Posted on 03/14/2012 3:40:44 PM PDT by grundle
Many hotels are faced with making improvements to pools by Thursday or falling out of compliance with the latest accessibility laws for disabled people.
Hoteliers must have pool lifts to provide disabled people equal access to pools and whirlpools, or at least have a plan in place to acquire a lift. If they don't, they face possible civil penalties of as much as $55,000.
There are about 51,000 hotels, according to the American Hotel & Lodging Association, and most have pools.
The lifts are required by regulations made in 2010 stemming from the Americans With Disabilities Act, a civil rights law that bans discrimination based on disability.
With just days before the deadline, some hotels are considering shutting their pools or whirlpools to avoid penalties or possible lawsuits.
The 93-room Town & Country Inn in Quincy, Ill., for instance, has halted reopening its newly renovated pool and whirlpool for fear that it would buy the wrong type of lift and not meet the new rule.
"If we have to close our pool for a month, that's fine," says Dax Fohey, the hotel's general manager. "Our pool is a nice amenity, but it's not the main feature."
A pool lift costs $3,000 to $6,000. New hotels, which fall under different rules, are being constructed with built-in lifts.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Unbelievable......
If they need that gizmo, they aren’t safe in the pool to begin with.
You would think the whole damn nation was disabled.
Oh well, we get what we vote for.
Disabled people have gone from being sympathetic figures to crass shakedown artists.
Their agenda isn’t “equality” — it is revenge on the abled.
I 100% guarantee you that the last place I worked we were told the DAY AFTER the ADA passed that we were under NO circumstances to hire any disabled b/c they would be impossible to fire.
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A company would be better off hiring a moslem in full garb than a person in a wheelchair.
If there is a market for “accessible” pools, then hotels would be able to charge a premium for them, which would encourage more hotels to make their pools accessible.
It’s really wonderful how the free market works when it is allowed.
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Will the families of the disabled sue when they drown because they don’t know how to swim?
I bet the hotels will decide to close the pools—and they may never reopen them. Pools are expensive to maintain and costly from an insurance standpoint.
Now if you start putting in lifts so disabled people can use them, the liability insurance costs could go through the roof once underwriters start reviewing the issue.
Goodbye resort hotels. Goodbye Mom and Pop Motel 6s.
They would have to hire someone to operate the lift. This should be voluntary for the hotels to be wheelchair friendly. Butt out government!
The market only works that way if demand is high enough to justify charging a premium. The whole point of the ADA law is to force businesses to offer amenities that aren’t in demand enough to justify the expenditure. It’s the antithesis of how a free market works.
And what would happen if that employee lifting that disabled individual either had them fall out of the lift on to the concrete or fall in to the pool and drown?
If they want to swim that badly let them do themselves or a family member do it instead.
I hope the hotel owners with the closed pools put up signs mentioning how the federal legislators, judges, and trial lawyers, and disabled shakedown artists worked together to shut down the pools.
Exactly my point. But I guess an existing swim at own risk sign would suffice.
I’d past those signs all over those lifts!
In my city, they busted up 65 year old inlaid mosaic on street curbs to put in handicap ramps on every sidewalk at every intersection. Except the sidewalks are absolute broken crap and they flood so they get little use of any kind, especially if it has rained that week.
OK, how many congressmen/senators have quietly bought up pool lift franchise rights, to profit from this abomination?
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