We are awash in barriers, as our country splinters into groups hamstrung by biases too ingrained for easy fixes. Increasingly we identify by race, income, sexual orientation.
One splinter we can re-think are the “disabled.” The category itself is fluid: 20 years down the line, “able-bodied people” may well be “disabled.” Many will be temporarily disabled — think of those almost inevitable knee and hip replacements. Others will need a cane, a wheelchair, a walker. Crucially, though, the label doesn’t account for the modifications to the environment that will welcome “the disabled,” however we define the term, into the mainstream.
But we make those modifications grudgingly, spurred by legislation and court orders.
Consider curb cuts. Without them, we effectively block people in wheelchairs from city sidewalks. As for using a walker or a white cane, without curb cuts, a walk is a hazardous exercise.
The cuts demand no technological wizardry. Nor are they prohibitively expensive. And they incite no opposition from conservatives or liberals. The users span all incomes, races, genders, ages, sexual orientations.
Yet, our nation has far too few. On most sidewalks you will find missing cuts and broken ramps.
The cuts began as a commonsense way to help veterans. Post World War II, a coach pressured the University of Illinois to install some ramps for veteran student/athletes. Later, veterans spurred Kalamazoo, Michigan, to install a few ramps.
The plea soon morphed into a political cause.
The campaign started in earnest in Berkeley in the 1970s, when the campus brimmed with activists protesting the status quo on a lot of counts. “Rolling Squad” students, who lived in the one accessible dorm, the campus hospital, poured cement to make a ramp. The 1968 federal Architectural Barriers Act had mandated that government buildings be accessible — but not the sidewalks. The students’ protest spread, until the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act mandated curb cuts at intersections.
In an ideal world, curb cuts would now be standard across America.
But the cuts did not just happen.
Enter the courts.
New York City has 162,000 sidewalk corners.
In 1994, disability rights activists sued the city, arguing that too few sidewalks had cuts. In a settlement, the city promised to do better. Yet by 2014, three-quarters of the sidewalks in lower Manhattan were not safe for wheelchairs; more than a quarter had no curb cuts at all. A 2017 survey, ordered by the court, found that 80% of the curbs in the city did not meet ADA requirements. (In another lawsuit, activists sued the MTA: a 2013 renovation of a Bronx subway included no elevators.) The lawsuits, spearheaded by the Center for Independence of the Disabled, worked. Mayor de Blasio promised to survey and upgrade all sidewalk intersections. Of course, Mayor de Blasio soon will no longer be mayor.
Boston, too, has its tale of missing or broken cuts, followed by a lawsuit, followed by action. In 2018, of 23,000 curb cuts, more than half were not compliant with ADA regulations, or missing. Activists, led by the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center and Disability Law Center, sued the city. In the 2021 settlement, the city agreed to repair 1,600 curb cuts a year until it had repaired all of them. In addition, the city promised to give ramps to restaurants with outdoor dining. Activists will surely revisit Boston’s progress under its new mayor.
On the one hand, the legal victories are good news.
On the other hand, by making curb cuts into a demand for the disabled, we have overlooked the larger need, linking progress to court orders and lawsuits - hardly an effective way to make the cuts happen.
In addition to helping “disabled” pedestrians (a number that will grow as the country’s demographic ages), the cuts make transit easier for everybody. Parents pushing strollers, people hauling packages, toddlers on scooters, dog-walkers, others walking slowly — we all can benefit. Even runners.
Admittedly, curb cuts will not in and of themselves be enough: some sidewalks, with broken or uneven tiles, will still be hazardous.
Yet, curb cuts are a first step — a non-ideological fix, one that shouldn’t need class action lawsuits.
The solution: call, email, and phone your local officials. Ask them to implement this common-sense solution, not on behalf of the disabled, but on behalf of all their constituents.
Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in Providence, R.I. Email retsinas@verizon.net.
From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2021
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