JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ANNOUNCES AGREEMENTS
TO ENSURE CIVIC ACCESS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Justice Department today announced the second phase of an initiative designed to ensure greater access for Americans with disabilities. The initiative, Project Civic Access, is a wide-ranging effort to ensure that cities and counties throughout the United States comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Under the initiative, Justice Department investigators visited and surveyed selected sites for ADA compliance.

Hailing the second phase of this initiative, Attorney General John Ashcroft today announced agreements with eight communities that will improve access to all aspects of civic life including courthouses, libraries, parks, sidewalks, and other facilities, as well as employment, voting, law enforcement activities, and emergency preparedness and response.

“Participation in civic life is a cornerstone of American society,” said Ashcroft. “To fulfill the ADA’s promise, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has worked in concert with cities and counties across the country to ensure access and achieve equal opportunity for people with disabilities. I thank the local government officials who have cooperated so willingly with the Department and have taken steps to make their communities more accessible.”

The communities that reached signed settlement agreements today include Madison County, Mississippi; Worcester County, Maryland; and Loudon County, Tennessee. The Justice Department has also reached agreements in principle with Springfield, Massachusetts; Lincoln County, Nebraska; Binghamton, New York; Muskogee, Oklahoma; and Carson City, Nevada. Signed settlement agreements with these five localities are expected soon. In addition, negotiations continue with cities and counties in seven additional states.

Prior to today’s announcement, the Justice Department has reached agreements with fifty-three local governments across the country regarding Project Civic Access. The Department will conduct on-site compliance reviews of nineteen additional states and U.S. territories later this year.

Today’s agreements address specific areas where access can be improved. These include:

• improving access at city and town halls, police and fire stations, sheriff departments, courthouses, community centers, convention centers, libraries, baseball stadiums, parks, pools, band shells, and gazebos;
• altering polling places, or providing curbside or absentee balloting;
• upgrading 9-1-1 emergency services for people who are deaf;
• installing assistive listening systems in legislative chambers, courtrooms, and municipal auditoriums;
• providing delivery systems and time frames for providing auxiliary aids, including sign language interpreters and materials in Braille, large print, or on cassette tapes;
• amending employment policies and practices to make reasonable accommodations for qualified job applicants or employees with disabilities;
• ensuring that emergency management procedures and policies enable people with disabilities to safely self-evacuate or be evacuated by others, and;
• providing curb ramps at newly constructed or altered streets that intersect pedestrian walkways, and at newly constructed or altered pedestrian walkways that intersect streets.

“I encourage all local governments to use these agreements and our informational materials as models to evaluate whether their own services are accessible to people with disabilities,” said J. Michael Wiggins, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “These important steps should be taken even without a review by the Justice Department.”

Two of the informational guides available to assist local governments are “Americans with Disabilities Act: A Guide for Small Towns” and “The ADA and City Governments: Common Problems.” These documents, which review the ADA’s requirements and offer practical examples of how to comply, are available on the Justice Department’s ADA website at www.ada.gov <http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/adahom1.htm.>. The Department has also recently released a technical assistance document entitled “Accessibility of State and Local Government Websites to People with Disabilities,” developed as part of the Project Civic Access initiative. It is available at www.ada.gov/websites2.htm <http://www.ada.gov/websites2.htm>.

Title II of the ADA prohibits discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities in the programs, services, and activities of state and local governments. Public entities must make reasonable modifications in policies that deny equal access, provide effective communication, and make their programs accessible through the removal of barriers or through alternate methods of program delivery, unless an undue burden or fundamental alteration of the program would result.

People interested in finding out more about the ADA or today’s agreements can access the ADA home page or call the toll-free ADA Information Line at (800) 514-0301 or (800) 514-0383 (TDD).

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