Glossary

Accessible: Easy to approach, enter, operate, participate in, or use safely, independently and with dignity by a person with a disability (i.e., site, facility, work environment, service or program).

Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR): A variety of procedures for resolving disputes. ADR is a fair and efficient alternative to court adjudication that must be entered into voluntarily by all parties. Some of the more common ADR procedures are arbitration, mediation, and conciliation. The Americans with Disabilities Act encourages the use of ADR to resolve conflicts.

Alternate Formats: Formats usable by people with disabilities. These may include, but are not limited to, Braille, ASCII text, large print, and recorded audio.

Alternate Methods: Different means of providing information, including product documentation, to people with disabilities. Alternate methods may include, but are not limited to, voice, fax, relay service, TTY, Internet posting, captioning, text-to-speech synthesis, and audio description.

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): Comprehensive civil rights law that makes it unlawful to discriminate against individuals with a disability in public and private sector employment (for businesses with15 or more employees), state and local government services, public accommodations, transportation or telecommunication.

Assistive Technology: Any item, piece of equipment, or system, whether acquired commercially, modified, or customized, that is commonly used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities. Includes items such as communication devices, adapted appliances for accessible living, environmental control devices, modified housing, adapted computers, and specialized software.

Auxiliary Aids and Services: Devices or services that accommodate a functional limitation of a person with a communication-related disability. Includes qualified interpreters and communication devices for persons who have deafness or hardness of hearing; qualified readers, taped texts, braille or other devices for persons with visual impairments; and adaptive equipment for persons with other communication disabilities.

Disability and Technical Assistance Centers (DBTAC): Ten regional centers established by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research that provide information, training, and technical assistance to employers, people with disabilities and others on their rights and responsibilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Electronic and Information Technology: Technology and any equipment or interconnected system or subsystem of equipment that is used in the creation, conversion, or duplication of data or information. The term electronic and information technology includes, but is not limited to, telecommunications products (such as telephones), information kiosks and transaction machines, World Wide Web sites, multimedia, and office equipment such as copiers and fax machines.

Essential Job Functions: Fundamental job duties of an employment position that an individual with a disability holds or desires.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC): Federal agency responsible for overseeing and enforcing nondiscrimination in hiring, firing, compensation, promotion, recruitment, training, and other terms and conditions of employment regardless of race, color, sex, age, religion, national origin or disability.

Fundamental Alteration: Change in the essential nature of a program or activity, including but not limited to an aid, service, benefit, training service or cost that a recipient can demonstrate would result in an undue burden.

Individual with a Disability: Person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of that person's major life activities, has a record of such impairment, or who is regarded as having such an impairment.

Information Transaction Machines (ITM): Public service kiosks such as fare vending machines and Automated Teller Machines.

Job Coach: Person hired by a placement agency or provided through an employer to assist an employee with a disability in learning and performing a job and adjusting to the work environment.

Major Life Activity: Basic activities that the average person in the general population can perform with little or no difficulty, such as caring for oneself, performing manual tasks, walking, seeing, hearing, speaking, breathing, learning and working.

Natural Supports: Supports provided to an employee with a disability from supervisors and co-workers, such as mentoring, friendship, socializing at breaks or after work, providing feedback on job performance or learning a new skill together. These natural supports are particularly effective as they enhance the social integration of the employee with a disability with his or her co-workers and supervisor. In addition, natural supports are more permanent, part of the workplace and more readily available than paid job coaches, thereby facilitating long-term job retention.

Qualified Individual with a Disability: Individual with a disability who satisfies the requisite skill, experience, education and other job-related requirements of an employment position the individual holds or desires, and who, with or without reasonable accommodation, can perform the essential functions of such position.

Reasonable Accommodation: (1) Modification or adjustment to a job application process that enables a qualified applicant with a disability to be considered for the position; (2) modifications or adjustments to the work environment, or to the manner or circumstances under which a position held or desired is customarily performed, that enable qualified individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions of that position; or (3) modifications or adjustments that enable an employee with a disability to enjoy the same benefits and privileges of employment as similarly situated employees without disabilities.

Rehabilitation Act of 1973: Federal legislation that set up grant programs for vocational rehabilitation, supported employment, independent living and client assistance. The Rehabilitative Services Administration in the Department of Education oversees programs created by the Act.

Rehabilitation Research and Training Centers (RRTC): Centers nationwide that conduct research and offer training in improving rehabilitation methods and delivery systems, alleviating or stabilizing disabling conditions, or promoting maximum independence for people with disabilities.

Section 508: Section of the amended Rehabilitation Act requiring all federal agencies to make their electronic and information technologies available to people with disabilities.

Supported Employment: Supports that help people with severe disabilities (e.g., psychiatric, mental retardation, significant learning disabilities, traumatic brain injury) find competitive work in an integrated setting where they might not otherwise be able to do so. The supports can include job coaches, transportation, assistive technology, specialized job training and individually tailored supervision.

Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS): Service available in all states and territories that enables voice telephone users to talk to people who have deafness or hardness of hearing via trained Communications Assistants who relay the message in real time.

Teletypewriter Technology (TTY): Typewriter keyboards that allow users to type their conversations over the phone lines. The conversation is read on a lighted screen display or a paper printout.

Ticket-to-Work: Social Security Administration (SSA) program designed to help individuals with disabilities who are receiving SSA benefits find and maintain employment.

Title V of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973: Title prohibiting discrimination on the basis of a disability by the federal government, federal contractors, recipients of federal financial assistance, and in federally conducted programs and activities.

Undue Hardship: Significant difficulty or expense incurred in providing a workplace accommodation for an individual with a disability. Factors considered in determining undue hardship include the size, nature and structure of a business, as well as the resources available to an employer. If the facility considering the accommodation is part of a larger entity, the structure and overall resources of the larger organization are considered, as well as the financial and administrative relationship of the employing facility to the larger organization.

Vocational Rehabilitation: Programs designed to help individuals with disabilities enter or reenter gainful employment.