When the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law in 1990, it provided the first-ever federal equal rights protections for people with disabilities. That meant that a disability could no longer be used as an excuse not to hire an otherwise qualified employee; it also meant that workplaces had to become fully accessible to those employees—at businesses with more than 15 workers, at least. The ADA opened up a new world of opportunities for people who had largely been shut out of the corporate world.
