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Carpal Tunnel Syndrome not a Disability
An Anonymous Coward writes: "It turns out that the Supreme Court of the United States doesn't think Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is a real disability. See here for details." Read the summary or the whole opinion. In a nutshell: just because a woman was sufficiently disabled that she couldn't perform her job due to carpal-tunnel, doesn't mean she was sufficiently disabled to be considered disabled under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Everyone who has that nagging pain in your wrists should probably read this decision.
This is interesting. The court is basically saying that if you can do "everyday life tasks" (brushing your hair, cooking dinner, whatever), you're not disabled for the purposes of the ADA. But on my disability policy, it states that if I can't do my regular job, they consider me disabled. Since my job (like most of yours) involves lots of typing, losing both legs wouldn't make me disabled, but C-T would. So now the question is, how does this court decision affect my policy? Can I expect a call from my agent telling me they've changed their definition to line up with the court?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Take Aikido.
Aikido focuses on joint locks, which include wrist locks. After taking Aikido you will quickly have wrists that can withstand the rigors of typing. Flexible wrists are the key to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome, IMO, and Aikido is the key to flexible wrists.
Or you could just wait for speach recognition.
Moreover, Justice O' Connor pointed out that the test under the ADA is whether or not a person's disability affects his or her to perform normal daily tasks--not his or her ability to perform a specific job.
In fact, the ADA specifically states that this is the test. As Justice O'Connor wrote, "Repetitive work with hands and arms extended at or above shoulder levels for extended periods is not an important part of most people's daily lives," O'Connor wrote. "Household chores, bathing and brushing one's teeth, in contrast, are among the types of manual tasks of central importance to people's daily lives." In sharp contrast to the rather extreme and dire view suggested by the story posting <rant>(which, in my view, is either misleading and downright shameful or simply reflects a total lack of understanding of the decision and the governing laws)</rant>, the Justices did not rule on the validity of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome; they simply verified the intention of the ADA as written and asked the lower court to reconsider its decision.
In this case, the court held that the woman was not impaired in normal daily tasks, in spite of the fact that she was impaired in her job. There is a critical distinction here, and I firmly agree with the limitations placed on the ADA by the court here.
-db