Accessible to all? Pennsylvania’s Capitol an obstacle course for many citizens living with disabilities

• By Sarah Nicell/For LNP | LancasterOnline

Inside and outside of the state’s 117-year-old Capitol, beauty eclipses accessibility for many government workers and visitors, said Pam Auer, a Harrisburg resident who frequents the building to advocate for people with disabilities living in the commonwealth.

Auer was born with spina bifida, a condition that begins before birth and can cause a range of physical problems including difficulty walking.

Auer is reliant on a motorized scooter to get around, and on her trips to the Capitol, only one entrance can accommodate her scooter — the East Wing entrance.

This is one example of how visitors with disabilities are left to navigate a building largely frozen in 1906, despite the passage in 1990 of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities, including in accessing public spaces.

About 26% of Pennsylvania adults were living with a disability in 2021, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Around 12% of Pennsylvanians were living with mobility disabilities that year, the CDC said. Seven percent were deaf or hard of hearing, while 4% were blind or had low vision.

Pew Research ranks Pennsylvania as one of three states with the highest percentage of elementary and secondary students living with disabilities in the country.

The Capitol website calls spring its “school field trip season.”

“Students are all going into the Rotunda because all that great history is there. And here you are with your peers, and they all run up the steps,” Thomas Neuville, professor of disability studies at Millersville University, said. “It’s sort of representative of who’s welcome.”

As an educator who has studied disability issues since 1975, he said he would not allow nondisabled students to enter through one entrance and others through another.

That accessible entrance, which Auer uses with her scooter, has automatic doors reachable by a pair of ramps.

On weekends or holidays, anyone who needs ramp access must pre-arrange visits with the tour guide’s office or call Capitol police on a phone attached to the wall beside the entrance, out of reach to many wheelchair or scooter users.

Police have taken up to 20 minutes to arrive, Auer said.

Fortunately for Auer, and the reporter accompanying her, the doors were unlocked.

Auer is the director of advocacy for the Center for Independent Living of Central Pennsylvania, and she agreed to show how the building is a series of obstacles for people with mobility and vision disabilities.

“There’s one entrance for people with disabilities, and everyone else can get in there however they want,” Auer said. She referred to the disparity as “separate but unequal.”

Auer said she worries about what might happen to those with disabilities in an emergency, particularly in the case of a fire, since they must rely on the building’s single entrance for wheelchairs and scooters.

Challenge for the visually impaired

Inside the Capitol, Auer noted the inconsistent availability of signs in Braille for low-vision visitors and how some legislative offices require visitors to navigate more stairs without any accommodation for wheelchairs or scooters. Heavy doors and bumpy flooring are also a challenge.

Signs for accessible routes are visible, Auer pointed out.

Even so, after pressing her hand to the first sign she passed, she noted the building’s directional signs do not feature Braille or raised lettering, complicating unaccompanied travel for blind or low-vision visitors.

Auer noted that the elevator up and down buttons often feature Braille and textured symbols. Once inside, though, the lack of raised lettering on the floor buttons leaves vision-impaired riders to guess which button will get them to their destination.

On the way down, she described how a friend with low vision once mistakenly took the elevator to the employee parking garage.

Some, but not all, Capitol elevators are spacious enough to fit multiple wheelchair users comfortably. During the tour, Auer waited for more than five minutes for an empty elevator to arrive. Once inside, it was a tight squeeze for three people. Fortunately, Auer is a nimble pilot of her scooter.

“We’re often late,” Auer said, laughing. “But you can see why.”

Then there’s the lighting.

On the recent tour, Auer ran into friend Tom Earle, disability advocate and chief executive of Philadelphia-based Liberty Resources. Earle has retinitis pigmentosa, a progressive form of blindness, and uses a white cane to navigate.

“When I walk through this hallway, it feels like all the lights are out,” Earle said, referring to the dimness in the passageway approaching the East Wing.

Throughout the walk, Auer stopped to assess several restrooms. Some, to her surprise, were easy to navigate. But in the Capitol’s East Wing, Auer must use ambulatory toilets — compartments set up inside the bathrooms made for those using mobility devices like walkers or crutches.

They do not easily accommodate wheelchairs or scooters, Auer said.

Accessibility and history

The ADA requires 60% of public entrances to be accessible in new buildings, with an overall goal of ensuring equitable access to public spaces for people with mobile, visual and auditory aids.

Older buildings complicate compliance.

Properties registered with the National Register of Historic Places, like Pennsylvania’s Capitol, can pursue alternatives to the disability features required in new buildings. For example, videos of spaces can be made available if retrofitting a historic building would “threaten or destroy the historical significance” of the structure.

David Craig, executive director of the Capitol Preservation Committee, said that making the building fully accessible would be a challenge and that accessibility is only one of many factors that must inform ongoing renovations and repairs.

When asked how much it would cost to make the Capitol meet current ADA rules, Craig suggested reaching out to the Department of General Services, as the number could not be calculated without considering actual plans to complete such renovations.

“I’ve got no idea,” Craig said. “I wouldn’t even know how to get that answer.”

The Capitol must balance these accessibility concerns with proper preservation of an aging building. The complex is well-respected by those in preservation circles, Craig said.

“You’re looking at a monumental building that’s tough to get your arms around,” Craig said.

Theo Braddy, executive director of the National Council on Independent Living and the leader of Auer’s Pennsylvania group, said people with disabilities are not a legislative priority.

“If this was an issue of another marginalized group having to go through the back, I guarantee you it would’ve been done already,” Braddy said.

While they appreciate the Capitol’s historical significance, some legislators said accessibility needs to be a higher priority.

“The ADA is a very weak law, and we should be doing better than that,” said state Rep. Jessica Benham, D-Allegheny County.

As the only openly autistic member of the Pennsylvania Legislature, Benham has sponsored legislation advocating for people with disabilities. She introduced a bill to create a consolidated government department for disabled communities and add a secretary of disability position to the governor’s cabinet.

“The people who are here now are more important than whatever small piece of history we might lose by taking out a chunk of steps and putting in a lift,” Benham said, adding that she understands that those in charge of preservation have constraints they have to abide by.

The Department of General Services confirmed in an email that they infrequently receive mobility complaints from visitors.

This month, the Department of General Services will begin renovating the East Wing to address some accessibility concerns.

An accessible 20-person passenger elevator will replace a spiral staircase in the East Wing atrium and a wide staircase will replace a set of aging escalators. Construction is scheduled to end in August next year.

Other renovations scheduled this year include new, accessible and single-use restrooms in the Forum Building and the Labor and Industry Building. New and accessible elevators will also be installed in the Forum and Finance Buildings, the agency said.

An executive order signed in May by Gov. Josh Shapiro mandated that the Department of General Services conduct an accessibility study to assess mobility for disabled communities in and around the Capitol complex.

The department recently finished designing the scope of the study and hand-selected professionals who will carry out the assessment. The work will begin this month and is expected to end by spring 2025, the agency confirmed in an email.

 

Offices, meeting spaces

Where no elevators exist inside the Capitol, there are long ramps that can be tricky to find without assistance. This includes a long ramp to enter the Matthew J. Ryan Building that features multiple 180-degree turns that Auer said are problematic for manual wheelchair users.

Peeking into a senator’s office, Auer pointed to multiple steps required to enter. Several other legislative offices have similar layouts.

While senators may invite wheelchair users to talk in the hallway instead, Auer faulted the lack of privacy granted to constituents with disabilities when discussing personal concerns.

“Standing out in the hallway is just not dignified,” Auer said.

Wheelchairs and other mobility devices tend to take up more space, so every member of a delegation of disability advocates is often unable to fit into an office or hearing room even without steps, Auer explained.

The House and Senate galleries, where visitors and reporters can observe sessions, have only a single row for wheelchair-accessible seating. Disability advocacy organizations like the Center for Independent Living of Central Pennsylvania gather at the Capitol three to six times per year to rally for various causes, Auer estimated, with their groups often numbering in the hundreds. Only a handful can watch proceedings from the galleries.

“It’s just stifling people’s voices,” said state Sen. Christine Tartaglione of Philadelphia, the only state legislator to use a wheelchair. “This is their Capitol. We want people to come in and be able to have access to everything.”

To get to the Senate hearing rooms in the North Office Building, those unable to take the stairs must use a vertical platform lift, a machine that transports people and their mobility devices between levels.

Before driving onto the machine, Auer described past instances of getting stuck and needing maintenance to assist her.

When discussing renovations, Auer emphasized the importance of including disabled communities in the conversation. She said that disability advocates have previously made this request but saw no follow through from the Department of General Services.

Braddy said state officials often tell disabled communities “they’re going to look at it, but nothing ever happens.” He attributed this issue to financial and historical preservation burdens.

“Nothing about us without us,” said Auer, reciting a popular slogan in the disability rights community. “How do we make changes for people with disabilities without including them in the decisions?”

Sarah Nicell is a 2024 graduate of Franklin & Marshall College and reported this story as part of an internship with the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association.