Explain and analyze legal mandates requiring reasonable accommodations needed by people with disabilities in daily living, the workplace, public services, public accommodations and education.

Purpose

The purpose of this assignment is to provide students the opportunity to identify one public accommodation or service in the urban community that people with disabilities may or may wish to access, identify problems of access and utilization by people with a range of disabilities and propose a solution

Knowledge and Skills

The civic learning assignment is designed to allow students to extend classroom knowledge into real world, community based applications, and to apply problem-solving and research strategies to civic issues. For people with disabilities, the exercise of two fundamental rights: the right to equal access and the right to equal opportunity, depend heavily on the willingness of the greater community to make itself open and accessible to them. This fundamental social justice issue will be explored through this assignment.

This assignment will allow you to apply the following skills in a real-world, social justice application in the community.

Explain and analyze legal mandates requiring reasonable accommodations needed by people with disabilities in daily living, the workplace, public services, public accommodations and education.
Describe universal design and its impact on the access to public accommodations, including theaters, amusement parks, public buildings, hotels, restaurants and other facilities accessible by people with disabilities.
The Problem
The Americans with Disabilities Act (P.L. 101-336) prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities in access to all public accommodations. Public accommodations include most places of lodging (such as inns and hotels), recreation, transportation, education, and dining, along with stores, care providers, and places of public displays. The problem arises when small business owners who may not be well versed in the mandates of the law or aware of the needs of a range of people with disabilities fail to make their businesses fully accessible. Among the issues that arise are, but not limited to:

Lack of employee sensitivity to disability and/or training to serve customers with disabilities
Discriminatory practices that discourage patronage by customers or clients with disabilities
Failure to make facilities accessible to people who are blind, deaf or use wheelchairs
Lack of or insufficient disabled parking
Failure to accommodate service animals, or to differentiate between service and so-called emotional support animals
Small businesses, such as stores, restaurants and offices often depend on a small number of employees and are more likely to be family owned/operated. Unlike larger businesses that have an office that handles issues of equity and diversity, small businesses must seek out training regarding how to accommodate customers/clients with disabilities that may or may not be readily available to them. Consequently, they make be under-prepared to provide the accommodations their customers/clients need, be more likely to lose their business, and be more vulnerable to legal action.

Each student will identify one small, local business (shop, restaurant or office) or small branch of a chain business that they will study for the purposes of this assignment. You will quietly observe, and analyze the accessibility strengths and issues present for five areas of disability: mobility, vision, hearing, learning and cognition. Students are not expected to question employees or business owners, which can be difficult and uncomfortable, but are free to do so at your own level of comfort. If you can, discreetly take photographs.

Guidelines
You may not use three facilities for this assignment: the Cal State LA campus, the sites you used for the disability walks, or any governmental office or site. This is about the ordinary small businesses or offices that both adults and children with disabilities will access on a daily basis. The second and third disability walk fieldwork will support this assignment, and give you insights you will need to complete the project.

Your project will be completed in five steps:
Select a public facility, service, business or accommodation where you believe or are aware people with disabilities may have issues of equal access and need for reasonable accommodations. This might be the local fitness club, a public library, the Metro train service, a chain hotel (such as Holiday Inn Express), a restaurant or theater, or a neighborhood store. You have plenty of latitude in your choice. Be prepared to defend your choice, and to make a visit to your site. Caution! Have a back-up just in case your first choice doesnt work out. Do some preliminary research about your site online: review the business’s website to see if/how the business accommodates customers/clients with disabilities as well as how the site addresses accessibility, then see what positives and negatives you can find by doing a simple Google or Yelp search. You do more in-depth research later.

Ill put the rest in another page

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