5 Years Later, Disabilities Law Gets Mixed Response

These are good days for hoteliers. And by law, they should be good days for hotel guests with disabilities, too. But federal officials say things aren’t nearly as good as they ought to be, and access advocates say that in some cases, they’re downright rotten.

At issue is the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), which took effect over hotels and other “public accommodations” in 1992. The act is an enormously broad piece of law, covering everything from dentists who refuse to treat HIV-positive patients to county courthouses without wheelchair ramps, but it has particular impact on hotels.

Since its implementation, the act has required all hotels to take all “readily achievable” steps to remove barriers to access, whether they’re planning a renovation or not. But for new hotels and hotels that undergo substantial renovations, there are stricter, costlier requirements--mandates that are suddenly a factor for hundreds of hotels that are expanding or renovating in the wake of two spectacularly profitable years. In 1996, U.S. hotels made an estimated $12.5 billion in pretax profits, more money than the trade made in the previous 13 years combined.

Under ADA requirements, hoteliers must take steps in staff training and construction to make new facilities accessible to disabled travelers. In most cases of guest-area renovation, the hoteliers must devote up to 20% of their overall renovation cost to clearing a “path of travel” from the building’s exterior to the altered space, and to the telephone, drinking fountains and bathroom facilities associated with that path.

In addition, hotels should be able to satisfy guests who may require TDD phones (which allow hearing-impaired guests to place calls and conduct conversations) or other devices. And the law has teeth. ADA civil penalties can run as high as $50,000 for a first violation and $100,000 for subsequent violations.

The problem: Many hoteliers say the law’s language is so vague that their lawyers can’t figure out what is required of them. Other hoteliers, either ignorant of the law or looking for a way to save money, have ignored the issue until spurred to action by Justice Department civil suits.

“The results are mixed. . . . Clearly, there are pockets of resistance, as well as ignorance, but we’re trying to deal with those,” says John Wodatch, chief of the U.S. Justice Department’s Disability Rights Section, Civil Rights Division. He also notes hopefully that “in boom times, compliance is always easier.”

For a traveler with impaired sight, hearing or locomotion, all this discord means it’s a good idea to A) have an idea what the law does and doesn’t require; and B) ask a lot of detailed questions before choosing a hotel. If the answers are discouraging, you may be able to get the attention of federal regulators.

“I believe some hotels are trying to make an effort with the ADA, but it’s my experience both as an attorney and a consumer of hotels that the great majority of hotels are still out of compliance,” says Alexis Kashar, a Sherman Oaks civil rights attorney.

Kashar, who is hearing-impaired, notes that “usually a hotel just has one or two pieces [of equipment] rather than the full array of products they are supposed to have. For example, they might have a TDD [telephone], but not the required fire alarm with the flashing lights. . . . I really do not like to travel alone, or to sleep in a hotel alone. It’s really a scary experience for me to sleep in a hotel without all the required equipment.”

Beyond that, she adds, “some hotels may have the equipment, but fail to train their employees. . . . What good is a TDD if a hotel employee cannot locate it?”

In the Berkeley offices of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund Inc., staff attorney Jan Garrett laments that “my general sense [of hotels] is they’re not doing very well. I myself use a wheelchair, and I have seen changes. But it’s rare to find a hotel where they’ve done a very complete and thorough job” of meeting requirements. In some cases, Garrett suggests, “I have to think that . . . this is a business decision on their part, that they would prefer to wait to be sued than take a pro-active stance in complying with the accessibility laws.”

However, as architects are quick to point out and attorneys on all sides must admit, the Americans With Disabilities Act is no simple law.

The government technical assistance manual that gives hotels specific directions on compliance runs about 80 pages. In many cases, it’s quite specific: A new hotel with fewer than 25 rooms must have at least one “accessible” room with such features as widened bathroom doors and handrails; a hotel with 400 rooms must have at least nine accessible rooms, at least four with roll-in showers. But as Wodatch acknowledges, there’s no “cut-and-dried” formula for measuring what steps should be considered “readily achievable” in a pre-1992 building.

Thus replacing steps with a ramp at a mom-and-pop restaurant might not be required, but replacing the steps outside a Marriott hotel might be. Hoteliers can get guidance from a federal hotline, but ultimately make their own judgment, hoping that if a guest mounts a legal challenge, a judge won’t disagree with them.

At Universal Designers & Consultants Inc., a Maryland firm that specializes in ADA advice, vice president Jim DiLuigi reports that he is consulting with more hotel chains and owners than at any other time since passage of the ADA--about a dozen, including the American Hotel and Motel Assn. The association, he said, “has put considerable time into educating its members.” But because of the vague language of the law, “there’s a lot of confusion out there,” DiLuigi said.

The confusion is most troubling for all sides, he said, when people with disabilities come to an older hotel property and expect its accessibility to meet the often-costly standards the ADA sets on new buildings, rather than the less-exacting requirements it mandates for pre-1992 buildings.

If it’s true that some hoteliers are sitting back and waiting for legal action to nudge them along, they may be unacquainted with the growing files of the Justice Department. Among the more than 500 ADA-related settlements obtained by the department over the last five years, several have involved familiar hotel chains:

* In January 1993, pursuing a guest complaint against the Hotel Inter-Continental New York, Justice officials, Wodatch said, struck a settlement agreement that called for the hotel to build ramps to its front entrance and lobby restaurant, and to make first-floor bathroom and several guest rooms more accessible.

* In November 1994, Justice officials won a settlement with the Dallas Hyatt Regency under which the hotel agreed to make 28 guest rooms, its health club and several drinking fountains more accessible. The settlement followed complaints stemming from a 1992 conference of the Spina Bifida Assn. of America. The hotel agreed to give 24 guests compensatory damages equivalent to $1,500 each.

* In a September 1996 settlement affecting more than 200 hotels, Courtyard by Marriott agreed to upgrade its national reservations system to better track accessible rooms. The settlement followed complaints from an Oklahoma couple who reserved an accessible room at the Memphis Courtyard by Marriott in 1993, then arrived to find it had been given to another guest. The settlement included a damage payment of $10,000 to the customer and a civil penalty payment of $7,000 to the Justice Department.

* In June, challenged by an Ohio father of two deaf girls who were unable to use a hotel television during a visit last year, the Hotel Bel-Air paid the family $5,000 and agreed to provide television sets with closed-captioning and other devices for the hearing-impaired.

Also, in a 1994 case filed not by the Justice Department but by attorney Kashar, the Sea Venture Hotel in Pismo Beach was sued by a couple who said they were left sleeping in their beds during a 1993 hotel fire because their room wasn’t outfitted with a flashing-light fire alarm. The couple, David and Jodie Gardner, said they slept through an evacuation prompted by conventional alarms and only awoke when they smelled smoke. No one was hurt in the fire, and Kashar said the case was later settled.

Meanwhile, some hotels have won reputations for responsiveness to travelers with disabilities--and gained business in the bargain.

One is the Renaissance Washington, D.C. Hotel (999 9th St. NW), an 8-year-old, 801-room convention hotel that regularly hosts such groups as the National Council of Independent Living and National Black Deaf Advocates. Mark Gruzin, assistant general manager of the hotel, said it not only pays close attention to staff sensitivity training but seeks out advice from guest groups on how to spend about $50,000 every year to further upgrade its accessibility--an investment that has helped bring the hotel nearly $1 million yearly in business from groups interested in disability issues. Recent investments include a $12,000 ballroom sound system designed with hearing-impaired groups in mind. Early in the hotel’s life, Gruzin said, management realized that “it was good business for us to be above and beyond the ADA requirements.”

For travelers and hoteliers seeking information, the Department of Justice maintains a technical assistance hotline (tel. [800] 514-0301 or [800] 514-0383 TDD) and an ADA home page (https://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/adahom1.htm). To complain about a business or public agency that may be in violation, consumers can write the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Disability Rights Section, P.O. Box 66738, Washington, DC 20035-6738.

Another source for disabled travelers is Access to Travel magazine (P.O. Box 43, Delmar, NY 12054-1105; tel. [518] 439-4146), a quarterly that will increase to six issues yearly in 1998. Subscriptions cost $16 for four issues.

Reynolds travels anonymously at the newspaper’s expense, accepting no special discounts or subsidized trips. He welcomes comments and suggestions, but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053 or e-mail chris.reynolds@latimes.com.