actually did not characterize themselves or define themselves as people with disabilities. So my question to the group is why.

Well, the answer is pretty clear. For most of us, the word disability is associated with a stigma. In fact, the sociologist Erving Goffman wrote about stigma. And the idea is that a disability identifies you as the other, so the other group, the people who aren't part of the real group, right? We're out there as the other. And that's part of what stigma is all about. 

And part of what the ADA is trying to do is include people with disabilities. We've all heard about diversity and inclusion or diversity, equity, and inclusion, a lot of classes around that. But the idea of inclusiveness, that's what the ADA is all about, giving us choices. We can choose to be disabled for purposes of advocating for our rights. Or we can choose to be silent, especially if we have hidden disabilities, and not raise our hand and say hey we need something here and just go about our business without being bothered. That's what the ADA is all about. If you forget everything I say, that's probably one important piece to take away.

So let me get into the definition of disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. First of all, the ADA definition talks about a qualified individual with a disability. What does qualified mean? Well, it's qualified in terms of an applicant - are you qualified to do the job - or as an employee - are you qualified to do the job. If it's in a public service realm, it might be qualified to receive a service. So the definition of a disability is a qualified individual who has a substantial limitation to a major life activity. 

So let me back us up into this because that's the first prong of the definition. I'm going to get into the other two prongs in a minute. So the first prong of the definition, let's unpack it. What does substantial mean? What is a substantial limitation to a major life activity? Substantial typically is associated with having some major impact in our daily lives. I had a friend who was a lawyer and he said, "Jim, something has to be screwing up their life." I know that kind of legal talk. It's a little bit inappropriate to use here, but that's the way that it was defined to me. It's something that really affects you on a regular basis. 

And typically substantial means that it's not a temporary condition. People talk about pregnancy, my gosh, pregnancy is a pretty substantial limitation, but pregnancy tends to end at childbirth. So the law actually excludes women who are pregnant from the definition of a qualified individual with a disability. There are exceptions. Some states, my state Minnesota, actually has protection for women who are pregnant under the disability definition for the state of Minnesota - and that's probably the case for other states as well - to the extent that they allow for accommodations, which we'll talk about later, to the person's medical condition.

What are major life activities? That's the second part of the definition. We could probably think of some of the obvious ones, walking, talking, seeing, hearing, breathing. But then they get into a lot of other kinds of examples, caring for oneself, concentrating, interacting with others. Now you're starting to get into the realm of mental health disabilities, right? 

And then the ADA Amendments Act came along in 2008, a very important change to the ADA that qualified what major life activities include and added things like normal cell growth. What does that mean? Well, it's pretty obvious that that's probably referring to cancer. So they're specifically saying, hey, if you've got cancer, you're going to be qualified as a person with a disability, no questions asked. Because there are a lot of cases where a person with cancer, their cancer was in remission and that person was excluded from being protected. So then the law, the Amendments Act actually went around 2008, and it actually says that a condition has to be looked at in its active condition. So specifically it's saying that if you had cancer, if you have epilepsy or something that's not always active, you're protected because during the active stage of that condition you have substantial limitations to your major life activities. 

So let's get into the whole issue of obvious and hidden disabilities. The majority of individuals who are protected by the ADA will have hidden disabilities. That surprises some people. The reality is there are a lot of conditions - think of all of the mental health conditions like depression, anxiety disorder, PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder, all those conditions are psychiatric conditions that are hidden to most people. Other conditions might be diabetes. I mentioned epilepsy and cancer, other conditions. But the overall majority of those folks are in that hidden disability area. 

And for that reason, a lot of the law in ADA is defined in a way so that the person with the disability has to describe what their disability is, which makes sense even in the context of blindness, right, because I can't assume that somebody who's blind has total blindness. The majority of us don't have total blindness. We have some light vision. We might have partial vision. We might have vision under certain circumstances. When I had fairly good low vision, I saw really well at twilight. But during the day when the sun was up and there was a lot of sun and shadows and so forth, my vision was just - it was crap. It wasn't very good. But that's sort of typical.

So then when you think about it, when it talks about defining what your condition is - and we'll get into that in the area of accommodations - it makes some sense that the person with the disability does have the responsibility to basically tell someone a little bit more about their condition, not the medical aspects, not providing medical records, but specifically providing them with information about what sort of limitations they have. 

So let's get into the second and third prongs - these are less common now because of the Amendments Act - but the idea that a person might have a medical record of an impairment might qualify them. Here's an example. Somebody who had cancer is a good example. Before the Amendments Act, that person might have been not chosen for a promotion because the employer might fear that their condition would come back and they would lose a lot of time from work. If they were to take the action like not to promote them, that would be a violation of the ADA even if they didn't have a disability.

And then the third prong says having been regarded as having a disability. This covers people like someone who might have a facial scar or a birthmark, somebody who - a person who is hiring somebody might say I'm not so sure I'm comfortable with having this person be our receptionist because it might make people feel uncomfortable because of the way they look. That would be regarding somebody as disabled even if they don't meet the definition of having a substantial limitation to a major life activity.

So let me get into the employment protections of the ADA. The ADA prohibits pre-employment medical inquiries. When I first started looking for jobs, it was prior to the 1990 ADA Act being passed. So in the 1980s, employers commonly asked if you had a disability. That would be an illegal question now. You can't ask somebody how many days they've missed from work or whether they received workers' compensation for an injury at a previous employer. Those would all be illegal questions on an application. In a pre-employment interview, supervisors who are hiring somebody can't ask you questions about your disability. They can't make assumptions about your disability. 

There's only one exception that's made which is that if you have an obvious disability that the employer believes could interfere with the performance of essential job functions. In that case, that rare case, the employer is allowed to ask you to either describe or demonstrate how you would perform the essential functions of the job. 

The ADA also protects medical records. So let's say you applied for family medical leave because you had a serious health problem for a short term period of time. Those medical records are protected under the ADA. They have to be kept separate from your employment records, and they have to be stored in a confidential area where only people who have a need to know have access to that information. 

We had supervisors that would come down to look at records for employees because they wanted to make sure that before they hired somebody that they had a good employment record. So they could look at things like the person's performance reviews, but the people in human resources would take the sleeve out that had the confidential information so that a supervisor never got to look at that information. 

So I've talked about accommodations and that's the last major part of the ADA on the employment side. So reasonable accommodations, let's talk about that. Reasonable accommodations are considered to be modifications or adjustments to the job, the worksite, or the way the work is performed that allows a person with a disability to have an equal opportunity to perform the job itself. And it applies to all terms and conditions of employment. 

For example, you would be required, if you were employer if you had somebody who used a wheelchair, to provide accessible spaces for conferences and other activities, even social activities that the employer uses as a basis for, for instance, not just socializing but having people get to know and bond with each other as employees. 

So what is a reasonable accommodation? The word reasonable sticks in there. It looks confusing to a lot of people. So reasonable means that the accommodation does not pose an undue hardship on the employer. It's another term that they use. It's like one term leads to another term, right? Undue hardship means that something is unduly costly or burdensome to the employer. It's not just a simple it's inconvenient to the employer. 

And here's the other piece of the ADA that's really important. Because it says it has to be a known disability, that's where the tricky part about disclosing your condition or talking about your condition comes into play. The question becomes do you have to disclose the condition? Do I have to say I have depression? No. Do I have to say I have a vision loss? Well, technically with a vision loss it's going to be probably obvious when you're walking around with a guide dog. But you might have to give some more information about what are the limitations that you have. 

I have a difficulty reading print or have a difficulty in certain conditions in the workplace. When I was promoted at my job, they offered me an option of having an office with a window, and I actually declined that as an accommodation because I said, "I have a visual loss that's affected by a lot of light, and I'm happy to have the lesser office which was below my pay grade because I'd rather be in an office where I could have shade and I didn't have a difficulty reading my computer screen. So those are some examples of some reasons why you would want to disclose more information about your medical condition.

Again, the whole medical condition question comes up in a lot of contexts. So what typically - what I would do as an ADA coordinator is I would go out and ask the employee to sign a release so that I could confidentially get information from a provider, not medical information, but an opinion about whether a particular accommodation would be appropriate or would make sense in the context of providing better employment to this employee.

The release is always optional. You don't have to sign a release. But you might have to provide some kind of a statement from a provider depending on the nature of your condition. So when you get into things - we talk about - right now one of the big issues is folks who had COVID and have long COVID syndrome. And as a result of that I might have issues like fatigue. And that fatigue might be remitting during certain parts of the day, but it might be active in other parts of the day. Or it might be that they can only handle maybe three or four hours of constant work before they take a short break, and they have to take many breaks during the day. So those kinds of situations might require the employer to provide more information or the employee to provide more information to their employer.

Let's talk about some examples of accommodations. That probably makes more sense to talk about that in the context. I gave about ten examples or more in the list that I have in my notes, and you can certainly look at that if you'd like. But let me just say aloud four or five of the more common accommodations that I would typically run into in my job. 

So job restructuring, what is job restructuring? Restructuring a job involves a modification of the job duties and potentially removing certain marginal duties. So that gets into the issue of what's an essential job duty versus a marginal job duty? 

Let me give an example. We had somebody who was blind who worked at one of our group homes. And some of the duties of the person in the group home involved things like going out to the grocery store and shopping for the group home and other activities to keep the group home running, right. In the case of the individual who was blind, who didn't drive, because the clients needed to be supervised regularly, they choose to move that marginal duty to someone else. So the other person drove to the grocery store or whatever because the blind person might take longer to walk or take a bus to get supplies or groceries. So that might be a modification to restructure a job that involves a marginal duty.

Now, if the person with the disability was the only individual at the group home, there might be a question about whether a blind person would be appropriate for that job, if involved constant working with - it would be sort of a challenge because obviously you wouldn't be able to supervise people around the clock or during your shift and also shop for people at the grocery store. There might be some questions about whether that would be a valid issue. 

A better example of that might be if someone was a cashier at a grocery store, and let's just say that it was a small grocery store. It was a mom and pop grocery store. They had other duties that were assigned like stacking shelves in the grocery store, and the person might be in a wheelchair. They may not be able to reach to all the different shelves in the grocery store. So that duty might be essential if it was small operation. But it likely wouldn't be essential if there was someone else available to do that duty. 

So that's the issue of what's an essential duty versus a marginal duty. Essential duties are essentially the reason the job exists - surgeons cut through bodies, lawyers argue cases at court. Those kinds of things that are specific to the job themselves. Now obviously there are exceptions to all these jobs. I knew lots of lawyers that didn't go to court at all. They were folks that just did paperwork with clients and lots of other duties. 

Anyway, part time or modified work schedules. This was a very common example of an accommodation. A lot of people who have certain kinds of, again, fatigue related disabilities might be able to work a six-hour job or a four-hour job, but probably couldn't work a full eight-hour job straight through without a lot of breaks. And a modified schedule might include having multiple breaks during the day so the person could do, say, an eight-hour workday over, say, ten hours. 

Reassignment to a vacant position. Reassignment is considered to be sort of the last resort of accommodations. So for example, if I were in a job where I was capable of doing the job, but I had a limitation as a result of some accident. I had a person who was a correctional officer who was driving to work on his motorcycle and he was hit by a Brink's truck. He was actually able to go underneath the Brink's truck and was ejected out the side of the Brink's truck, believe it or not. He survived the accident. His pelvis was broken in three places. He had about a dozen surgeries before he was able to come back to work, but he had to walk with a cane. He wasn't physically able to do the job of a correctional officer which might involve wrestling with inmates or other kinds of things. So we transferred him to, reassigned him to a vacant position in another part of his department. 

Now there are a lot of questions around reassignment, and one of the things that comes up, something that I used to refer to as a bossectomy, right. Basically it's a surgery involving removing your boss on a permanent basis. Bossectomy, right? I mean, we would generally not recommend having a person removed from a job where they just didn't like their supervisor. That would typically would not be an appropriate, reasonable accommodation to reassign that person to a better supervisor unless there was some substantial limitation that was prohibiting that person from doing their job and there was another vacant job that they could perform. 

The bottom line for a lot of this is that reassignment or modifications to a job or other accommodations are going to require an interactive process. The word interactive process is used over and over again in the ADA. That means that when you make a request or ask your supervisor, the supervisor doesn't just go to HR or whatever and his manager or her manager and all of a sudden here's the job. Here's the accommodation, end of story. You're supposed to be involved in that discussion. 

Well, I don't really like this accommodation. What about this accommodation? Before you buy that screen reader program, can I take a look at it? Can we try it? Can I make sure that I have the IT support that's necessary for it to do all the applications that I have to do my job?

All right, I've got seven minutes. I've got to fly through some of this stuff because I want to give you time for questions at the end. So let me just give you an example, quickly, about Martha. I'm giving her a name, Martha. It's not her actual name. Martha was an identification clerk, which meant that she was responsible for reviewing fingerprints. So like in a sheriff's office or a police office, right, you might have to look at fingerprints, match those to other fingerprints. Originally Martha was able to do the job with some low vision technology, maybe a magnifying glass or some kind of other low vision technology. And at some point her vision worsened to the point where she could no longer do the matching job, part of the job. So because she wasn't able to do the essential part of the job, the only accommodation available to Martha might be a reassignment to another job, to a vacant position. 

So public services. Now let me just break this down because there's actually two sides of this part of the ADA. There's the public side in state and local government. And then there are public accommodations which are considered things like hotels and restaurants and theaters, other places where you would go and congregate to receive a service or entertainment. 

And the laws are a little but different, but the idea for both the public service and the public accommodations side this that programs and services need to be accessible to people with disabilities. And typically that runs into a couple different areas. One is physical program access, things like providing elevators or other types of physical modifications to programs and services. 

Communications access might be pretty obvious to most of us, providing things like assistance with reading documents or providing something in an electronic format so it can read by someone on their computer, providing sign language interpreters or other things, note takers. Those and others are examples of providing communication modifications. 

Reasonable modifications to policies and practices. So modifying a policy or practice. We might say that this is the only way that we provide this service is in person. Well, maybe for the person that is sick in bed, for instance, that person we may make a modification. A good example of this actually, when I was working with the courts in my area of the country, we were starting to get into providing electronic testimony of witnesses. So if somebody was assaulted, we didn't have to wait for them to get out of the hospital in order to identify witnesses or to participate in the court process because we could provide secure, confidential, secure technology that allowed them to testify from their bedside or from their home while they were convalescing. 

And the last part is to provide programs in the most integrated setting. An example I ran into was we had programs for AA or Alcoholics Anonymous programs, and we would provide those programs for people who are deaf with other deaf individuals. But if somebody was deaf and they wanted to participate in another program with a sign language interpreter, they were welcome to do that.

Let's just talk briefly about complaints and disputes. There are actually three ways to do that. You can actually file a dispute with a regulator agency, which are typically state or federal government agencies. You can find an attorney to file a complaint for you. Or typically there are informal grievance procedures that you use prior to going out to an agency or they might be formal complaint procedures within organizations. 

In my organization I was the grievance officer, so I handled complaints. I investigated complaints, and if the response wasn't satisfactory to the individual, they were welcome to go out and find an attorney or go to another agency to file a complaint officially with another organization. 

A lot of ADA coordinators are available. At any state and local government that's over 25 employees, so most state and local government agencies, they're required to have an ADA coordinator that helps you, to be an ombudsperson to address your issues, to be an advocate, and help you with whatever issues are appropriate to access programs and services.

So in terms of advocacy, again the ADA allows the person to be involved in the process. So in terms of advocacy, you should be aware of what's going on and be - it's your right to ask questions about what's happening and why it's happening. And if something isn't appropriate to respond and ask for other options. Again it's that interactive process that I referred to that it works for accommodations as well as other modifications in the public sector.

And there are lots of consumer advocacy groups. Certainly Guide Dogs for the Blind is a great advocacy group in terms of things like reasonable modifications to be appropriate for guide dogs to participate in various programs and services. And so there are good advocates within all organizations. And there are also legal organizations that are out there like the Disability Law Center that can provide you with advocacy as well as other community organizations. Phew.

[THERESA]
Yeah. You've got to start taking questions. 

[JIM]
Oh, my gosh. Questions?

[THERESA]
Any questions out there?

[JIM]
Oh man, I couldn't have been that comprehensive.

[UNIDENTIFIED]  
He was so thorough that - oh, there's Marcia.

[THERESA]
I was going to say. There ought to be questions. We've got 62 people out there.

[MARCIA]
I want to say I loved that bossectomy. I never heard that before.

[THERESA]
Yeah. I know I liked that too.

[JIM]
I've got more of them than that, man.

[MARCIA]
Is that something you [inaudible 00:40:50] or is it - like if I were to use that word or explain it to somebody, is that a real thing or is it something that you just made up?

[JIM]
I just made that one up. Sorry. It doesn't really exist. 

[MARCIA]
Okay. But if I said it to somebody, I could say I heard it from somebody giving an official presentation.

[LAUGHTER]

[JIM]
That's right.

[MARCIA]
All right. Because I like when people put things in like that. And it's more interesting when -

[UNIDENTIFIED]  
We could have used that word last night in the Trivia game, huh?

[THERESA]
That's true. That's true.

[LAUGHTER]

[JIM]
Yeah.

[THERESA]
Sometimes I think my guide dog would like a bossectomy. 

[LAUGHTER]

[JIM]
I've got a funny guide dog story I've got to tell you about -

[MARCIA]
I never thought about - I know there's all these movies coming out explaining about disabilities and all that and what terms are politically correct. And I always hate it when I say it to somebody something. But and there's all these new terms, like I never knew what total meant. They say I'm total. What does that mean? But now I know it means that they're totally blind, but I didn't know that so when someone tells me that, I don't know what it means. So those are things - but that's true with emojis now. It's true with everything. But thank you, thank you. It was great. 

[THERESA]
Thank you, Marcia.

[JIM]
Absolutely.

[MARCIA]
Here is what I don't know is the different between raise hand and lower hand. If it says raise hand, does that mean --

[JIM]
Don't worry about it. We'll lower your hand. We have the power to do that.

[UNIDENTIFIED]  
We'll take care of you.

[MARCIA]
Raise hand? Does that mean it's already been lowered by you guys?

[UNIDENTIFIED]  
Yes. We'll take care of it, Marcia. Afron?

[AFRON]
Hello. So I liked the presentation. Everything was pretty clear. My question is are you guys going to do one on the Fair Housing Act, the service animal part of the Fair Housing Act?

[JIM]
Oh.

[UNIDENTIFIED]  
Oh.

[AFRON]
There's one that seems like there's a lot of misconceptions.

[JIM]
Well, theoretically, I could tell you that the quick and dirty on that one. If you've got a guide dog, in terms of fair housing, and if you're in -- in most housing settings, you are allowed to make modifications or adjustments to your residence as long as you return the unit to its existing condition when you leave. So -- go ahead.

[AFRON]
Well, there is that. And then there's the huge misconception I've seen with people in the handler communities, the reasonable accommodations request part. 

[JIM]
For guide dogs in housing? Say more about that.

[AFRON]
So for example, I'm going to bring a service animal into the house. There's the I could show up with a dog camp, and there's the requesting the accommodations camp. You know what I mean?

[UNIDENTIFIED]  
You don't have to request an accommodation for that.

[THERESA]
No, you don't. It's -- you might be thinking of people with emotional support animals, which is different.

[JIM]
Oh yeah. That's very different.

[THERESA]
And they are covered under the Fair Housing Act just to make us all a little bit crazy. So maybe that's what you're thinking about. But as a guide dog user, you're in.

[JIM]
Yeah. No, I don't think there should be any issue about that.

[UNIDENTIFIED]  
Right. Right. Okay. Ryan?

[RYAN]
So we've got two questions, one for myself, and then Bianca's also here. We're just sharing the same phone. 

[JIM]
Awesome. A twofer.

[RYAN]
So the first question is recently we had fleet week here in San Francisco. And I, being totally blind, was specifically identified while waiting in line for tours of the ships that had come into port and was dismissed saying we don't need to be ADA compliant. But to my knowledge any program where the public is allowed in a place, doesn't matter if it's a navy ship or not, applies. But it's interesting because the federal government, the ADA doesn't necessarily apply to the federal government. So can you actually help explain where can the federal government effectively still actually do things that we would consider to be a violation of the spirit of the ADA. And where can they get away with such things?

[JIM]
Yeah. That's a really good question. So it gets really confusing. The Title 1 of the ADA is the employment side. That applies to state, local, and federal government. Title 2 of the ADA, which is the public service side, it only covers state and local government. But there are similar laws that apply to federal agencies and to the federal government. It's just not the ADA. 

And it gets tricky because when you're talking about something like a tour at a naval facility, then you get into stuff like public and private areas. For instance, I'm not required to make my private work zones accessible to people with disabilities. But the areas that the public go in should be available to you and to anyone else. Boy, that's a really tricky question.

[THERESA]
Yeah. It's shocking that they -- so they just pulled you out of line?

[JIM]
I agree. That is shocking.

[RYAN]
Pretty much. Yeah.

[THERESA]
I've never heard of that. 
 [JIM]
That's embarrassing. I would write somebody about that one.

[RYAN]
Well, yeah, yeah. But I think what's interesting is you're correct if it's considered a private work area, but my thought would be giving a public tour of a private work area -

[THERESA]
- Well, exactly.

[JIM]
Exactly. Theoretically if you're bringing people in on a tour, then it would be considered a public space.

[RYAN]
Exactly. So my thought would be they might want to reconsider having public tours if that's going to be the way they would handle that.

[JIM]
That's right. What was the logic of pulling you out of line?

[RYAN]
Because of the fact that the - there are facilities on the ship that posed a danger to me. So for example, bulkheads, fire gear, steep stairwells, things like that. I've been on tours of several of these ships in the past. I've been in the Bay Area for more than a decade, and this is the first year that they denied me. 

What they've always done in the past is what I would call a reasonable accommodation. They always had a sailor meet me early in the morning like 8:00 in the morning or something early before its tour started. And then we would go on our own tour where they could actually watch out for objects like that that might pose a safety issue. 

But this year they decided nope, which is the first time that that's ever happened. I'm so used to this type of treatment while waiting to tour a ship that I expect it. But what I didn't expect was a complete denial. So that's where I was actually like well, I've never had a reason to need to push beyond this border because they've always been reasonable. The moment they became unreasonable it's like okay now I'm actually curious about this. 

So Bianca has this other question -

[JIM]
I agree. I think you have a good beef for that one, so I would definitely follow up and challenge the behavior and bring it to somebody's attention. Okay Bianca's question. Go ahead.

[BIANCA]
So my question is in follow up to the housing question. Not referring to apartments, but referring to other types of accommodation, like if you're renting a single family home or if you are renting a room with roommates in a single family home. What are the rules around that?

[JIM]
Okay. So I actually didn't work in the area of housing, but I can tell you generally there is - I have a - if you wanted to send me an email, I have a contact here from somebody I worked with in HUD and I could give you their information, a contact person at the HUD. Or if you want to do your own Google research, HUD has got an ADA person. And if you're in San Francisco, my guess is there's probably somebody even in your region.

[THERESA]
Yeah. Because I think there's differences like if the person who owns the house lives there, there's a different - there's one little kink like little -

[CROSSTALK]

[JIM]
Well the problem with housing is the reason why I didn't get into it is because housing tends to be - usually it's locally governed. So it's usually the city or the county that have laws and rules. Now, they can't interfere with federal law. So they can't violate HUD's requirements. 

But typically HUD only deals with publicly sponsored or underwritten properties. And then in terms of the state, like the State of California might cover properties that they were licensing or the city might do the same thing. But it's really - you're going to have to go down and figure out who the appropriate jurisdiction is to address whatever issue you have because it could be a city person or a county person or a state person or a federal person. 

[RYAN]
A follow up that I think would apply to the entire group. What about a situation -

[UNIDENTIFIED]  
Wait guys. We do have some more people and you guys have taken - [crosstalk]. So let's - we'll try to get one more person. Candy?

[CANDY]
Hi. Well first of all I was like, my mouth is open because I had no idea that there were so many different rules for different parts of government. So I want to get really more informed, and I would want to know where we can get more information.

But I want to know because blindness is relatively new to me over the last 10 years - I'm not total yet - I wanted to know if it's more appropriate for instance when you're calling for an Uber or you're going to be staying somewhere to let them know that you have this disability and you're bringing a guide dog or you just show up? Is there a -

[JIM]
That wouldn't be a legal question. That's really more of a preference. But I don't - we've had issues too because we have a lot of - we have taxi drivers here that needed a lot of education because some people who were new immigrants who are Muslim were really concerned about the dogs were dirty, and that they would be dirty because they didn't have the ability to take a break, to wash and be cleaned for their prayers. And we had to do a lot of education. I was involved with the city advisory committee to do that education. But I think that's really a preference not a legal question. As far as I can see, it's not a legal question. It's really a practical one.

The reality is when I started booking B&Bs, the first time I had a guide dog, I found very quickly that some B&B owners and depending on what state you're in, they can exclude you depending on if they're a family run B&B or a larger operation. I actually had to file a complaint in the State of Maine because an innkeeper didn't follow the regulations in Maine. It's funny. I was 50 some years old. I've never had a problem. Boom. I get a guide dog. First year complaint, I have to file a complaint. Are you kidding me? Geez.

[BIANCA]
Exactly. 

[UNIDENTIFIED]  
We're really close on our time. In fact, we're a tiny over, but we've only got one more person to take. So Steve, if make it quick.

[JIM]
I hear a guide dog.

[STEVE]
Yeah. My question's already answered. It was regarding Air B&Bs.

[JIM]
Okay.

[UNIDENTIFIED]  
Okay. Great. Then that wraps it. 

[THERESA]
All right, guys. Hey, I want to thank Jim so much. We are def- now that I know how much that you know about all this stuff, we will be calling on you more. So sorry to tell you that.

[LAUGHTER]

[JIM]
All right. Absolutely. Happy to do it. One area I forgot to mention - I need to throw this in at the very, very end - is that ADA laws are changing radically. And one of the things that just happened over the last 10, 20 years is recreational facilities are being covered. And so a lot of laws and rules are about parks. So if you guys go out to parks, think about that in terms of these laws because there are regulations how that are being promulgated by the state and federal government that affects all of those parks and making sure that they're accessible to you in all of their aspects of parks and rec.

Okay. That's it. 

[THERESA]
Great. Good know. All right. Thank you. Let's go have a cocktail.

[JIM]
Absolutely. Hey you bet. Take care. Thanks everyone.

[End of Recording]