It imposes some precise architectural standards, but generally the Act gives businesses room to maneuver. People with disabilities negotiate more than they sue. Most accommodations flow from private, inexpensive negotiations, not from courtrooms. A July Harris poll forcefully says otherwise. We need the ADA because of the enduring power of these myths.
Critics suffer from the problem the law tries to cure.
They hold a distorted view of the capacities of people with disabilities, the discrimination they suffer and the cost of curbing that discrimination. Fortunately, the ADA educates as much as it prescribes. This law, passed in 1990, works. Few laws enjoy such universal support. Its bipartisan character derives in part from the understanding that anyone, Republican or Democrat, can become disabled.