All tagged Accessibility
An April 13 forum on accessibility in Swarthmore was organized by architect and Swarthmore resident Samina Iqbal, and hosted by Swarthmore Town Center. The event gave community members the opportunity to learn about the experiences of community members who are disabled, the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and options for complying with the law.
Traffic on Fairview Road, Swarthmore’s response to the sale of the county regional wastewater management company, and accessibility were the main topics of the month’s sole Swarthmore Borough Council meeting on August 10. The meeting was (virtually) packed, with 26 people in attendance, including 16 residents of Swarthmore and Ridley.
Swarthmore architect Samina Iqbal attended the Swarthmore Human Relations Commission (HRC) meeting on August 6 to raise the commission’s awareness of accessibility issues in the borough. Iqbal described the slow history of increasing accessibility in the United States, and the disabled community’s frustrations with how little progress has been made in the 30 years since the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act. She described her family’s challenges navigating the public world with her husband, Tony Denninger, in a wheelchair.
My husband has used a wheelchair since 2006. Despite this life-changing challenge, we are able to live our lives here in Swarthmore, where we are grateful to the schools, businesses, and libraries to which we have access. However, we can do these things in only a subset of places. There are many places where we still cannot participate in places of public activity. When it comes to compliance with accessibility requirements, complacent inaction is the norm. Why, in Swarthmore, is this most physical denial of civil rights perennially acceptable? Opinion Piece
