Legal Protection
Those with invisible disabilities are protected by national and local disability laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 has been amended several times such that the definition of “handicapped” includes the statement, “any person who... (C) is regarded as having such an impairment” .
This particular defining point of “handicapped” puts the assessment of impairment in the hands of observers who may or may not regard others as having an impairment. For people with disabilities, invisible or not, this creates a space for discriminatory practices which stem from the observer’s perception of who is disabled and who is not.
Read more about this topic: Invisible Disability
Famous quotes containing the words legal and/or protection:
“There are ... two minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal system. On the one hand those rules of behavior which are valid according to the system’s ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and on the other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behavior by its officials.”
—H.L.A. (Herbert Lionel Adolphus)
“The best protection parents can have against the nightmare of a daycare arrangement where someone might hurt their child is to choose a place that encourages parents to drop in at any time and that facilitates communication among parents using the program. If parents are free to drop in and if they exercise this right, it is not likely that adults in that place are behaving in ways that harm children.”
—Gwen Morgan (20th century)