Thanks to the Americans with Disabilities act – which turns 25 next year – and a demanding and aging baby boom generation, the nation has fewer limits for those with physical impairments. When New York City announced 30 years ago that it was spending more than $50 million for buses with wheelchair lifts, Ronnie Raymond rolled her eyes. The founder of a reinsurance brokerage firm, she commuted by bus “and I never saw anyone in a wheelchair, anywhere,” she says. “So why spend all that money?”
The city had already invested in 1,362 accessible buses, and only 10 to 20 people citywide a day boarded in a wheelchair.
“The reason I didn’t see anyone in wheelchairs,” Ms. Raymond later realized when she herself developed multiple sclerosis and had to use a wheelchair, “was because they couldn’t get anywhere.” Read more.
25 Years of Progress for those with Disability
November 23, 2014 by
