Help me compose a rant.... I mean rebuttal.

[selkiechick]

I am on a committee of a conventions and we are talking policy. We are talking about medical documentation requirements for accommodations, and I am having a hard time finding the right words to tell them why this is a /terrible/ idea, and as a newb of sorts, I'd love to have some authority to stand on. Is there a good blog post or website out there already outlining the reasons why that is a bad requirement, and why?

Thank you.

(I promise, my next post will have content)

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

The U.S. Department of Justice has more than a hundred decisions on personal care assistants, aka aides or attendants. "PCA" is the magic acronym if you're searching ADA regs. Unfortunately, my search-magic is asleep this afternoon.

Are you requiring a minimum amount of work for someone to be "a PCA"? That is, must someone work at least 8 hours (or whatever) to ride the attendant seat? If so, I'd check with a lawyer, as there may indeed be case law on this.

There have been several ADA cases that I remember using but can't fucking lay hands on in search this afternoon. They were all Title II (government), in particular paratransit service complementary to mass transit. (You may know it as Dial-a-Ride or Door-to-Door.) The general pattern was: transit agency says, "You're not really a PCA because ..." and therefore somebody has to pay an extra fare.

Here were some tests transit agencies used to disallow a PCA:
- they weren't needed on the ride, but instead before or after the ride
- the work they did for their employer wasn't personal enough (trufax! A blind person couldn't bring their reader)
- they weren't specially trained/certified
- the fact that they were related to the PWD they worked for. This was a biggy! Transit agencies were deep into this mindset of "how dare someone do PCA work for a member of their family and NOT PAY AN EXTRA FARE"

The disability advocates said, "A PCA is like a service dog or a wheelchair. Why & when I use it is my business." We won this one: now PWD says, "I have a PCA." On that say-so, without any further documentation, the transit agency can ask if the PCA is traveling, and when that happens, the PCA travels at-no-extra-charge (nobody gets anything "free.")

Tactically, if "comping" the PCA is such a significant burden, I'd advocate raising the member/ticket price.