On March 12, 1990, over one thousand people rolled in wheelchairs, leaned on crutches and marched from the White House to the U.S. Capitol. Upon reaching the Capitol, a relative handful of protestors — about 60 of them — started crawling up the building’s 83 steps. In doing what was later dubbed the “Capitol Crawl,” protesters were making a straightforward point unmissable: built environments typically accommodate able-bodied people much more easily than disabled folks.
This was all in support of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a bill that ultimately passed into American law. It is no exaggeration to say the law’s passage transformed American life. This is true in ways both large and small: thanks to the ADA, employees have the right to request “reasonable accommodations,” like screen-reading software, from employers. ADA standards require curbs to be ramped — the kind of thing that might not impact most people but allows folks in wheelchairs to more comfortably move through cities. Many things ushered in by the ADA, such as live closed captioning on television, have become common regardless of the audience.
In December of 2024, the City of Minneapolis published its “ADA Transition Plan for Public Works.” All told, the documents listed total over 200 pages: the “American with Disabilities Act Transition Plan for Public Works” focuses on the public-infrastructure side of the ADA, ranging from how high buttons should be on traffic lights to allowable slopes on curb ramping. The “Vision Zero Action Plan 2023-2025” outlines the City’s attempts to end “traffic deaths and severe injuries” and includes analyses of particularly dangerous intersections. The “Transportation Action Plan” ties it all back to public safety writ large, exploring the relationships between safety, equity and the public right-of-way. (If you are curious about any of these pieces, they can be accessed at the City’s website: https://bit.ly/MPLSADA).
This is all, of course, well and good. But the “Plan for Public Works” reveals just how far the City of Minneapolis has to go. One person with a disability surveyed for the Plan described being in a wheelchair in Minneapolis as “very challenging … In winter, I’m resigned to staying in the house unless my aide drives me.” Another outlined “grave concerns about the safety of pushing a stroller through our neighborhood because of cars.”
In a 2018 “ADA Transition Plan,” the city of Columbia Heights acknowledged “general comments” that include “not enough sidewalks,” “not safe for pedestrians,” “lack of walkability,” “need better shoveling on sidewalks at bus stops,” and “it is hard for wheel chairs and disabilities.” A similar plan from Saint Anthony Village is publicly available, but it includes few public comments.
It may seem like the ADA is a relatively niche concern; if you’re able-bodied, you might wonder, why should you care? But, as one surveyed Minneapolis resident said, “I’m not disabled, but I am aging — with the expected decline in hearing sharpness, muscle strength and balance. Safe sidewalks are critical to me — more so everyday!” Nearly 80% of surveyed residents said that the sidewalks were in poor condition — the kind of thing that makes for unsafe travel whether you’re on foot or on wheels. The communities in and surrounding Northeast Minneapolis are no different, and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure can only serve to benefit residents, whether in the long or short run.
This all circles back, then, to the “Capitol Crawl” 35 years ago, which made legible the struggles faced by differently abled people in America. In a conversation with PBS, Anita Cameron, one of the folks who crawled up the Capitol’s steps, put it plainly. “I think a lot of people forget that the ADA was the floor. It was not the ceiling. … It was the beginning of rights for us, but it was not the end.” Not everyone will eventually end up in a wheelchair, but, given enough time and luck, some form of disability comes for nearly everyone. There has been undeniable progress on this issue, but there is still plenty of distance yet to travel before everyone can safely and comfortably walk – or roll – through town.