28 CFR Parts 35 and 36 Amendment of ADA Title II and Title III Regulations To Implement ADA Amendments Act of 2008 - Final Rule

II. Summary of Regulatory Assessment

As noted above, Congress enacted the ADA Amendments Act in 2008 to ensure that persons with disabilities who were denied coverage previously under the ADA would again be able to rely on the protections of the ADA. As a result, the Department believes that the enactment of the law benefits millions of Americans, and that the benefits to many of these individuals are non-quantifiable, but nonetheless significant. This rule incorporates into the Department’s titles II and III regulations the changes made by the ADA Amendments Act. In accordance with OMB Circular A–4, the Department estimates the costs and benefits of this proposed rule using a pre-ADA Amendments Act baseline. Thus, the effects that are estimated in this analysis are due to statutory mandates that are not under the Department’s discretion. The Department has determined that the costs of this rule do not reach $100 million in any single year, and thus it is not an economically significant rule. 

In the Initial Regulatory Assessment (Initial RA), the analysis focused on estimating costs for processing and providing reasonable modifications and testing accommodations² to individuals with learning disabilities and ADHD³ for extra time on exams as a direct result of the ADA Amendments Act. Although the Department’s analysis focused only on these specific costs, the Department recognized that the ADA Amendments Act extends coverage to people with the full range of disabilities, and the accommodation of those individuals might entail some economic costs. After review of the comments, and based on the Department’s own research, the Department has determined, however, that the above-referenced exam costs represent the only category of measurable compliance costs that the ADA Amendments Act will impose and the Department was able to assess. While other ADA Amendments Act compliance costs might also ensue, the Department has not been able to specifically identify and measure these potential costs. The Department believes, however, that any other potential costs directly resulting from the ADA Amendments Act will likely be minimal and have little impact on the overall results of this analysis. 

The data used to support the estimates in this Final Regulatory Assessment (Final RA) focus on (1) the increase in the number of postsecondary students or national examination test takers requesting and receiving accommodations—specifically, requests for extra time on exams—as a result of the changes made to the ADA by the ADA Amendments Act; and (2) the actual cost of these additional accommodations, which involves costs of providing staff with the training on the changes made to the ADA by the ADA Amendments Act, administrative costs process the additional accommodation requests made as a direct result of the ADA Amendments Act, and the costs of additional proctor time needed for these additional accommodation requests. For both postsecondary institutions and national testing entities, costs are broken down into three components:

• One-time cost of training staff on relevant impact of ADA Amendments Act;

• Annual cost of processing additional accommodation requests for extra exam time made as a direct result of the ADA Amendments Act; and

• Annual cost of proctoring additional time on exams as a direct result of the ADA. Amendments Act.

Based on the Department’s calculations, total costs to society for implementing the revisions to the ADA Amendments Act range from $31.4 million to $47.1 million in the first year. The first year of costs will be higher than all subsequent years because the first year includes the one-time costs of training. Note that even the high end of this first-year cost range is well within the $100 million mark that signifies an ‘‘economically significant’’ regulation. The breakdown of total costs by entity is provided in the table below.

Note: Due to rounding, totals may not equate exactly to the product of the inputs provided in the table.

Taking these costs over the next 10 years and discounting to present value terms at a rate of 7 percent, the total costs of implementing this final rule are approximately $214.2 million over 10 years, as shown in the table below.

TOTAL COSTS OVER 10 YEARS, PRIMARY ANALYSIS