One of the participants in the program, Mr. B. van Schijndel, Member of the Senate, Groen Links (Green Left Party), has written a report (in Dutch) on the program.
This study trip to the United States of America took place from May 6 to May 12, 2001, and focused on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), signed into force by President Bush in 1990, and one of the first and most comprehensive and trendsetting pieces of disability-related non-discrimination legislation throughout the world. This study program in Washington and New York offered a close look at the contents and scope of the ADA, the ideals behind it, the implementation and enforcement system as well as a thorough exploration of the divergent range of effects that the ADA offers in actual practice. The program facilitated an informed evaluation of the costs and benefits of the ADA in the past ten years for society at large and for people with disabilities (PWD) as a particular target group of this Act.
This study trip was offered at a time when in the Netherlands a first piece of legislation barring discrimination on the grounds of disability, was being prepared for discussion in parliament. The trip provided participants with valuable insights and background information that proved to be helpful in the legislative process and in deliberations on equal-opportunities policy in the Netherlands.
The program started in Washington DC, where the delegation visited Capitol Hill to talk to members of Congress who were closely involved in the legislative process leading up to the ADA. Prominent academic experts and researchers of the National Council on Disability discussed the contents and the effects of the ADA. Meetings on ADA-related developments also took place with representatives of various organizations of PWD such as Enable America!, the National Association of the Deaf and the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF), and with senior representatives of several (semi-) government agencies. Examples of the latter category are the Presidential Task Force on Employment of PWD, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Education, and the Department of Transportation's Office of Civil Rights.
Furthermore, the delegation visited several companies and shops and talk to employers and workers about their experiences with the ADA. Educational institutions were visited with the same purpose. In New York meetings took place with the New York City authorities and the Metropolitan Transport Authority on the policy and the practice of 'transportation for all'. The city's more than 100 year old subway system served as an interesting example in this respect.
To learn about the legal practice of the ADA, meetings were arranged with representatives of the civil rights division of the Department of Justice and legal experts of the DREDF and the National Council on Disability.
This program wass developed by the CG-Raad Nederland (the Dutch Council of the Chronically Ill and the Disabled) in cooperation with the Atlantic & Pacific Exchange Program (APEP) and with advice from the Dutch Embassy to the United States, Task Force No Limits, and the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF).
Mr. Jan Troost, Chairman of the CG-Raad, led the delegation.