Disabled & Title III of ADA

In Sunday May 26 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle travel Section thereer was splendid article on disabled traveling by Michael Dougan which I commentyed on. The folowing is my opinions that may be of interest.

My wife has been disabled for over five years and needs
to use a wheel chair. Accordingly I have been interested in Americans with
Disability Act(ADA) reading published lawsuits and court cases. The
Europeans seems to be ahead of the U.S. as far as cruise ships are concerned. While
many of the cruise lines are providing wheel chair accessible facilities to
comply with Title III, when sued by a passenger or the Civil Rights Division
of the U.S. Department of Justice they tend to plead that the U.S. has not
developed construction standards. In 1991 U.S. Senator Phil Gramm, then head
of the Committee over the Dept. Of Transportation asked it to develop
standards. The latest is that it is going to take another three years.

These are two things I learned about Title III of ADA. There is no requirement that a cruise ship or any Public Accommodation under Title III be required to
provide a wheel chair for the disabled passenger, or customer.
On cruise ships there is no requirements under Title III that the owners
make it easy to get around the ship. At this time standards are being developed
to take care of this but it will be three years before being finalized.
HannaS77 a.k.a Hermann Paul