New disability regulations raise concern

Miniature golf courses are among the millions of businesses and other public facilities that would be affected by proposed regulatory changes under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the milestone 1990 civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability.

The proposed regulations address a wide range of facilities - including access to courthouses, drinking fountains, amusement park rides, stadium and theater seating, fishing piers, boat slips, and bowling lanes - and establish specific requirements for qualifying accessible designs. For miniature golf courses, 50 percent of the holes would have to be accessible for players in wheelchairs.

The 1,000 pages of regulations proposed by the Justice Department are drawing intense scrutiny from businesses that foresee a financial drain and disability rights advocates who say they are long overdue and don't go far enough. Both groups say they want more clarity.

"We have a very mixed sense of what's happened," said Curtis Decker, executive director of the National Disability Rights Network. "They left a lot of things unanswered."

Costs to 7 million affected businesses plus state and local government agencies would total $23 billion over 40 years, according to the Justice Department. But they would also realize billions from being more accessible to disabled customers. The Census Bureau says there are more than 51 million disabled Americans, representing 18 percent of the population.

The rules would apply to new businesses and facilities and to alterations of existing ones. Businesses also would have to remove "readily achievable" barriers - changes that don't require a lot of difficulty or expense. The proposal was published by the government last month. Final regulations could take effect next year, after a period for public comment.

The proposed regulations also define "service animals" for the blind and other disabled groups as dogs or other domestic animals; the regulations would exclude wild animals such as monkeys, which people with spinal cord injuries sometimes use for help with daily activities.