U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige today paid tribute to the 12th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by hailing the progress that the law has enabled people with disabilities to make.

At the Education Department, significant resources — more than $130 million — are currently being devoted to implementing the landmark measure.

"The ADA has been critically important in removing barriers — physical, policy, and systemic — to ensure that people with disabilities can participate in many of the same activities as Americans without disabilities," Paige said. "The act has played a major role in guaranteeing that housing, transportation, employment, recreation, shopping and voting — indeed most activities that occur in places of public accommodation — are available without discrimination on the basis of disability."

The Education Department sponsors numerous projects that help support the law, including:

• The government's largest grant program for providing technical assistance on the ADA, administered through the department's National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR). The institute funds 10 regional centers that offer information, training, and technical assistance to employers, people with disabilities, and other entities with responsibilities under the ADA. Each Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center (DBTAC) provides comprehensive resources on ADA issues in employment, public services, public accommodations, and communications.

• $20 million for the department's Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers which conduct advanced research in the field of assistive technology.

• $3 million for the Interagency Committee on Disability Research, substantially increasing the funding to coordinate the many federal disability research programs.

• $5 million for the Assistive Technology Development Fund to assist small business in the development and transfer of new technologies.

• $37 million for NIDRR to award matching grants to states to help people with disabilities purchase assistive technology through low interest loans and other means. And,

• $65 million to support Jumpstart research in the area of assistive and universally designed technologies, as well as aiding small businesses in the development and transfer of new technologies through the Small Business Innovative Research program.

In addition, NIDRR issued last year the "First National Study of People with Disabilities Who are Self Employed" (http://rtc.ruralinstitute.umt.edu/SelEm/RuSelfEm.htm). Forbes magazine the same year recognized NIDRR's dissemination project ABLEDATA as one of its "Best of the Web" sites in the Summer 2001 issue (http://www.abledata.com).

Since its signing July 26, 1990, by former President George Bush, the ADA has given people with disabilities rights and protections similar to those previously afforded only in connection with federally assisted or federally conducted activities through Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

The act has played a vital role in raising public awareness of disability issues and the broad social benefits of equal opportunity.

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