Prior Disability Standard

• The U.S. Supreme Court established a definition that requires individuals to demonstrate an impairment that severely restricts the individual from doing activities that are of central importance to most people's daily lives.
  
  

Objectives of ADA Amendments Act of 2008

• Congress amended the law because many people, for whom the law was intended to apply to, could not meet the high standard of a disability established by U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Congress intended the ADA Amendments Act to focus on an entities' compliance instead of an exhaustive analysis of an individual's impairment.
  
  

Amended Disability Standard

• The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 established a standard for disability when an individual has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; major life activities include such things as performing manual tasks, hearing, eating, sleeping, working and reading. A major life activity also includes the operation of a significant bodily function such as the function of the immune or neurological systems.
  
  

Disability Determination

• The law establishes that disability determinations should be made without consideration of the corrective effects of mitigating measures such as medication, medical equipment or supplies. However, corrective effects can be considered in "determining whether an impairment substantially limits a major life activity."
  
  

Remission and Minor Disabilities

• The law establishes that disabilities include impairments in remission if the disability would substantially limit a major life activity when active. However, the law excludes coverage of impairments that are transient and minor, which are expected to last six months or less.