CASI & ADA ANNIVERSARY WEBINAR CELEBRATION
Friday, July 31, 2020, from 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm PDT
FREE REGISTRATION!
CASI is pleased to welcome John Wodatch, Ida Clair, and Janis Kent for a conversation and celebration moderated by our president, Ernest Wuethrich, to celebrate 30 years of the ADA and 10 years of CASI.
All three have worked in their fields and in the accessibility world for many years in differing capacities. John is a disability rights attorney that led DOJ’s Disability Rights Section and was one of the drafters of the ADA. Ida is California’s Acting State Architect, was a founding member of CASI, and has had a key role in creating regulations for Chapter 11B and providing oversight for DSA's CASp program. Janis was CASI's Founding President and has been involved with CASI since then.
Join us as we listen to their stories of the "good ol' days", stories that most of us have never heard about how things got to be the way they are. Ever wonder where the elevator exception came from? Or how the CASI seed was planted?
Ernest will be moderating and asking your questions during the webinar. Feel free to submit questions in the webinar chat feature or submit them ahead of time to kdunlap@evanterry.com.
Since this is a time to celebrate, please limit your questions to nontechnical issues that don't require our speakers to provide an interpretation of code. Think of it as a virtual happy hour where we all have a chance to get to know them, and our field, better.
Panelists:
John Wodatch is a disability rights attorney, specializing in the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. He served for 42 years in the Federal government, where he authored the government’s comprehensive disability rights regulations and created and led the Department of Justice’s section in charge of enforcing the ADA.
He is one of the drafters of the Americans with Disabilities Act. He served as a member of the negotiating team established by President George H. W. Bush, as the Department of Justice’s chief technical expert during the writing and passage of the ADA. He was also part of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations that helped develop the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. He is continuing to work on the international level, assisting countries with their own disability rights laws and working to seek U.S ratification of the CRPD.
He was the chief author of the Department of Justice’s 1991 ADA regulations, created DOJ’s initial ADA technical assistance programs, and assembled the Department’s ADA enforcement staff. From 1990 until 2011 he served as the Director and Section Chief overseeing all interpretation, technical assistance, and enforcement of the ADA at the Department of Justice. Just before he retired, he was responsible for the first major revision of the Department's ADA regulations, including the 2010 Standards for Accessible Design. He is also the chief author of the first Federal regulations implementing section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
In 2010 he was honored with the Presidential Distinguished Rank Award for exceptional achievement in his career. He received a B.A. from Trinity College, an M.P.A. from Harvard University, and a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law School.
Ida Clair is a Principal Architect of the Codes and Standards at the Department of General Services Division of the State Architect (DSA). Ida has twenty-six years of experience as an architect in private practice and has been a Certified Access Specialist since 2009. She is responsible for regulation, policy, and interpretation development for California Title 24, Part 2, Chapter 11B, Accessibility regulations. As Principal Architect, Ida manages Accessibility, Fire and Life Safety, and Green Building programs in providing design and construction oversight for California K-12 schools and community colleges. She also oversees the Certified Access Specialist Program and CASp Examination development. Ida is a founding member of the Certified Access Specialist Institute and a Director on the Board of the AIA Central Valley.
Janis Kent, FAIA, CASp is a licensed California Architect and has been involved with Access in the built environment since the mid-1980s. She is designated a Subject Matter Expert (SME) by the California Division of the State Architect, a Certified Access Specialist, and has participated in developing the state CASp exams. In addition to having managed a variety of architectural projects, she has surveyed numerous facilities for accessibility compliance and provided quality control for facilities throughout the country.
Ms.Kent has been asked to speak on Accessibility at a variety of venues from the Dwell conventions in Los Angeles, to Design DC in Washington, to National AIA Conventions in Chicago, New Orleans, Atlanta, Orlando, New York, and Las Vegas, and the California Hotel & Lodging Association, California Public Parking Association, the Nevada State Board of Architecture, Interior Design, and Residential Design as well as numerous business associations and AIA Chapters. She has been invited to speak at business associations and not-for-profit organizations including Southern California Association of Non-Profit Housing (SCANPH), Manufactured Housing Educational Trust (MHET), California Public Parking Association (CPPA), ICC National Construct Symposium and local ICC chapters. Her most recent book ADA in Details – Interpreting the ADAS for Accessible Design, published by Wiley, is considered a top resource on Access used by architects, designers, plan checkers/inspectors, and facility managers nationally—“... the most comprehensive and useful tool available for anyone involved in the field of accessibility compliance. The book explains compliance with concise bullet-point summaries of the requirements that are integrated into a wealth of exceptionally useful annotated and dimensioned illustrations, all with the applicable reference sections cited.” She also has developed reference matrices for multi-family dwelling units, both for bathrooms and kitchens.
Janis is the Founding President of the Certified Access Specialist Institute (CASI) serving both those in private practice as well as the public sector who are involved with access in the built environment. Janis received her M.Arch from the University of California, Los Angeles. She was elevated to the College of Fellows of the AIA in 2015 for her work in Access and is currently the principal of Stepping Thru Accessibility in Long Beach, California.
Moderator:
Ernest Wuethrich is the current CASI President and a Certified Access Specialist in addition to an International Code Council Accessibility Inspector/Plans Examiner. He is currently the accessibility program manager for PM Design Group, a Santa Rosa architecture firm, and comes from a background overseeing architectural projects in the private sector including fueling, restaurants, and retail. Prior, Wuethrich was a project manager for a landscape architecture firm designing public parks and lands.
In 2017, Ernest was selected to be the CASp representative for the Access Code Collaborative (ACC). The Division of the State Architect established the ACC, a diverse 14 person panel, that provides input and feedback to the DSA on proposed amendments to California Building Code (CBC) Chapter 11B regulations affecting individuals with disabilities.
Throughout his career, Ernest has gained a wide variety of experience in the design industry and has become an advocate for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
**Webinar log-in information will be sent out via email the day prior to the webinar.
Online registration ENDS Thursday, July 30 at 2 pm PDT.
United States