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Accessible Cruises, Fair Housing, and the Americans With Disabilities Act

© Scott Paul Rains

A single strand of hair from a horse's tail is almost invisible--like a piece of fishing line--but it is quite strong. Birds and businesses ignore this fact to their peril.

My grandfather, a spry Goral from the mountains of Orava in Slovakia, taught me how he used to catch birds for pets as a boy back home. He would find horsetail hair, attach one end of a strand to a board, tie a noose-like knot in the other end, set the board on the ground, and bait it with birdseed. Without fail, birds would tangle their feet or snare their heads in the fragile-looking "loopholes."

I never tried the technique myself. Instead the image of greedy birds fluttering in desperation stuck with me as a sort of moral lesson on taking shortcuts and succumbing to the temptation of loopholes.

This week two legal cases in the United States strengthened the movement toward Inclusive Tourism and Inclusive Destination Development. Both snared businesses who might have done better for their investors had they paid closer attention to the intent, rather than the apparent loopholes, in the the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Inclusion may appear to be a fragile, slender thread but it is the cost of doing business in the USA.

On Monday June 6, 2005 the US Supreme Court determined that the Americans with Disability Act protects passengers with disabilities even on ships flagged to foreign ports when they operate in the US. This case, "Spector v. Norwegian Cruise Line, 03-1388," was discussed in the previous "Travel & Disability" section article, "Manifest Accessibility" (http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/1842...

The majority opinion, written by Justice Kennedy explains,

Large numbers of disabled individuals, many of whom have mobility impairments that make other kinds of vacation travel difficult, take advantage of these cruises, or would like to. To hold there is no Title III protection for disabled persons who seek to use the amenities of foreign cruise ships would be a harsh and unexpected interpretation of a statute designed to provide broad protection for the disabled.

Notice that even the court decision recognizes the preference for cruising as a travel product by consumers with disabilities. As some cruise lines recognize this and adopt Universal Design principles to satisfy their customers, it will become all the more difficult for other lines to watch their market share fall away to their competitors who do not practice discrimination. Universal Design will trump notions of ship design that have long been uncritically accepted as essential to seafaring and seaworthiness.