To the editor:
The most troubling thing about the American with Disabilities Act civil rights laws is that there is no enforcement.
By this, I mean a way to show the public why certain logical decisions were made to benefit the public.
As an example: new and modern businesses are being built, but no one stops to thank the architect or craftsman for including these ADA civil rights regulations on paper.
Today, I ate at Zaxby’s, a chicken drive-through. Guess what they had? The correct ADA handicapped parking for wheelchair users. The city did their job by issuing a business license. A great addition to the Oak Ridge community.
One of the most simple rules is if you have only one handicapped parking space, that space has to be wheelchair-accessible; this means the new five-element sign, 18 x 24 inches, passed in 2008.
This automatically tells the public that the sign seven feet off the ground is ADA wheelchair-accessible.
Yes, I did see a new business that had moved into a refurbished building with new street striping but incorrect signs.
Now the sad thing is that too many people are allowed to do whatever they wish, and city officials are allowing this to occur decade after decade.
Year after year, I pay taxes and still cannot have access to wheelchair handicapped parking a good percentage of the time.
I do have walking trails, swimming pools, and bicycle lanes on the highways.
The funny thing is handicap parking abuse is visually witnessed but never ticketed by the police in the “Playful City.”
Lee Roy Gilliam
Oak Ridge
Skirnir Hamilton says
Do you think the sidewalk in this city if wheelchair accessible? I find I seriously doubt it. Seems you constantly have to go down a curb and back up again, which I know is doable in a wheelchair, as I have seen my father’s husband do it, but it isn’t the easiest. It also isn’t the easiest on my bike which I do use on sidewalks, as traffic isn’t the safest for a bike. On smaller side roads, I do bike on the road. Also, most stores don’t have ramps that are easily accessible for wheelchairs in this city. I mean, CVS has their wheelchair ramp hidden where I had no idea where it was when I was taking a cart of 12 packs out of the store and I spilled my 12 packs on the ground, because the curb is huge. Compared to where we moved from in WI, this entire city is not very wheelchair/ADA compliant. I hope that is in the process of changing, so that it will be more friendly to my husband’s father and more friendly for casual bicyclists who aren’t comfortable on many streets. (Yes, I am now learning the side streets that the city prefers the bicycles on, but only just learning them.)