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"They
don't seem to understand that the ADA is about independent access and that
it's about dignity," said Reddy, operations director of Accessibility
Development Associates, a Pittsburgh firm that helps clients identify
architectural and other barriers that could hinder employees or customers
with disabilities. The
audit of Renaissance Woman for ADA compliance is part of a cooperative
program called Access South Side. Sponsored by the nonprofit South Side Local
Development Co., it's one response to a number of lawsuits filed over a year
ago by the Disabilities Law Project against some of the restaurants and other
businesses in the popular East Carson business district. The
idea of Access South Side is to educate businesses on the law's requirements
and help them find ways to comply without necessarily costing them lots of
money. Accessibility Development Associates hopes it will eventually be used
as a model by other neighborhoods. The evaluation, partially subsidized by the
development company, is being offered on a trial basis to 15 of the
approximately 200 businesses along East Carson, many of which occupy historic
buildings with front stoops. "There
are cost-effective ways of making modifications. It doesn't always take a
million dollars," Reddy said. "We try and work with you." A
ramp, Reddy argued to Niederberger, could attract new patrons to the dress
shop in addition to people with disabilities. She mentioned mothers with
small children in strollers or elderly shoppers who use walkers as examples. Then
she noted that insurance rates for the building might drop once a ramp is
installed and that the project could possibly qualify for government
assistance that would help pay for the cost of installation. "It's
sounding better and better," Niederberger said. Reddy
first looked at parking and the exterior pathway into the store. The stoop
was the only outside impediment Reddy found and, since there is no private
parking available to customers, that was not considered to be an issue. She
then measured the store's double front doors. Each of the two doors is 24
inches wide, below the 32-inch ADA requirement. But when both are opened
together, the doorway is in compliance. So
Reddy suggested installing a sign and doorbell outside that a wheelchair user
could use to alert store owner Ruthann Mangelsdorf to open both doors.
Typically one door is locked. Inside
the store, Reddy measured the pathways around the dress racks and found them
to be wide enough. The counter where the cash register sits is 49 inches
high, too tall for a wheelchair user to be serviced and higher than the ADA
requirement of 36 inches. But
rather than replace the counter, Reddy suggested store clerks simply agree to
walk around it to conduct transactions with disabled clients. They could use
a clip board to hold paperwork, she suggested. |
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South Side
businesses find complying
with disability access standards isn't the
obstacle they'd feared |
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The
seven-inch stoop at the front door of Renaissance Woman, a specialty dress
shop in a refurbished old building on the South Side, is big enough to stop a
wheelchair in its tracks. Installing
a ramp on the sidewalk along East Carson Street would be the best way to make
the building compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, consultant
Penny L. Reddy told the building's owner, William Niederberger. Niederberger,
eager to maintain the former bank's historic look, at first blush questioned
the need. Why couldn't an occupied wheelchair be carried over the hump or
balanced like a wheelbarrow and given a good push? It's
the type of question Reddy frequently hears from landlords and small-business
owners confronted with meeting the requirements of the law approved by
Congress a decade ago to improve public access for people with disabilities. |
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