Good day, Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Great Lakes ADA anniversary update, 24 years later. Currently at this time all participants are in listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a Q and A session and instructions will follow at that time. Should anyone require assistance at any time during the conference press star and zero on your touch tone telephone. Also as a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would like to turn it over to your host, Mr. Peter Berg. ir, you may begin.
Thank you very much. And welcome to everyone. Welcome to the July 15th, 2014 session of the ADA audio conference. The ADA audio conference is a project of the ADA National Network, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, NIDRR. If you want to get in touch with your regional ADA Center you can do that by calling 800-949-4232 or by visiting www.adata.org. Today is one of our most popular sessions each and every year, because of the great speakers that we get for the session, representatives from the Justice Department and from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. So, we''re going to get to our speakers. I just want to remind folks in the webinar room that you can submit questions while the session is going on, and they can do that by posting your question in the chat area. Even though you can''t see your question, it has been submitted and is viewable by the moderator. And for participants on the telephone, we will bring the operator back when we get to the Q and A portion of today''s presentation to give instructions on how you can give questions, how you can ask your questions. As mentioned today''s session is being recorded and the archive will be made available on the www.ada-audio.org website. So we have three great speakers joining us today. They have all joined us in the past and many will be recognizable to those of you that have participated with us over the years. Our first speaker today will be Sharon Rennert, a long-time friend of the ADA National Network, and we appreciate all the assistance and guidance that Sharon has provided to the Network over the years. Sharon is a Senior Attorney Advisor within the ADA/GINA Division at the U.S. department -- I''m sorry, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Following Sharon we will be hearing from Katie Wolfe. Katie is an attorney in the Civil Rights Division Disability Rights Section of the U.S. Department of Justice and also joining us today Sally Conway, another long-time friend of the ADA National Network. Sally is the Deputy Chief within the Civil Rights Division, Disability Rights Section for the U.S. Department of Justice. I want to welcome all three of our presenters and at this time I would like to welcome Sharon Rennert to all of you. Sharon.
Thank you very much, Peter. Thank you and welcome to everybody participating this morning or this afternoon, depending on where you are in the country. It''s not often that I begin a presentation by saying "hot off the presses," but I am today. Yesterday the EEOC issued a Guidance on pregnancy discrimination. Now, you might think it a little odd in a webinar devoted to the ADA or for any people from federal agencies participating today, the sister law, the Rehabilitation Act, but I do want to begin my focus on the pregnancy discrimination guidance, because it will have a tremendous impact on any employer who must follow either the ADA or the Rehabilitation Act, and I want to call it to your attention. If you have not seen it or not heard about it yet, you can go to the EEOC website. It''s EEOC.gov. At the very top of our home page, sort of every 30 seconds hot issues come up. This will be one of them. But if you don''t want to wait 30 seconds, scroll down just a little bit on the left to our news room and the second press release down is all about the pregnancy discrimination guidance. Now, what does this have to do with the ADA or the Rehabilitation Act? Well, two things. If you look at the guidance, and there is the guidance itself, there''s the press release, there''s a Q and A, a question and answer document. There''s also a document geared specifically to small employers. So if you look at any of these, there are two things that I want to call your attention to in particular, as they relate to disability. And the first is, if you go to the guidance itself, section 2 is about the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA. Again, for any federal agencies, everything that we say about the ADA applies under the Rehabilitation Act, to federal employers. Okay, there what we focus on, as most of you probably know, after the ADA Amendments Act came into force in 2009, EEOC started to send out the word with a broader definition of disability. This would clearly encompass pregnancy-related disabilities, where a woman, due to pregnancy, may develop certain kind of impairments and that it would be much easier, thanks to the ADA Amendments Act, a lower threshold for establishing disability, that many of these pregnancy-related impairments would actually be pregnancy-related disabilities for purposes of the ADA, and therefore these women, due to a pregnancy-related disability would be entitled to the full range of protections of the ADA, which would include if a woman needed it because of her pregnancy-related disability: reasonable accommodation. And in section 2 of the pregnancy guidance we go through all of this and we go through a number of pregnancy-related impairments that could well now be pregnancy-related disabilities, just to give you a sense, we talk about pregnancy-related anemia, and we identify the major bodily function that could be impacted; So for anemia, normal cell growth, pregnancy-related sciatica, gestational diabetes, nausea leading to severe dehydration, and we go on several more. And it''s not meant to be an all-inclusive list, but to give you a sense of the wide-ranging nature. And it is so wide-ranging that we note certain courts that have started looking at this issue: When is a pregnancy-related impairment potentially a disability for purposes of ADA coverage? And there is one court that refused to dismiss a case where the woman''s doctor simply identified that it was a high-risk pregnancy and therefore she required some reasonable accommodations. But there was no specific impairment identified and the court said, you know what, under the ADA Amendments Act that may be sufficient to at least go to trial. They didn''t rule totally in favor of the plaintiff, but they said, no, that could be enough to go to trial. So I really want to underscore for employers, for sure, they''ve got to be very careful now about, you know, about if a pregnant woman comes forth and says, "I have some problem related to my pregnancy," What is that problem? Is it an impairment? Is it high-risk? You want to really explore this. You don''t want to dismiss out of hand the potential here for having to provide reasonable accommodation, as well as if it is a pregnancy-related disability, all the other kinds of protections that could come with the ADA but even more important than that, I want to call your attention to section 1(a) 5. 1 (a) 5. This has nothing to do with the ADA or the Rehabilitation Act, but rather it''s about Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Now, stay with me for a few minutes because I will make a connection for you. Because you may be wondering, "why are we going to talk about Title VII of a Civil Rights Act?" Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, many of you may know, prohibits discrimination in employment on a number of bases: race, sex, religion, national origin, color. Under sex discrimination, in 1978, Congress added an amendment to Title VII called the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the PDA, Pregnancy Discrimination Act, in which they said a form of sex discrimination is discrimination against a woman because of pregnancy. And they said that is illegal under Title VII. Now, what this guidance is spelling out is that under that provision, if an employer is going to provide reasonable accommodation to employees with disabilities under the ADA, or under the Rehabilitation Act for federal agencies, and then they turn around and tell a pregnant woman who says, "Look, I need those kinds of reasonable accommodations due to my pregnancy. I don''t have a disability, there''s no pregnancy-related disability, I have a normal pregnancy, but even with a normal pregnancy, I still need accommodation" and you''re giving out employer reasonable accommodations under the ADA, under the Rehabilitation Act. What this guidance says is an employer has to give those same reasonable accommodations to a woman who requires it because of pregnancy. And if an employer does not provide it, that is discrimination on the basis of pregnancy. In other words, you are discriminating against a woman because she''s pregnant. You''re not giving reasonable accommodation. It''s not as a legal matter about reasonable accommodation or a right to it in the way that we have that embodied in the ADA of the Rehabilitation Act. Pregnancy Discrimination Act does not have a reasonable accommodation provision. What this is comparing the pregnant woman to an employee with a disability and saying to an employer, "if you give reasonable accommodation, which under the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act you have to give reasonable accommodation to employees with disabilities, obviously subject to undue hardship, if you do that for somebody with a disability, you have to do the same for a woman who is pregnant and who requires the same kind of reasonable accommodation." A failure to do so is what we lawyers call disparate treatment. You are in effect discriminating, punishing a woman because of pregnancy. You''re denying her something that somebody else has an entitlement to. This is important for everybody to know. But it''s certainly important for employers to know. This is a change. This is new. This is different. And any employer -- I assume for employers who are participating today, you''re all covered by the ADA or the Rehabilitation Act. You all are providing reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities. If you are doing that, you must be aware of this new guidance and what it is saying you must do for a pregnant woman. Again, remember, no disability is involved here. So this is really about just any garden variety normal pregnancy where there still might be a need for reasonable accommodation. Now, you''re going to -- if you haven''t yet heard about this, you probably will. It''s getting an awful lot of attention. And I think it''s going to get more. There is going to be a Supreme Court in the next Supreme Court term, which will begin October 1. It''s called Young versus UPS and it involves this very issue about whether under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, if employers are providing accommodation to people with -- to their employees with disabilities, if they''re providing, say, light duty, you know, if you''ve got a program of workers comp kind of program, light duty, for those injured on the job and a pregnant woman says, hey, due to my pregnancy, I could really use a light duty position just like people with on-the-job injuries. That is the focus of this Supreme Court case that will be heard in the next term. I don''t have a date yet. The Supreme Court hasn''t published it. But that means that within the next year, we''ll have some kind of ruling from the Supreme Court on this issue. So this is going to bring a lot of attention, so I encourage people who read this to get in touch with us, get in touch with me specifically with questions, because this is hot off the press and everybody has to digest it, but my duty today is to call it to your attention.
Sharon, just to let folks know, we posted in the chat area a link to the press release that EEOC put out yesterday and that press release has links to the guidance, the facts sheet and the Q and A document. And for folks not in the webinar room, you can link to the press release off of the EEOC home page, EEOC.gov.
Thank you very much, Peter. Why the focus on pregnancy, you might ask. And every few years the EEOC publishes what we call our strategic plan. It kind of guides the Commission in terms of issues that the Commission thinks are extremely important, that ought to be getting more of our attention, that in turn we need to bring it more to the attention of the employer community, and we have a whole section in there on what we call emerging issues. Pregnancy was one of the issues we highlighted. So that is one reason why this guidance is coming out now, is because we highlighted it as another -- as a big issue. Let me touch on two other issues related to the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act that we identified. One is leave as a reasonable accommodation. This has been a big issue for the EEOC for a number of years now. It will continue to be, I think, for the foreseeable future, the strategic plans are through 2016. But leave is a reasonable accommodation, still very important issue to EEOC that employers understand that whatever they do with their leave policies, they have to remember that it is possible as a reasonable accommodation, there may be a legal requirement to provide additional leave above and beyond whatever an employer may offer to its employees, leave as a reasonable accommodation. It can be unpaid leave, not a requirement to provide more paid leave, but certainly unpaid leave. And to sort of highlight that this continues to be a big issue I''ll call your attention to a settlement, a recent settlement from just a couple weeks ago. EEOC settled a lawsuit with Princeton Healthcare for $1.35 million dollars -- yes, you heard me right -- $1.35 million dollars. If you want to see the press release, again, EEOC.gov, and you go to our news room. That''s where we have our press releases. It was issued June 30th. So it was just a couple weeks ago. And look for Princeton Healthcare, and you can read more about this, but in this case, what EEOC alleged in its lawsuit was the policy basically is this employer was it was covered by the Department of Labor''s Family and Medical Leave Act, the FMLA. It would give the maximum of 12 weeks of leave, but that was it. If you were not able to come back to work at the end of 12 weeks for your medical condition -- not talking about the family leave now, but the medical leave aspect. If you were unable to come back, the policy was to terminate you. And if you weren''t even covered under the FMLA, for example, you haven''t worked long enough to be protected by it, then you might be fired sooner than that. So there was no individualized assessment of whether this person has a disability, and, again, with the ADA Amendments Act, probably most of them, if they were unable to return to work after 12 weeks, you probably are talking an ADA disability. Instead of an individualized assessment, do you need accommodation, additional leave, is it going to cause undue hardship? Instead they were just automatically terminated. Under the settlement of the lawsuit, in addition to paying $1.35 million, the consent decree sets up a number of things that Princeton Healthcare is going to do including they no longer can have a blanket policy limiting the amount of leave for anybody covered under the ADA. The healthcare agency must also engage in an interactive process with covered employees, note that that includes employees who need leave due to pregnancy. Okay, so EEOC, even before issuing the pregnancy guidance, in this consent decree, there is a requirement that for pregnant employees, as well as those with disabilities, the employer must engage in an interactive process, how much leave to you need, when do you think you''re coming back? All the kinds of discussions one should have at that point. If there''s no undue hardship, you should be granting the leave. Nor can the employer any longer require a fitness for duty certification saying that this person can return to work without restrictions. The employer had said, really we don''t want you back if you still have work restrictions. Well, those work restrictions, those are reasonable accommodations potentially, so, again, they just can''t have a blanket policy saying, you''ve got to be able to, in effect, return to work without needing accommodation. And nor can they discipline people who need leave as a reasonable accommodation. So I call your attention to that. Lastly, under our strategic plan, another area we''ve identified under the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act for focus is qualification standard. And we are pointing or having a focus on qualification standards in contrast to essential function. Most of the attention in our EEOC enforcement, if you look at private litigation, employers in their workplace, people tend -- and not surprisingly -- to focus on the essential functions. What are the essential functions of the job? Can an applicant perform those essential functions? Can a current employee continue to perform the essential functions of the job? Alright, that''s valid, as far as it goes. But what has gotten the EEOC concerned is that it tends to, or too often tends to, lead to ignoring another provision of the ADA. And that is that the provision on qualification standards, there are sort of two things that can determine whether somebody is qualified for a job. The one that gets the most attention, can you perform the essential functions with or without reasonable accommodation. But jobs, also, many of them tend to have various kind of qualification standards. For those jobs that have medical standards, vision requirements, hearing requirements, those are qualification standards. If you require a college degree, a specific kind of college degree, if you require a post-graduate degree, those are qualification standards. There''s a whole range of things that would fall under qualification standards and these two are things that people with disabilities need to generally meet. But here is where it diverges from essential function. We all know employers do not have to remove an essential function. They don''t have to alter an essential function. They don''t have to, for example, if an essential function says you have to produce a certain quantity of something in a given time period, you don''t have to alter that. That''s part and parcel of being able to perform the essential functions, which is a must if you''re going to be considered qualified. But qualification standards, ADA approaches a bit differently. If due to disability -- and that''s important. It has to be due to a disability, somebody cannot meet a qualification standard, then an employer must be prepared in that circumstance to justify why it requires the qualification standard. So if a disability would screen somebody out because they fail to meet a specific qualification standard, why is that important? Why does the employer have this qualification standard? If the employer can justify it, then the person with the disability, if they can''t meet the standard, with or without reasonable accommodation, they''re not qualified and they''re not entitled to that job. But the ADA recognizes that employers can''t always justify those standards. Sometimes these things have been on the book, so to speak, for years and years and nobody remembers why it''s there. Sometimes because they''ve been on the books for years, jobs have changed over time and what might have been required 20 years ago isn''t required today as a qualification standard. So, again, it''s important to do an individualized assessment. If somebody says, hey, due to a disability I can''t meet this standard, is this really integral to performing the essential functions of the job, whatever those are? Or is it really not? Can we, you know, basically, not require it for just this person? Nobody is saying you have to throw it away for everybody, but in terms of applying it to exclude a person with a disability, you may not be able to do it. And this has become a huge focus for the EEOC. At the moment, mainly in our federal sector cases -- hello, federal agencies, you''re probably a bit more familiar with this than the private sector. EEOC has enforcement responsibility for private sector cases, but we also act as a kind of appellate review board for federal agency decisions involving the Rehabilitation Act, and when the EEOC makes a decision, that can carry weight in terms of the private sector. It goes back and forth. What do we do under ADA when it affects the Rehabilitation Act, but vice versa, a ruling under the Rehabilitation Act signals EEOC''s intended enforcement of the ADA. And most of the decisions being issued on these qualification standards happen so far to be in our federal sector cases. So, again, I want to sort of call people''s attention to that. That ought to be an issue you start looking at. But if you want to look at one, for example, Nathan versus Holder, Holder, as in our Attorney General, Nathan versus Holder, you can just do plug in a search with those terms, Nathan versus Holder, it should come right up. It was issued last year. And it involves someone who wanted to be an FBI agent and he failed the vision test due to monocular vision. And the EEOC decision is all about using this qualification standard analysis. So there is another issue I wanted to call your attention to. Okay, in the remaining time I have, because I want to be able to turn this over to my Department of Justice colleague, let me just highlight a couple of other things for you. In terms of pending or potential regulatory action by the EEOC, two things to point out. One, again, for federal agencies, I''m sure are aware, the EEOC published a few months ago an advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on what does it mean under the Rehabilitation Act for federal agencies to be model employers? This does not affect private sector employers. It does not affect employers that are state and local governments. So you can tune out for 10 seconds because this is really just for federal agencies. But federal agencies are required under the Rehabilitation Act to be model employers when it comes to hiring and employing people with disabilities, but that term has never really been defined and EEOC would like to see about giving it more definition. So we invited federal agencies to start giving us some ideas. What does it mean to you? What do you think it would need to be in regulation? The comment period closed on that. We are in the process of reviewing the comments submitted. And the next step, and I can''t tell you when that will happened, but the next step will be actually publishing a notice of actual proposed rulemaking. Again, federal agencies will have a chance to comment on that. The other thing to call your attention to, okay private sector, state and local government, you have to pay attention again. Because this does affect everybody. And this was actually more for you all than federal sector employers. The EEOC in May, May of this year, announced that within the next 12 months, so by May of 2015, it is our expectation we will publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on voluntary wellness programs and their impact on financial inducements or using financial penalties as part of the wellness programs to encourage participation. This has been an issue that the EEOC has been asked for quite a while. Can you offer us more guidance? How does the ADA impact or in what ways would the ADA impact the ability of employers who have voluntary wellness programs, but who may not be getting the participation they would like to either offer financial inducements or kind of reverse, impose penalties on its employees to get a higher rate of participation in these programs. And not only how does the ADA look at this, when would there be a violation under the ADA, when would something be permissible, but also how does the ADA interact with the Affordable Care Act and with HIPAA, which also regulates voluntary wellness programs. So the expectation of EEOC, as I said, is within the next year to publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, and, again, when we publish it, we''ll invite the public to comment before we would do any final regulations on this. The last thing that I want to -- I guess a couple of things -- two last things to highlight here. EEOC''s litigation on the ADA, we have litigation that is involving all kinds of disabilities, all kinds of issues, but one I want to highlight is one that a lot of kind of misunderstandings, a lot of kind of head shaking and ridicule, because on the face of it, it sounds, depending on your point of view, as you got to be kidding me, that a federal agency filed a lawsuit about something like this. But it was against Walgreen''s, which is a kind of pharmacy/grocery store, Walgreen''s out in California, and they had an employee, a cashier, who had diabetes, and one day she felt her blood sugar plummeting and she didn''t have any food or drink on her, but, heck, she''s working in a grocery store pharmacy. So she goes to the food aisle. She grabs a bag of potato chips and she opens it and starts eating and she starts feeling better. Now, she tries to pay for it and there isn''t anybody there to take her money. And she is supposed to go back to work. And so she kind of goes back to work, but somebody spots her with the potato chips and they confront her and she tells them, diabetes, blood sugar plummeting, needed to eat immediately. So she explains it. She doesn''t hide or deny it. She''s ultimately fired because employers like this -- and I don''t know any employer like this, that doesn''t have a policy against you cannot steal the food items. You have to pay for them. There''s a problem with theft, including among employees, so it''s a very common policy for these kinds of stores, an anti-sealing policy, very rigid, you cannot take any item without paying for it first. And here, there was no question, she did take it and started eating before she paid for it. So Walgreen''s fired her. And ultimately EEOC filed a lawsuit. The court when it first looked at all this Walgreen''s said, court, there''s really no issue, we get to fire her, please dismiss it. And the court said, no, the court said, we''re not dismissing it. We think there are important issues here that need to go to trial. And after the court issued that decision, so no actual final decision was issued, just the court saying we''re not prematurely dismissing, we''re going to go to trial on this. Then Walgreen''s decided to settle. And that $1.39 bag of potato chips cost them $180,000, that''s ha they paid to Miss Hernandez to settle the lawsuit with the EEOC. This is what a lot of people -- that became a very expensive bag of potato chips. The reason I want to bring this case up is that EEOC is not saying with this lawsuit to employers like Walgreen''s you have to allow your employees to steal food. Or you have to get rid of these kinds of policies. But, again, it goes to the idea of training your employees. They really need to get a full picture and they really need to look individually at what happened here. And I think what convinced the EEOC to take this case, I think what certainly made the judge look at this case and say I''m not going to dismiss it, I think we should go to trial, is the fact of, number one, that she had a medical emergency. And nobody was disputing that, but she really was having a medical emergency and she needed to get some food in her quickly or it would have been far worse medically for her. Number two, she did try to pay. It gets a bit complicated why it didn''t work, but there''s no question she did attempt as soon as she felt better to see about paying for it. Number three, when she was confronted she immediately admitted to it. She didn''t try to sneak the bag of potato chips out or put it in her purse or hide it or something. She immediately admitted to it and explained the circumstances. None of which mattered to Walgreen''s here. They still went ahead and fired her. And so my message out of this case is that it is important to really look at the full circumstances on this, to sort of make sure that people have a little bit of latitude to remember that one form of reasonable accommodation is modified -- modifying your workplace policies. This is what this is. This is a workplace policy. But you can''t be completely rigid when something comes up with a disability. If this woman had tried to hide the fact she took it, if she denied it, no, I never took any potato chips, she just walked out of the store at the end of the day, I think this would have been very, very different. Because, again, this lawsuit was not about saying employers have to tolerate stealing from their employees. But I think it''s a good reminder of people need to be trained. They need to realize sometimes you cannot be rigid in your application of these policies. Okay. With all of that, let me stop there and turn it over to my justice department colleague.
Thanks, Sharon. This is Katie Wolfe and Sally Conway and I are going to jump back and forth a little bit and update you all on some matters we''ve done over the past year and hopefully leave a good amount of time for questions at the end. I''m going to start with three newsworthy events on our regulatory front. First, I wanted to note that on July 9th of this year, OMB accepted for review under Executive Order 12286 the Department''s proposed Title II web regulation Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. As many know, the department issued an advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in 2010 that addressed both Title II and Title III. And we''ve divided the rulemakings and will proceed with separate notices of proposed rule makings for Title II and Title III, and OMB has now accepted for review our Title II NPRM in which we intend to amend Title II regulation to expressly address the obligations of public entities to make the websites they use to provide services, programs or activities or information to the public accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities under the ADA. The second regulatory update is that on July 9th as well, OMB cleared the department''s proposed -- or Notice of Proposed Rulemaking under Title III for movie captioning and audio description. So we do not have a publication date yet for that NPRM, but stay tuned and keep checking back. Finally, we just wanted to note that the ADA Amendments Act NPRM that we published this past year, the proposed -- the comment period, excuse me -- closed in March 2014 and we''re currently reviewing the comments that were submitted towards the process of issuing a final rule. And I know that the EEOC''s rule came out, you know, quite some time ago to implement Title I, to implement the ADA Amendments Act, so we''re moving along with ours with respect to Titles II and Title III. Moving on to a couple of education highlights. I wanted to touch first on our litigation against the Law School Admission Council. A couple years in the past several years we sued LSAC for their failure to provide testing accommodations to individuals with disabilities on the law school admission test, which is a required entrance exam for all ABA approved law schools in the United States. So these types of gateway exams, of course, are critically important that individuals with disabilities receive the testing accommodations that they''re entitled to under the ADA. We also alleged in our lawsuit that LSAC''s practice of flagging the exam scores of individuals with disabilities who received an accommodation of extended time was a violation of the ADA. Under this practice, if an applicant received extended time when they took the test, when LSAC reported if test scores to the law schools, the test score would be flagged with an asterisk with a cautionary notice that the school should consider the score with caution, that it was not taken under standardized conditions. LSAC also would not provide a percentile ranking for the score, so the student could not really be compared in the same way to other applicants. In May 2014, after several years of active litigation, the court entered a joint consent decree negotiated by the parties. In this consent decree, we agreed to -- LSAC agreed to comprehensive injunctive relief and monetary damages, first and foremost LSAC agreed to a permanent ban on their practice of flagging and they are permanently enjoined from doing so. They also agreed to streamline significantly their process for reviewing applications for testing accommodations, and many accommodations will be automatically granted when the applicant shows that they received the same accommodation on another post-secondary admission exam. So if you''ve got extended time on the SAT, you automatically get it on the LSAT or any of the post-secondary exams. We are establishing a best practices panel that will develop best practices for this review process. Also, they''ll be monitoring for a period of three years. And finally LSAC agreed to pay 7.73 million in compensatory damages for individuals who had been harmed since January 1st, 2009, which coincidentally is the effective date of the ADA Amendments Act. And 45,000 a piece to each of the named witnesses or individuals in our case and 6.73 million in compensation fund for other victims. And on our website at www.ada.gov you can find information about how to apply or information about that compensation fund and the process for getting compensated under that. In the K-12 arena we just wanted to note a recent settlement agreement involving service animals and students in K-12, which is an emerging issue we''re seeing a lot more with the increase in the variety and the use of service animals. We recently entered into a settlement agreement with Del Ran Township in New Jersey involving a young child with Autism and a seizure disorder who used a service animal for seizure alerts and also to assist with mobility. His parents fought for over six months to get the school to allow the child to use his service animal in the school and school-related events. They were subject to onerous documentation demands repeatedly and attempted for six months to comply with all of the requests that the school district kept throwing in front of them. Finally on the eve of the -- six months later the child was not even permitted to bring the service animal on the school field trips, so the mom followed behind the bus with the service dog in her car. Under the agreement, which is our first settlement agreement in this area with the school district, the school paid $10,000 to the family and adopt 88 service animal policies and subject to monitoring for a number of years. And relatedly in the child-care arena we just wanted to highlight a small case but one that really sort of goes to core issues that are important to us under the ADA and that''s gotten a lot of attention. It involved a Cam-A-lot Child Care Center in Oklahoma, and I believe a six-year-old with Down''s syndrome who wore pull-ups. She was not fully toilet trained. She went there for after care and summer program. And the mom was fully open that the child needed toileting assistance. They have child care for infants and toddlers and provide toileting assistance for them. Over time the school told the family that the child could not go on any field trips with the class over the summer because she was not fully toilet trained. They also threatened at one point to expel the child from the child care because she still wore a pull-up. Through the settlement agreements, the child care center agreed to comprehensive training and to change their policies to ensure that this would not happen to other children and also agreed to pay the family $3,000 and also provide a full year of child care to the family, which to the family meant so much -- this child had been at that day care for years and loved her caregivers, and so for them to have a resolution in which they were able to retain the relationship with the child care center was important, and so this was sort of a perfect ending to that story for them. Now I''m going to throw it over to Sally for a few other cases.
Thank you, Katie. Good morning, afternoon, whatever time it is where you all are. I''m just going to talk really, really briefly about technology and access to technology, and I''m not talking about assisted technology. I''m talking about folks with disabilities being able to communicate, to learn using this ever-changing technology. And some you may be familiar with cases that we''ve done in the past. I''m just going to talk a little bit about our H and R Block consent decree, and we intervened in a lawsuit that was brought by the National Federation of the Blind and it was against H and R Block, who is one of the very largest tax preparers in the United States, and they offer a ton of stuff through their web, and there are things like web and mobile apps, there are professional and do-it-yourself tax prep. There''s a lot of videos. I don''t know - videos about doing my income tax, which doesn''t sound scintillating to me, but nonetheless I''m sure people look at those. You know contact information about how to go to their office and how you can make an appointment, as well as live video and chat with an H and R Block representative. Because the website just simply wasn''t coded correctly, somebody who was blind had no access to all of that information because it was inaccessible to them. And it related also to folks who had manual dexterity issues in terms of responding to things in a timely manner. You know how quickly things time out when you''re trying to do things on any website. And also for folks who were deaf or had hearing loss. So this past March we entered into a consent decree with them and resolved the case, and the consent decree the last five years, and what will happen is what was agreed to is that their website, tax filing, mobile apps, all their other utilities are going to conform to the level AA of the WCAG, the web content accessibility guidelines that are widely and universally used as sort of a benchmark for accessibility. And their website will be accessible at the start of the next tax filing term, which would be January 1st of 2015, which is just a few months from now, and it will continue to increase accessibility over the life of the consent decree, and an additional two individual plaintiffs were awarded $45,000 the government general fund was -- they were required to pay $55,000 in civil penalties. As you know, technology is so critically important, because it really is the way that America lives. And it''s not just conducts business any longer, it''s really how people use technologies and devices in all aspects of their daily life. You may be familiar with several years ago, but when we started looking at universities and public libraries, who had either -- were either using E-readers for course work or public libraries that have E-reader loaner programs. And we''re continuing to look at that kind of thing and we''re looking at other ways that people use technology to do things like apply for work, to go to school, to, you know, pay their taxes; All of the things that every one of us does. And we''re very active in this area. But it''s a really good segway because I''m going to transfer this way back to Katie to talk about technology in a couple of Title I employment matters.
Sure, and just briefly too, the department enforces Title I with respect to public employers as opposed to the EEOC. We just, in the past couple months, entered into two settlement agreements, one with the City of Hubbard in July 2014 and one with Florida State University in June 2014, both essentially dealing with online employment applications. And our investigations revealed that the online employment applications asked questions about disabilities on the application, which violated Title I prohibition on conducting -- on making disability-related inquiries of a job applicant before a conditional offer of employment is made. So both of the agreements require the entities to revise their application process and also agreed to related prohibitions on medical examinations and things like that inconsistent with Title I. Back to Sally.
Thank you. We''re trying to make sure that we don''t intrude on questions and answers. The department for a long time has really understood that access to healthcare is just a critically important thing, especially for folks with disabilities. And we''re talking about outright discrimination, which is denial of service. We''re talking about inaccessible doctor offices, effective communication, all of those things. And since 2012 we have through our United States attorneys, who are participating in the ADA enforcement program, had initiative called the Barrier Free Healthcare Initiative, and there are, I think 60 -- I might be wrong on that -- 60 offices throughout the district who are participating and have a very active caseload and are resolve a number of cases, particularly relating to effective communication, which continues to be a huge, huge issue for folks who are deaf or who are blind, particularly, in understanding what the diagnosis is and communicating effectively with that healthcare provider. We very recently -- well, this year, also had -- we reached a settlement agreement with Rite-Aid of Michigan. Rite-Aid is a pharmacy, grocery, one of the multi-purpose pharmacies, and this -- the allegation was that there was a pharmacist in the Okimo -- I''m sorry if anybody is from Michigan and I''m mispronouncing it -- refused to give a flu shot to a customer who had volunteered that he had HIV. And the pharmacist said, no, no, no, we can''t do that. I have to get special gloves. And then, you know, I''ll order them and then you can come back to the store and we''ll set up a time for you to come in and get a flu shot. As you might imagine, we believe that this was, you know, pretty blatant discrimination and exclusion, so we reached a settlement and they required Rite-Aid of Michigan to pay $10,000 to the customer and $5,000 in civil penalties. And we continue to work in this area and it''s very important and we have been working closely with the Access Board in terms of accessible medical diagnostic equipment. So just stay tuned for news from that front. So I''m going to turn it back to Katie. I don''t know where --
All right, I will talk about voting before Sally talks about our Olmstead work. So let me just touch on voting, which is the cornerstone of our democracy, and ensuring that people with disabilities have equal access to the polls on election day, early voting, whatever the activity is, it''s critically important to us. So in March of this year, in our voting work we entered into a settlement agreement with Blair County, Pennsylvania, over polling place access for voters with disabilities. Under the agreement, Blair County agreed to in the future going forward, in site selection for polling places ensure either that each of the polling places was accessible using the department standards for physical accessibility, that it could be made accessible through temporary measures on the day of election or that the county move the polling place to an accessible location to ensure on the day of voting people with disabilities can go down to their local precinct just like everyone else. Now back to Sally for an Olmstead update and questions that will wrap us up.
I''m sure you all know about Olmstead and we have been working very hard since the post Supreme Court decision. Olmstead versus LC, in which the court recognized that civil rights of people with disabilities who are unnecessarily institutionalized is a violation of the ADA. And we initially started our work under Olmstead to get folks who are already in nursing homes out of nursing homes, those who were able and chose to live in the community with supported care and with appropriate healthcare and community based services and we did that and we continue to do that, but we''ve sort of broadened over the years what we''ve been doing, and then we started looking at folks who are already in the community and were doing well, but either because services were withdrawn, money was no longer available to support those services, we looked at folks who without those community based services were at risk of going to an institution. And we have since then started moving toward looking really broadening our perspective really looking at people who are stuck in sheltered workshops as a form of isolation and segregation and people who are able and want to work in a regular job like you and me and Katie and Sharon and Peter. So we''ve really branched out in that area and I''m going to talk about one minute, and a number of you probably have heard this. We reached a really groundbreaking agreement with the City of Providence and the state of Rhode Island. And what was happening is that folks were put in to - after - they went to a vocational program and it was the Birch Vocational Program at Mount Pleasant High School in the city. So students with disabilities were placed there and then what we found out is right after that, when they were no longer eligible for those services they went into a sheltered workshop called Training Through Placement or TTP. And what was happening is that you would think Training Through Placement would be training and moving folks out, and that didn''t happen what was happening is that people were languishing there for decades. And many earned less than $2 an hour. They were assembling things and then they took them apart and had them assemble them again. So this information is all available on the website, but what happened is the state is essentially stopping doing business with TTP, and what they''re doing is... What they''re doing is the state is going to help initially find everybody a TTP, a placement -- you know, help so they can work in a real job with real wages, and they''re going to provide supported employment services, which is the key for folks succeeding in the real world. And as of, you know, May or June, again, Rhode Island stopped providing any funding for new participants at that TTP sheltered workshop, and the City has stopped providing services or funding to that Birch -- the in-school program, and they''re going to be working very hard to get folks placed in real jobs. And this was a great collaborative effort because the complaint first came to us from the Department of Labor''s wage and hour division, who started looking into the subminimum wage issue and then it came to us. So we''re really proud of that. We have a number of other cases that are pending. And you can find all that information on our website. So with that, I''m stopping at 3:00 p.m.
All right, very good, very good. In the spirit of World Cup soccer, we had some extra penalty time to allow you to finish off there, Sally. So thank you very much, Sharon and Sally and Katie. We could have, you know, had an update from each one of you separately, but glad to get that information out. I want to have the operator come back now and give instructions for those participating by telephone so how you can ask questions. In the webinar room remember you can submit your questions in the chat area. You can''t see your question once it''s submitted; it is viewable by the moderator. Click on the chat area or control-M for assistive technology user''s focus in the chat area or emails to webinars@ada-audio.org; If you can give instructions for phone participants at this time.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question at this time, please press star and one. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press the pound key.
All right, when we''re waiting to get to a question submitted in advance -- and this will go to Sally and Katie. This questioner wanted to know, are there any requirements for the individuals that are doing the individualized assessments? This is in regards to Olmstead. So the professionals who are doing the individualized assessments to determine whether or not someone would benefit from community based living opportunities, are there any requirements in terms of the qualifications for the individuals doing those assessments? You know, I got to tell you, I don''t dare to answer that question because I''m not certain, but certainly the required -- we would require that an individualized assessment be done and that it be done by someone who understands what they''re assessing, but I would -- and I know this sounds like a gigantic punt, and it is, but I would encourage you to look at ADA.gov and look under -- we have an Olmstead page and I think you can find more information. If not, Peter, I can find some information and get it to you.
Perfect. We can share it with folks. There are tremendous resources on that Olmstead page, including FAQs and also contact names, briefs and filings and contacts for people in our office and other agencies who have really devoted their careers to this area.
Right. You can get to that Olmstead section by visiting ADA.gov. Let''s go, before we check our telephones, go to another question submitted through the webinar room. And what, if any, role does DOJ play in terms of enforcing who is allowed to park in accessible parking spaces?
DOJ really plays no role in terms of that local enforcement. It is -- I mean, we basically say that you have to provide the parking spaces in compliance with the standards, but local -- this has always been an issue. Local enforcement is -- it''s all a local matter. It may be proscribed by state regulations. It may be proscribed by individuals, and I know there''s always issues related to you know, private parking lots and who can come in and who has authority and that varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but it''s a totally local matter.
Okay, very good. And we''ll get to one more parking question here. This one for Sharon, an employment parking question, it''s from an employer asking if an employer observes an employee parking in an accessible parking space in an employee-only parking lot, what, if any, documentation or inquiry can the employer make of that employee? I''m sorry, and the employee has a state issue placard on the vehicle.
Let me make sure if I understand this, Peter. This is an employee-only parking lot. It is a designated accessible space, and the person has a placard indicating, like they get from their local jurisdiction that they have a disability that allows them to park in such spaces. If I have those facts correctly, I''m not sure why the employer would be asking anything. If the employer requires people to first check in, in other words, that it is trying -- you know, it has limited spaces for employees with disabilities and it wants to maintain some control as opposed to kind of a free-for-all, then I think number one, make sure all your employees know that. But I wouldn''t necessarily single out one employee. Again, I can''t tell from the question, you know, if it''s standard practice that they''re supposed to ask before they use these spaces. And the employer monitors that. Then, yes, I think it''s okay under the ADA as long as you''re not singling somebody out, to go to explain your policy, to say that we just want to find out, is this short term, is it long term, in terms of, we have a number of employees who need such spaces, so we need to monitor, we need to see if we need to do something different as a reasonable accommodation, because let''s say this isn''t what Sally and Katie enforce in terms of Titles II and III of the ADA. If you ultimately need 25 spaces for employees with disabilities, unless you show undue hardship you may have to create more spaces that people can use. You know, without a little bit more information, it''s hard, Peter, to give a definitive answer. Again, if there''s a policy and this is not singling someone out, then I think the employer can approach the person and get more information and see if they are, you know, entitled to the reasonable accommodation and if they need to do something with the -- if the employer needs to do something a bit different for the person as a reasonable accommodation.
Great. Do we have any questions on the telephone at this time?
I show we have two questions on the phone.
Thanks for opening yourself up to this grilling. The question I''ve got is, I guess, for Sally and Katie. Do you see any situation where the outdoor regulations could interface with the ADA and, I guess, specifically would you say that asphalt concrete or board walk is the only acceptable surface for a trail under Title II?
Just clarification, I think the caller is asking about the outdoor developed area rule that the Access Board published that applies under the Architecture Barriers Act to federal properties.
Okay, well, thanks, Rick. I knew you would do something like that I mean, I think the issue is -- I mean, I can''t answer as to whether whatever the outdoor developed area is, is going to ultimately apply to the ADA. I know that in terms of things over which we have jurisdiction, there''s a lot of research that is going on about what is an acceptable firm, stable and slip-resistant path of travel. And I don''t think that we would probably ever say that the only thing that would work is asphalt or a board walk. But certainly that would apply, and to the extent that you can do it in areas, just like other parts of the standards, there may not be a specific standard for something, but you used the general standards to get yourself there. Beyond that, Rick, I really don''t know. I think that''s all down the road. I think it will be certainly further inquiry and study on what constitutes an accessible path of travel in outdoor developed areas.
What would you recommend at this point as we''re installing new trails on not only state properties but also city parks?
Oh, generally what I would recommend? I thought you were going to ask me something more specific. You know, I think making the best effort and in looking at what is the information out there, making the best effort to figure out what will work the best to provide the greatest level of access in areas that may not be specifically covered by the standards. So, I mean, you can certainly look to things that are being developed. You can look at best practice kinds of things, but you know that I can never advise you.
Yes, ma''am. Thank you. I appreciate the answer. It sounds great. Thank you.
Thanks for the question, Rick. Why don''t we go ahead and take the next question on the telephone before we go back to our other questions.
The next question comes from Sheila Laurie.
This is for Sharon. She was talking about the voluntary wellness program and the imposed penalties to employees to get higher participation. Is there more information available? Where can we get more information on that?
There is no more information available at this time about proposed rulemaking. The Commission is required every six months to publish what it anticipates it''s going to do in terms of developing new regulations. And so what we publish was simply to alert the public that we are looking to develop a draft regulation, a proposed regulation that would provide more information ultimately. What we first have to do would be to get public comment on it. So whatever we first publish would be simply a proposal but it would give you the idea of the EEOC''s thinking, the direction it''s heading. And then we would finalize the regulation after reviewing the comments that came in. So there isn''t anything really more. You can see the regulatory agenda is on the EEOC website, and you can probably do a search regulatory agenda, but it won''t say much more about this issue than I provided, but the whole reason that people asked for more is that really the EEOC hasn''t published much in this area other than saying that if it is a voluntary wellness program, then an employer would not be violating the ADA rules asking for medical information or requiring a medical exam, because it''s totally voluntary. And the issue around providing an incentive or imposing a penalty, does that mean that it''s no longer voluntary, that somebody doesn''t want to be penalized? Does it mean that, gee, your incentive is so great, you''re offering me $500, why would I turn that down? So it sort of removes voluntary aspect of it. And if it''s not voluntary anymore, then it could trigger the ADA rules for employers, all such medical inquiries or any kind of medical exams would have to meet the business necessity test. So there really isn''t much more to give you at this point. Stay tuned is the best I can say.
Okay.Thank you very much.
You''re welcome.
Alright, thank you. Let''s go to another question that was submitted in advance. I just want to go to the justice department. An individual wants to know if they make a reservation for an accessible hotel room, is the hotel required to reserve that specific room that they request when making the reservation?
This is Sally. Here is my first answer. When somebody reserves an accessible room, the hotel is required to block that and to remove it from inventory. Whether or not it means that specific room, like Room 307, probably not. But if someone -- just a certain class of accessible room and there''s a reservation made, they are required to remove it and to guarantee.
All right, very good. And another question submitted through the webinar platform, before we go back and see if there are any questions on the telephone. Katie, you had mentioned the captioning and audio description requirements for movie theatres and that rule moving forward, and someone asked if you could provide a quick overview of what that actually would entail.
Sure. I really can''t. I would just encourage you to go look at the -- you know, you can look at the ARPM that was issued before and because it''s not published yet, I can only clarify that it''s going to address the Title III equal opportunity to fully participate requirement and also effective communication obligations. So we are hopeful it will be published soon, but I think looking back at the ARPM would be the closest that I could -- at least they''ll know what issues are on the table.
Along the same lines of pending rules, a questioner wants to know: Will the program access Title II and readily achievable area removal Title III requirements apply to websites, website access? Will those be --
Boy... That''s a good question. I don''t -- we''ve never necessarily used that, because it''s always been our position that websites need to be accessible. We''ve long said that if and simply as a matter of -- for some people it may be effective communication, pre-regulation coming out, and for others, you know -- we have just looked at it as a way of delivering services or goods and services and that people with all kinds of disabilities need access to it. And to use that form, you''re going to really need to wait, you know. I know we''ve been saying this for a long time, for when the final rule comes out. We really shouldn''t say any more at this point and we also never know what the final rule will look like or the NPRM, but the ANPRM, as Katie said, will certainly help inform, but things may change. You just never know.
Right, but the ANPRM will just propose the scope of the obligation to provide accessibility when persons with disabilities access public websites, as well as propose the technical standards necessary to comply with those obligations.
Okay, very good. Let''s see if we -- I guess as we are getting closer and closer to the 25th anniversary of the ADA in 2015 we can expect hopefully a lot of news out of the federal agencies with a continued rulemaking under the ADA. Do we have any additional questions on the telephone at this time?
I show no other additional questions at this time.
All right.
I''m sorry, sir, I do show a question.
Let''s go ahead and take this at this time.
That''s from Rick Edwards. Your question, sir.
It''s me again. The question is about the service animals. I noticed we had another situation with T.J. Maxx just yesterday. Do you have an opinion or any thoughts as to why we''re having an issue with service animals and what can we do on the front lines here to help folks to understand this better. I was thinking it was training, but then we also had a lawyer''s office not real long ago say they denied access to a service animal. So I just wanted your thoughts and opinions -about that.
I''m going to step right in. You know, when early on, you know, I''ve said this before, so some of you may have heard it, so bear with me. But early on, we really did think that one of the easiest things to resolve and to eradicate would be the constant issues with public and private entities, you know, refusing to let folks use service animals on the premises. It wasn''t a matter of money. It was education, awareness. But I''ll tell you right now that is still pretty much the topic that we get the most questions on the ADA Information Line. So we know it continues. We tried, when we did the 2010 regs, really by narrowing it to the species of dog, we thought that that would help a great deal. And I think to a certain -- I think it has helped because it immediately it takes all of the other kinds of animals and, you know, vegetables and minerals that people may be using for a service animal out of the mix, so it made the decision easier. In terms of education, you know, Rick, I know you do a lot of education and I know a lot of you out there, Peter, you folks, the ADA Networks are constantly doing education on this issue, and I don''t know what the answer is. I think we are in the process of doing a new question and answers sort of a follow-up to our first service animal TA document that we hope can go into a little more detail about things, but, you know, I just -- I don''t know. It is education, and, you know, I think certainly -- I know it gets hard because it''s 24/7, if you have a disability and are doing all of that. I really don''t know what the answer is. And I think -- I''m hoping that the additional questions and answers will help, but I think let''s face it, there''s a lot of places that don''t look on federal websites for information. You know, I think we have to just keep at it.
I will just add this, this is Katie, that we recently filed a lawsuit against a Days Inn franchise for denial of a -- with a veteran and his family traveling through one of the southern states, Oklahoma, and were refused a room with their three young children and the service animal. So, you know, maybe through litigation we''ll have another opportunity to send a message to have some impact in this area as well.
And we continue to get questions on our 800 lines I''m sure just as you are at the Department of Justice, and, you know, some of it also has to do with the different definitions under different federal laws, the fair housing act, the air carriers act, even under the ADA, the Department of Justice''s definition of a service animal versus the Department of Transportation''s definition of a service animal. So just trying to understand what the requirements are themselves can be confusing for people with disabilities as well as covered entities.
Good point. Thanks. Appreciate it.
There can be some real confusion.
We''ll keep plugging.
For the folks at the DOJ, has the Justice Department ever entertained filing lawsuits regarding companies that build their products as being ADA accessible and the person here uses an example of some products for children''s play areas, some surfacing material, has the Justice Department ever -- would you even have the authority to pursue anything like that, where someone slaps an ADA approved label on their product?
Yeah, thank you for the question. We don''t have any authority. We don''t have the authority to regulate manufacturers. Or, you know, how people sell things. And we don''t. And Peter, exactly right, you know, you see this all the time. You''ve seen it since 1993. And then there are a lot of other times, I remember a call that I took, it was a hospital, and they had purchased -- you know, the hand washers that hang on the wall, and the thing itself didn''t go past four inches to be a protruding object, but the way they had to install it, essentially it made it inaccessible. So I think there''s a couple things. One is the marketing issue. I think if products are misrepresented, you know, certainly the state in which they''re doing business that could be something that the attorney general''s office or the consumer protection division could address. We have gotten involved if someone has misrepresented that they, in fact, are an agent of the Department of Justice in their effort to sell things. But other than that, very tiny little slice. There isn''t anything we could do, but certainly there are state consumer protection laws and if it''s an issue of sort of false advertising and false claims, you know, people can file directly with their state.
Very good. And Sharon, not to leave you out there by yourself, I have a question regarding qualification standards. You had mentioned that in your update. And this individual is a job coach who works with individuals with intellectual disabilities and wants to know what she can do as an advocate for these individuals when they encounter applications or job descriptions that have a requirement for a high school diploma, when many of these individuals don''t receive high school diplomas, they receive some type of equivalency when they graduate from high school.
Excellent question. I think that the first thing to do would be if you want to be an advocate, is to notify the employer and to explain about the fact that there are individuals who don''t get the diploma, they get something equivalent, to educate employers what that equivalent diploma or document represents. And then to really explore with the employer why do they have this requirement. What does it symbolize to the employer? What does the employer think that it''s getting by saying somebody has to have a high school diploma, because in exploring those questions and the answers to those questions, then it may be possible to point out that the equivalent type of certification that somebody with an intellectual disability has obtained may well encompass the very same kind of thing that a high school diploma may signify. Now, on the other hand, there may be things that the employer -- kind of the high school diploma becomes a shorthand if you will for other things the employer is looking for, that it may need to individually test somebody with an intellectual disability, let''s say if there''s reading and writing skills or a certain kind of baseline math skills, that they''re looking for. They think by saying you must have a high school diploma I''m getting this, it''s not kind of clear that the alternative certification is somebody with an intellectual disability encompasses this, then the employer could use a different method of seeing if these kinds of requirements could be met a different way. This is reasonable accommodation. That''s what it would be, is where either this alternative certification suffices, that''s reasonable accommodation or looking for another way of ascertaining if a really baseline requirement that they want, instead of using high school diploma as a shorthand, what is the employer actually trying to ascertain it''s a reasonable accommodation to use an alternative method, which might include testing, a conversation with the individual, a simulation of something. It really just depends on what it is the employer is trying to find out. So these are the initial things that I would do with any employer requiring a high school diploma where that is something that on its face somebody doesn''t have a diploma due to a disability is to see a bit -- explore a bit further, what is it the employer is seeking?
Very good. And that takes us to the bottom of the hour. I really want to thank Sharon Rennert and Katie Wolfe and Sally Conway for their time today and the time that they put in preparing for this session. Lots of great information that was provided here today, and they make themselves available to your questions, and if you didn''t have an opportunity to ask your question or if we did not get to your question, we can -- you can send that to us at webinars@ada-audio.org and if needed we can get that to Sharon or Sally or Katie for their response. If you have any questions going forward, you can always contact your regional ADA Center by calling 800-949-4232 or visiting ADA.org. Our next in the Audio Conference Series is August 26. It is a week later than normal. We''re in the fourth Tuesday of the month, not the third. That has to do with a scheduling conflict for our speakers for the next session. That next session will be helping people with hearing loss in public places with -- through the use of hearing loop technologies and registration for that session will be available very, very soon. So a big thank-you to all of the participants that joined us today. We''re glad to see the large number of participants we had, and, again, thank you to Sharon Rennert with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and to Sally Conway and Katie Wolfe from the U.S. Department of Justice. Thank you all very much and have a great day. Those of you in the webinar room can close your Internet browser to disconnect and those on the telephone can hang up. Thank you and good day.