CORRECTION APPENDED

Cambridge businesses may soon be widening their doors and converting small steps to smooth ramps following the adoption of a new city ordinance.

The City Council adopted a measure at last night’s weekly meeting that incorporates provisions from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into the Cambridge Municipal Code. The ordinance requires the removal of small architectural barriers that prevent people with disabilities from accessing businesses and public buildings.

“We are not providing them with a new right,” said Vice Mayor Brian P. Murphy ’86-’87, “but providing them with a way to make that [existing] right tangible.”

Title III of the ADA requires that such barriers must be removed when doing so is “readily achievable”—that is, when it can be done without too much difficulty or expense.

Under the new measure, the Cambridge Commission for Persons with Disabilities can enforce these ADA requirements, whereas before, doing so required an appeal to the U.S. Department of Justice.

According to City Solicitor Donald A. Drisdell, the new measure won’t lead to drastic changes for local businesses.

“If [a structural change is] something that’s going to cost half the value of the business, that might not be deemed to be readily achievable,” Drisdell said.

Several Cambridge residents spoke in favor of the ordinance during the meeting.

“Disability rights are human rights,” said Michael Muehe, executive director of the city’s Commission for Persons with Disabilities. [CORRECTION BELOW]

Muehe said the ordinance is a part of an effort to improve the implementation of the city’s human rights ordinance, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability and other characteristics.

The ordinance will require the evaluation of individual businesses accused of violating it, rather than being a set of rules that can be broadly applied, Murphy said.

Not all residents were satisfied with the measure.

Kathy Podgers—a former candidate for City Council and a frequent commenter on the rights of persons with disabilities during council meetings—said that she did not think that the measure went far enough.

Podgers was outlining the ways in which she said the ordinance fell short when her allotted time ended. The council voted not to give Podgers extra time to speak, and she left the meeting in tears.

—Staff writer Sarah J. Howland can be reached at showland@fas.harvard.edu.


CORRECTION

The March 4 article, "City To Improve Disability Access," reported that the Cambridge Commission for Persons with Disabilities enforces certain requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In fact, enforcement of the requirements is the purview of the Cambridge Human Rights Commission; the Disabilities Commission informs disabled residents and businesses about their rights and obligations under the new ordinance.