In September, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed updates to its Section 504 regulations. There have not been updates to the regulations since they started in 1977. This update is important because we have the chance to protect the rights of disabled people. We can make sure people with disabilities can access health care and vital services without discrimination. Our community needs to show our support for these changes by submitting comments! ASAN is holding a webinar to talk about the proposed updates and how to submit your own comments.
In this webinar, we will answer questions like:
- What is Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act?
- What are the proposed updates?
- Should I submit comments — and how do I do it?
This webinar is open to everyone, but we especially want to invite self-advocates and allies to attend!
Join us on Tuesday, October 17 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time. The webinar will be on Zoom and will have CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation). It will also be streamed live on Youtube.
If you have any questions or would like to request any additional accommodations such as ASL interpretation, please email jgood@autisticadvocacy.org.
More Information
When people talk about Section 504, they’re talking about Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. A group of disabled people staged a protest in San Fransisco to get Section 504 issued. We call that protest the 504 Sit-in. Without the regulations, the Rehabilitation Act wouldn’t be able to help people with disabilities like we needed it to.
Before the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) existed, people with disabilities relied on Section 504 to defend ourselves from discrimination in federal programs. Federal program here means any program that the US government runs. Section 504 is still very important. Federal programs, or programs that take federal money, aren’t supposed to discriminate against people with disabilities. For example, almost all hospitals use federal money. If a hospital discriminates against a disabled person, we can use Section 504 to defend that person’s rights.
In September, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed updates to its Section 504 regulations. There have not been updates to the regulations since they started in 1977. This update is important because we have the chance to protect the rights of disabled people. We can make sure people with disabilities can access health care and vital services without discrimination. This is something the Administration can do without Congress, and it will make many people’s lives better.
Our community needs to show our support for these changes! Updating regulations takes a long time and can be difficult to understand. This is even more true for Section 504, because it applies to so many programs. We need to take this opportunity to tell the government why this change is so important to us by submitting comments! You can talk about your own experiences with discrimination or tell a story. For example, the regulation talks a lot about healthcare discrimination, so you could share a story of a time you dealt with medical discrimination. You can also talk about the experiences of a family member or friend who had to deal with discrimination.Ready to submit a comment? You can see our Action Alert about submitting your own comments here.