The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 has several provisions with regard to handicapped accessibility. Both sections of Title II of the Act, the first covering public agencies, and the other section covering public transportation, Title III on Public Accommodations, and Title IV on Telecommunications, contain provisions on equal access to those entities by people with disabilities. Title II Section 1 of the Act, covering public agencies, are said to require those public agencies to comply with the provisions of Section 504 (Wikipedia 2006).
Section 504 is a civil rights law which guards against the discrimination of individuals with disabilities (Wright 2006). In the context of handicapped accessibility for children in public agencies, this can entail making sure that public agencies do not discriminate against such children. Both Sections I and II of the Act guard against discrimination of qualified individuals with disabilities or their exclusion from enjoying the benefits accruing to non-handicapped individuals from the services, activities or programs of any public entity. The two sections also guard against by any public entity against people with disabilities.
Here, public entity covers all state and local governments and their departments and agencies. The absence of accessibility to services is said to constitute a discrimination case with no regard to the person or groups that the lack actually affects. One example is the absence of wheelchair accessibility in passenger vehicles, or even just the leasing of non-wheelchair accessible vehicles done without the good faith act of trying to lease vehicles that are wheelchair-accessible, which are both considered acts of discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the 1973 Rehabilitation Act (Wikipedia 2006).
Title III, on the other hand, guards against discrimination in those public accommodations that are run by private entities, as well as prescribes the provision of protection from discrimination of those people with disabilities within the same range of facilities that are being enjoyed and made available to the general public. With regard to public services, all state and local governments are prohibited from discriminating against the discrimination of people with disabilities (Alexander, Hawes & Audet 2006).