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549 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 8 (1997)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0549 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is an expression of the concept that persons with disabilities are a minority subject to discrimination based on the prejudices of others. The analogy was born during the 1960s from the struggle to eliminate discrimination against African Americans. The groups of persons with disabilities who fought for the ADA and its predecessor, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, were typically persons with visible impairments, many of which limited mobility. The ADA was clearly intended to provide entitlements to the persons represented by the advocacy groups, and little attention was given to the large number of persons who are identified as part of the disabled community by national surveys. Information presented in this volume demonstrates that the suits filed under the provisions of the ADA are more likely to come from the larger population than from the target group envisioned by the ADA's supporters. The larger group consists of persons, typically middle-aged or older, with nonvisible impairments, such as arthritis, cardiovascular conditions or chronic back pain, that first occurred during adulthood. The distinction between these groups is one of many differences between persons with disabilities. Some of the other differences discussed in the articles that follow are the special situation of persons with disabilities who are doubly disad- vantaged because they also suffer discrimination based on age, ethnicity, or gender or they have few skills and little education. One theme that emerges from the articles in this issue is the need to understand that there are important differences between the various seg- ments of the population of persons with disabilities and that policies and programs that do not reflect the differences are unlikely to succeed. The benefits of antidiscrimination policies, such as the ADA, are believed to benefit a relatively small part of the population of persons with disabilities. An exception is the provision for reasonable accommodation, which, several authors suggest, could benefit a much larger portion of the persons with disabilities who seek employment or reemployment following an episode of work disability. Another theme expressed in several articles extends beyond specific issues related to persons with disabilities. It is the question of what constitutes appropriate social entitlements for persons with disabilities and how these entitlements ought to differ across subgroups of the population. What is, for example, the appropriate balance between self-reliance and government intervention? Is employment a socially desirable outcome of such importance that it outweighs efficiency-based comparisons of the value of outputs to the costs of production? 8

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