Politics & Government

Somerville Faces 'Daunting' Accessibility Challenges, Says Report

A recent report evaluates Somerville's buildings and facilities through the lens of the Americans with Disabilities Act. There will be a public meeting about the report on Thursday.

Correction: A previous version of this story said the ADA meeting would take place on Thursday, Aug. 28. In fact, Aug. 28 is a Wednesday. That's when the meeting takes place. The mistake has been corrected.

ORIGINAL STORY

Somerville residents with disabilities could find themselves unable to obtain a residential parking permit, pay a parking ticket, apply for building permits, attend events at the Brown School, bring a child to the Recreation Building's tot lot or, "in some cases, vote in local, state, or federal elections at precinct polling locations."

That's according to a recent report, "ADA Self-Evaluation (as basis for Transition Plan)," commissioned by the city and prepared by the Institute for Human Centered Design.

The city is scheduled to hold a public meeting about the report on Wednesday, Aug. 28.

The report says, "Like many cities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Somerville has a large number of aging buildings and other facilities that pose barriers to residents and city employees with disabilities, and the sheer amount of work that would be required to bring these older facilities into compliance is daunting."

The report's introduction notes that, "Broadly speaking, key facilities throughout the city, such as the City Hall Annex, Cross Street Senior Center/Recreation, DPW Building, Recreation Building, Parking & Traffic Building, West Branch Library, the fire stations, and most of the older school facilities are either mostly or completely inaccessible."

Not all is doom and gloom. The report says most buildings built after 2000 are accessible, and it points to some efforts the city has taken to work on the problem, such as hiring an ADA coordinator, re-establishing a commission on disabilities and conducting the self-evaluation study in the first place.

Wednesday's meeting takes place at 6 p.m. at City Hall.

By the way, the report says "City Hall is an example of ... a 'functionally accessible' facility: the building features two accessible entrances, mostly accessible toilet rooms, and has accessible routes through most of the building, yet portions of the Aldermanic Chambers are inaccessible, some offices cannot be reached via an accessible route, and virtually none of the service counters are accessible."


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