ADA National Network 30th Anniversary Series: Spotlight on the ADA Title II Action Guide for State and Local Governments and the ADA Checklist for Existing Facilities

Soon after the Department of Justice issued the 2010 ADA Title II regulations and the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design, the New England ADA Center created two important tools to assist with compliance. The 2010 Standards include design specifications for recreation areas such as playgrounds, swimming pools, boating docks, and fishing piers. There were no standards for recreation areas in the 1991 Standards. Since public accommodations have an ongoing obligation to remove barriers and state and local governments have an obligation to ensure program accessibility it was important to create a checklist that includes those elements as well as other public areas such as toilet rooms assembly areas. The ADA Title II Action Guide for State and Local Governments replaces the 1995 version. It is web-based and assists state and local governments to understand their obligations and to conduct a self-evaluation and develop a transition plan. It is multi-layered and has a lot of helpful information, forms for conducting a self-evaluation, and developing the plan.

During this session, we will review both of those tools to provide a deeper understanding of how they can be helpful to both public accommodations and state and local governments.