Helping the Handicapped

Without crippling institutions

No otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States ... shall, solely by reason of his handicap, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

Translated, that key passage of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act means that eventually city halls, courthouses, museums, subways, libraries, schools, universities and many other institutions that rely even partly on funding from Washington must be accessible to people with physical disabilities, particularly those in wheelchairs. Ramps must be built and elevators provided; doorways must be widened to at least 32 in.; the height of a great many toilets, pay telephones and doorknobs must be adjusted. Congress passed the law four years ago, but not until last April did the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, after intense lobbying by groups representing the handicapped, issue regulations spelling out what the law will require in practice.

HEW has ordered all the institutions around the country that it touches to file plans by next week showing how they intend to comply with the new regulations. The Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board, responsible for enforcing building-access requirements, has been accepting complaints for the past two years but so far has issued only two formal citations of violation (both of them against federal agencies). Institutions not federally funded have until 1980 to bring their buildings constructed before 1973 into compliance.

Confronted with the new guidelines and deadlines, officials at institutions large and small, public and private, are worrying that the cost of compliance may in many cases be prohibitive. In Rudd, Iowa, town leaders figure that it could cost thousands of dollars to do the necessary renovation in the local library, which receives only $2,000 in federal funds each year. The library was built for $16,000 ten years ago, and none of Rudd's 429 citizens is confined to a wheelchair.

Under the law, many public transportation systems will have to be refitted to accommodate the handicapped. In Florida, the department of transportation is taking issue with the federal requirement that all buses must eventually have ramps or hydraulic lifts for wheelchairs. The department's operations manager, David Duffy, does not think the so-called transbus system is adequate for disabled passengers. He prefers specially constructed vans, which already provide door-to-door service in Dade County for more than 800 people a day, but he expects that the high cost of the transbuses (as much as $50,000 more than a regular bus) will halt the expansion of the special van service. Still, the transbuses will soon be introduced in one of the nation's largest public transportation systems, the Southern California Rapid Transit District in Los Angeles.

Universities fear that they stand to pay the biggest price to accommodate the handicapped. They argue that with overhead up, endowments down and public money increasingly hard to come by, they can least afford the added costs. Duke University Business Manager James Henderson complains that federal guidelines are as vague as they are numerous: "Who can figure out what 'reasonable accommodations' and 'undue hardships' mean? We are at our wits' end in deciding what to do." Duke estimates it would cost $1 million to make every building on its hilly campus accessible. Says Frederick Ford, executive vice president and treasurer of Purdue: "HEW writes hundreds of pages of regulations and in very fine print. The question is: How in the world can you realistically implement them?"

Part of the answer may be that the institutions will have to be more sensible and imaginative in their attempts to comply. In their near panic to obey the regulations, some enterprises have been guilty of compliance overkill. A California firm spent $40,000 lowering all its drinking fountains when the installation of paper-cup dispensers, at a cost of $1.60 for each fountain, would probably have brought the building into compliance. The University of Texas put an elevator for wheelchairs into the student union--at a cost of $17,000--then discovered that the elevator was too small for a passenger in a wheelchair plus an attendant.

Common sense and moderation are also required on the part of the Government officials charged with making the regulations work. The Rehabilitation Act was long overdue when it was passed, and though a costly measure for all taxpayers, it is potentially a great boon to the 46 million handicapped people in the U.S. But in the months ahead, there will have to be numerous clarifications and modifications of the HEW guidelines, and other federal agencies still have to publish their own requirements under the law. As the regulations are defined and refined, the spirit of the law will be more important than the letter. Overzealous enforcement could drive well-meaning institutions to distraction, if not out of business, and thus handicap society as a whole.

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