Copyright (c) 2012 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/michaelschwartz Recent documents in Michael A Schwartz en-us Sun, 25 Nov 2012 21:30:03 PST 3600 http://works.bepress.com/michaelschwartz/2 http://works.bepress.com/michaelschwartz/2 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:21:39 PST In-flight entertainment has been available for over forty-five years, but to this day remains without captions or subtitles, thus depriving deaf and hard of hearing passengers of access to this service. The Air Carrier Access Act of 1986 (“ACAA”) and implementing regulations do not require captioning of in-flight entertainment, and Congress, the airline industry and the U.S. Department of Transportation (“DOT”) have yet to remedy the problem. The courts do not allow deaf and hard of hearing passengers a private right of action and punitive damages under the ACAA. The DOT recently indicated it will issue a Notice of Proposed Rule Making on the subject, and what follows is an argument for a new regulation that interprets the ACAA to require captioning of in-flight entertainment on United States transcontinental and international flights.

]]> Michael A. Schwartz Air and Space Law Civil Rights and Discrimination Law and Society Law and Technology Science and Technology Transportation Law http://works.bepress.com/michaelschwartz/1 http://works.bepress.com/michaelschwartz/1 Sun, 02 Aug 2009 04:57:41 PDT Medical schools utilize a set of technical standards used to screen applicants with disabilities, and one of the standards, which deals with communication, requires the applicant to be capable of speech and hearing. To the extent that medical schools exclude an applicant with a hearing impairment on the ground that the applicant cannot hear and speak, such exclusion would be (and should be) a violation of federal law. Schools must engage in an individualized assessment of how a Deaf medical candidate would satisfy the communication standard. The notion of an “undifferentiated graduate,” where all graduates qualify for practice in any field of medical practice and research, is outdated. Providing the Deaf candidate with an appropriate auxiliary aid such as a sign language interpreter would not constitute a fundamental alteration of the medical school’s program, nor would the interpreter serve as an intermediary substituting his judgment for that of the candidate. This Article is structured as a memorandum of law arguing for a construction of the technical standard of communication that is open to the different ways – via appropriate auxiliary aids – Deaf students communicate. Ends matter, not means.

]]> Michael A. Schwartz Civil Rights Health Law and Policy Human Rights Law Medical Jurisprudence