Birth of an advocate: One relentless woman's three-year quest to improve accessibility in the Village of Arlington Heightsts

Editor's Note: Read the story of a busy professional
-- in her own words -- who has become an advocate for accessibility.
An engineer, she noticed the improper curb cuts in her neighborhood;
she also noticed the removal of
some curb cuts where a friend and neighbor rode his wheelchair. After
a couple of years of patient communication with the village officials,
she finally got mad! The outcome was a recent village vote to stop the
village’s practice of removing curb cuts. Congratulations to these
stalwart citizens. Read on!

Barrier Curb and Sidewalk installed under Village Program.

Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act is only as good as the government agencies charged with shaping the built environment to accommodate people with disabilities [1] or the advocates who hound them to do so. I was reluctant to add ADA advocate to my job description, but my community pushed me too far.

In the summer of 2006 I noticed that the Village of Arlington Heights was taking out handicap ramps. This was usually at intersections where there was sidewalk on one side of the street but not on the other. They were taking out the legs of the sidewalk pointing towards the area with no sidewalks, but were leaving the perpendicular legs and ramps in place. The ramps removed were usually replaced with barrier curbs and grass but sometimes they were replaced with barrier curbs and sidewalk. Pedestrians and people using wheel chairs or pushing strollers could still get to where they were going using the perpendicular ramps left in place. In some locations, however, they took out ramps when there was a sidewalk across the street and even when removing the ramp created a significant detour. One detour was over 600 feet long.

Barrier curb and grass installed under Village Program.

This made me mad, but my parents were sick, I was visiting colleges with my son, my job was hectic, and I did not need to add a battle to my list. Until, one day I came across an intersection on Bristol Lane where the Village was repaving a street. It appeared that they were leaving a barrier curb in place. There was no perpendicular curb so this rendered the whole length of sidewalk unusable for people using wheel chairs. I called the Engineering Department and talked to the Engineer in charge of the job. She said this was not an oversight by the contractor, as I had assumed. She said the Village would not take out the barrier curb because there was no sidewalk across the street. I was shocked and said something like “Are you kidding? You think it is reasonable to ask a person in a wheel chair to wheel in the street an extra 90 feet, parallel to a public sidewalk? That is a violation of ADA.” She assured me she was not kidding. This was Village policy.

An advocate was born. I first tried quiet diplomacy. I contacted a Village Trustee I knew. I explained the story then delivered a follow up letter, with pictures, explaining this was both stupid and illegal. She did not get back to me or answer my email and phone queries.

Barrier curb left in place under the Village Program

I toured the town with a neighbor who uses a wheel chair. He immediately understood the potential impact of this policy. He lives on a cul-de-sac with no sidewalks that is connected to a sidewalk by a short, ramped walk from the street. If the Village removed his walk, his regular trips to a neighborhood store would require an additional half mile of travel. We discussed strategy and committed to write and ask the Village to stop this ridiculous policy. Because of coordination issues and the business of life, the letter was not sent until July of 2007.

Two months later we received a response detailing why the Village planned to keep removing sidewalks and ramps in town. They had decided that some sidewalks in the public right of way were not part of an accessible path, based on something in an ADAAG manual.

Sidewalk ramp improperly installed in the Village in 2008.

My mother died, my father in law died, my neighbor’s father died and time marched on. In my spare time I contacted the US Access Board who told me to talk to the Department of Justice (DOJ) because Title II states that when a sidewalk crosses a curb, a curb ramp is required. The DOJ said we should file a complaint, adding that the Village could not make the public right of way less accessible under Section 35.133. The Illinois [2] Attorney General’s office told me my neighbor should file a complaint and that it would receive high priority because the village was systematically reducing access. My neighbor was convinced that we could reason with the Village so no complaint was filed. We just kept plugging away. We contacted accessibility support groups and gathered information that we faxed to the Village. We made calls, we made noise, but we made no progress with staff.

We wrote the mayor a 16 page letter, including attachments, in February of 2008. She sent back a note telling us to meet with staff. So we met with staff on April 3, 2008. We were told that the Village was definitely going to take out the ramp my neighbor used regularly as well as the whole sidewalk on Bristol that had prompted my call in 2006 and every other ramp in town meeting their criteria because “blind people might wander into a neighborhood without sidewalks.”

April 4th I started searching for information on the conflict between people with visual impairments and people using wheel chairs. An organization that supports mobility for people with visual impairments told me the Village actions were illegal. Detectable warnings, required on all new ramps after 2001, alerted such people that they were leaving a safe place.

I contacted another support organization who offered to help. We waited while they searched for an attorney to handle our case. Time passed. My father died.

After President Obama was elected, I read that he had asked the Access Board to hold off on the launch of their revised regulations until his team had an opportunity to review the proposed changes. So I wrote the Access Board and asked if they could make sure the new regulations could not be used to justify the removal of ramps and sidewalks. The coordinator of research for the Access Board assured me that Arlington Heights “had completely misunderstood everything.” The ADAAG manual cited was a tool to help cities meet the ADA requirements, but it was not the law. She said the law required a ramp everywhere a sidewalk met a street and that it was “inconceivable” that a town would actually remove the sidewalk to get around that obligation. She said the town could not reduce access and suggested that taking out ramps like the one my neighbor uses would be “clearly punitive.” Again, she suggested I contact the DOJ.

My neighbor and I wrote one last letter to the Village Manager, copying the Board of Trustees and the candidates challenging the incumbents. This letter included an email from the Access Board and one from the support organization for people with visual impairments, both backing our position. This got the attention of the Board and one Trustee asked the Manager to bring this issue to the Board for Discussion.

We then asked for and got a moratorium on the removal of any ramps until that meeting was held. At this meeting, held May 11th, the Village staff continued to argue for the removal of ramps and sidewalks to limit the liability of the Village. Fortunately the Village Board listened to reason and voted to stop taking out ramps 8-0. The process lasted much longer than my patience. But it was worth it.

This should be the end of the story, but there are always messy details in a tale this long. The Village has not promised to replace the barrier curbs installed under this program. They have not promised to replace the barrier curbs they left in place under this program. And they have not even started to talk about the numerous ramps installed in town that do not meet ADA specifications, much less promise to institute a Quality Assurance Program to insure new ramps are built in accordance with the law. There is more work to be done.

Please join me. Become an advocate and speak up for accessibility. Report bad ramps and sidewalks as soon as you find them. Email or call the city immediately or you will find your city hiding behind a statute of limitations. Then all of us will live with these bad ramps and barrier curbs for ages. Keep a record of your contacts. If you don’t get a positive response in a reasonable time period, step up your program. Call the Illinois Attorney General’s office, or call a lawyer. You don’t have to fight the kind of battle we fought alone. We can change the world, together.