In an
opinion issued last Thursday in
Washburn v. Columbia Forest Products, Inc., the Supreme Court of Oregon held that under Oregon's disability discrimination law the question whether the plaintiff is a "disabled person" must take account of any measures s/he uses to mitigate the effects of an impairment. The court thus adopted the same rule adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court in
Sutton v. United Air Lines.
What I'm trying to understand is this whole concept of "mitigating" one's disability. If I (as a deaf person) make extensive use of text messaging, TTY's, flashing lights on various things (doorbells and whotnot) am I now no longer considered disabled? Isn't this sort of tautological, ie the mitigation required in ADA magically renders the person no longer covered by ADA which in turn puts the person back under ADA so that the mitigation can be applied...
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