Tanzina Vega: I'm Tanzina Vega and you're listening to The Takeaway. All this week we've been looking at how much has changed into 30 years since the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed. The ADA prohibited discrimination against people with disabilities in the United States, and that included physical barriers. Everything from sidewalks to subway stations. Yet, decades later these obstacles still exist in many cities across the country. According to a recent study from the Academic Journals series, 65% of curb ramps and 48% of sidewalks are not accessible for people with disabilities today.

Joining me to talk about all this is Aimi Hamraie, an associate professor of medicine, health and society at Vanderbilt University and author of the book, Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability. Aimi, thanks for joining me.

Aimi Hamraie: Thanks so much for having me.

Tanzina: The numbers I just cited, 65% of curb ramps and 48% of sidewalks are not accessible 30 years after the ADA, what's up with that?

Aimi: Well, it probably has to do with a few things. The first is that the law was not set up to create a sudden overnight transformation, it was set up to create gradual transformations in the built environment, and many parts of the law were created in negotiation with businesses and with other entities, and this has created a lot of slowness and loopholes in the enforcement of the ADA.

Basically, if someone wants a curb cut on the sidewalk in front of their business or their house, they have to wait until it's time for the sidewalk reconstruction in order to add that, or they have to sue someone on an individual basis in order to get it. It's a very slow process. Of course, businesses and the cities could voluntarily do this of their own volition, but they often don't do it because they are waiting for someone to basically enforce the ADA on them.

Tanzina: We just mentioned the curbsides and we're talking about even here in New York city, trying to get around to some of the subway stations if they don't have an elevator, for example, or an escalator, which many subway stations do not have that, can be almost an impossible task depending on the disability. Are we seeing other major physical barriers throughout our cities and maybe cities that don't have subways?

Aimi: Yes. There are so many types of barriers that come up in cities because cities, of course, are such complex built systems. There are things about how people move around, there are things about how people receive information. In addition to the types of mobility barriers that you were just mentioning, like the absence of curb ramps, or the absence of an elevator into a Metro station, a subway station, there are things like crossing lights that only have visual signals, but not sound signals, so blind people may not have the information that they need to know when to cross the street.

There are accessibility issues that come up around what we call wayfinding, which has signage that tells us where to go. If that information is only visual and it's not available in other formats, then a lot of people will not be able to access it. There are also new forms of barriers that are arising as technology changes that are not covered by the ADA. One example that I have experienced is that as cities move toward incorporating more LED lighting into streetlights and things like that, a lot of people actually get migraines from LED lighting or it triggers seizures or it triggers eye twitches, and so being able to go out into public space at night becomes quite a challenge if all of the lightings are LED.

This is a tension that's been created through efforts to save energy but that also have an effect on people's experience of public space.

Tanzina: Aimi, it's interesting because you say that this is something that-- These fixes to happen, they're not proactive. I'm wondering why have so many places just failed to comply with the ADA and whether there is a body that is enforcing these standards or not.

Aimi: That's a great question. The Department of Justice enforces the standards and there are ways to create accountability, and it really depends on localities as well. There are certain types of structures that there are people who come and check to see if they're accessible in order to issue permits and codes and things like that, and then there are others that elements of them unless a city is requiring that they be accessible, it really requires someone to bring an ADA complaint.

This is an issue with the way that the law is structured, is that it's so individual, and this applies also to the ADA and other areas like employment, where it really takes the time and energy of individual people to bring complaints and bring lawsuits in order to create changes, and so it's a very slow process. One can imagine that even in the process of entering such a complaint, you might get exhausted or you may run out of the resources, like legal or financial resources to follow through.

Tanzina: I'm wondering as we're talking, are these ADA compliant or are the expectations that come out of the ADA, do those also affect private buildings, private ownership, like apartment buildings, for example, or are we just talking about public structures, like streets?

Aimi: Yes, that's a great question. Title three of the ADA is places of public accommodation, and that includes businesses, basically any place that provides a service or access to a member of the public.

Tanzina: Are there specific cities, Aimi, that might serve as a model for the vision that you're seeing as becoming more inclusive for residents with disabilities? Is any place close to getting it better or right?

Aimi: That's a very good question. There are cities where disabled people have fought very hard to make them more inclusive. They're far from perfect, but I can give some examples. The classic example is in the San Francisco Bay area, which is a very hilly, densely populated place. Since the 1960s, disability activists have fought very hard to get curb cuts, to get BART stations, which is Bay Area Rapid Transit that have elevators and it's imperfect, but accessibility exists to a greater extent than other places, and so many disabled people move there and live there in community.

There are also examples of cities that were primarily developed or some of their infrastructures were primarily developed during the age of Disability Rights Law. In 1968 when Congress passed the Architectural Barriers Act, federal systems and spaces had to follow some minimal guidelines for accessibility and in places like Washington, D.C. where the subway system was developed right in the aftermath of the Architectural Barriers Act, we see some examples of accessibility that don't exist in other places.

It's definitely not perfect. There are still a lot of access barriers that exist, but you can look for places where there are a lot of disabled people in public space to be able to tell whether the infrastructures are supportive or not.

Tanzina: Aimi, we are in the middle still of a global coronavirus pandemic and as a result of that, people are really rethinking, at least here in New York City, how they get around. People were concerned about taking public transportation, so lots of options that people decided were walking or biking, does this present an opportunity to rethink how our cities are operating this coronavirus pandemic? Did it really allow, given the fact that some people decided to walk or bike instead of getting around in other ways, were people with disabilities limited more so by the coronavirus pandemic?

Aimi: It's important to remember that the coronavirus pandemic is, at its core, a disability issue. The majority of people who are affected by it have preexisting conditions and are vulnerable and susceptible to severe complications from coronavirus, and then also, there are so many people becoming disabled now because of the aftereffects of COVID. We are also facing a changing population that's going to need different ways of getting around.

For some people that may be driving in a car, for some people that may be walking or biking, but something that came to my attention recently because there was a big debate on Twitter and other places in the urbanist community, so this is the community of people that includes urban planners and other folks who are concerned with how cities are designed and planned, was whether in this shift away from driving cars or shift away from using mass transit, if there were opportunities for designing mobility differently.

One of the issues that came up is that many people-- if you're having extreme like respiratory issues or fatigue issues, driving in a car is going to be necessary, riding a bike is not going to be accessible. That's not to suggest that we shouldn't have infrastructure for bike riding, for example, but just that maybe in the design of cities going forward, we have to shift our expectations of what bodies can do and how they can breath and be outdoors together and things like that, and design spaces for slowness and respite, just as much as we're designing spaces for walkability and bikeability.

Tanzina: Lots to think about. Aimi Hamraie is an associate professor of medicine, health, and society at Vanderbilt University and author of the book, Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability. Aimi, thanks for being with us.

Copyright © 2020 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.