Abstract:

The National Organization on Disability (NOD) in the late 1980s joined with the public opinion research firm Louis Harris and Associates to conduct an ongoing series of benchmark surveys to document the attitudes and experiences of Americans with disabilities. The 1998 survey reports that much progress has been made in the last 12 years particularly since the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act. It reveals that people with disabilities on the whole tend to be more severely disabled than they were in previous years. Regardless of the cause , if this trend continues, there is a real possibility that the gaps will not only persist but further widen in coming years unless more aggressive steps are taken to address them.