Transcript of “Rights Here, Rights Now - Episode 7: Visitability.” produced by the disAbility Law Center of Virginia.

[NARRATOR]: **The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. Instead, all information, content and materials available are for general informational purposes only.**

[Intro Music: Light rhythmic percussion beats, finger snaps & hand claps]

[REN]: Welcome to Rights here, Rights now, the podcast about disability, advocacy and activism. I’m your advocate host Ren Faszewski

[VIRGINIA]: And I’m your advocate host Virginia Pharis. 

[REN]: Every 2 weeks we dig into relevant issues, current events and avenues for self-advocacy. Someone has to and it might as well be us! This podcast is produced by the disAbility Law Center of Virginia, the Commonwealth’s protection and advocacy agency for disability rights. Find out more at dlcv.org. 

[REN]: So what is our topic today Virginia?

[VIRGINIA]: Today’s topic is and bear with me now on the pronunciation, visitability.

[REN]: So not visibility

[VIRGINIA]: Not visibility, not vegetables, and not verisimilitude.

[REN]: You pronounced that way better than visitability.

[VIRGINIA]: I know and that really shouldn’t be that way. But here we are.

[REN]: So visitability, and certainly we’re going to do a head long deep dive into the topic but from what I understand its essentially the idea that not only should people with disabilities be able to have their own spaces that they live in and have accessibility but they can actually go see other people and visit people.

[VIRGINIA]: This shouldn’t be as novel an idea as it is but yeah. Today we are lucky enough to have Dana T. in the studio with us to discus visitability and why you should care and what you can do about it. Before we jump in let’s check out Disability in the news.

A new review shows that Virginia is behind on its promises to help people with Intellectual and developmental disabilities live on their own in the community rather than in large institutions. Seven years ago, the state pledged to boost community services as part of a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, which had accused Virginia of violating the rights of people with disabilities who lived in state training centers.

The latest independent review of Virginia’s compliance with the settlement, completed in the fall, found the state still doesn’t have enough community services staff, hasn’t been able to make local community services boards and private providers adhere to its standards for care, and has no standards for implementing services aimed at behavioral issues.

The deadline for full compliance is the end of 2020, but the review found it will take Virginia much longer to fully realize all the services and supports needed to meet the needs of the community. Find out more at Dailypress.com

[REN]: Alright so as promised we are here today with staff attorney Dana T.

[VIRGINIA]: Ooo an attorney.

[REN]: An attorney. And I’m so glad to have Dana in the studio today. I’ve been working with her for almost a decade. Which doesn’t seem possible

[DANA]: Wow has it been that long.

[REN]: It has! But Dana is like—

[DANA]: You haven’t aged a bit

[REN]: Neither have you my dear. So yeah Dana is just the guru of all things community and inclusivity and we’re so glad to have her here to talk about visitability (adds extra syllables).

[DANA]: Very good you only added like 5 syllables to that!

[VIRGINIA]: So visitability, I said it right. What is that? Like just what is it?

[DANA]: So in addition to being something that is hard to say and in addition to being something that Microsoft word doesn’t recognize it so it always says that it’s misspelled. But it doesn’t have any recommendations for a how to spell it just so in case you want to put it into a document. So visitability is the concept of making homes for lack of a better word, visitable. So, making homes available and accessible to people who use mobility devices to get into. If you think about your home is there a step going up to your front door?

There sure is.

[DANA]: Yeah, do you know how wide your front door is?

[REN]: Its door width, it’s my width.

[VIRGINIA]: I know it’s precisely two inches smaller than my couch. (Laughs)

[DANA]: Interesting Do you know how wide your doorway is to your bathroom?

[VIRGINIA]: Oh, certainly not!

[DANA]: Probably narrower than your front door.

[REN]: Probably yeah.

[DANA]: So all of the those things would make your home inaccessible to someone who uses a wheelchair and possibly to someone who uses a walker or a cane because going up those steps, even one step. I’ve had people tell me that a place is accessible and then they get there, “but there’s a step, but there’s only one!” Thinking that makes it sort of accessible if not totally accessible. So visitability means the- It’s not a law so let’s get that out there. There’s not a law saying homes need to be made visitable. But it’s a movement, if you will, to make new homes that are being developed, to have builders and designers think about designing so that they will be visitable. So, there are 3 things that make a home visitable. The first is, and we’ve talked about them already, is the zero-step entrance to your house. And maybe it’s not your front door, maybe it’s the basement. But some way for someone to have a zero step entrance to you house, so that gets them to the door and then the door has to be wide enough to get through the door which is generally considered to be 32 inches although some of the bigger wheelchairs might need more space than that. And then to have a bathroom that they can get into.

[REN]: This actually reminds me of my grandfather who was a quadriplegic and my dad built a whole ramp extension to our back-deck cause those six stairs were really hard with that power wheelchair. Just couldn’t quite- didn’t have the hydraulics yet. So, I don’t know if he could, he could definitely fit through the back door I don’t know if my dad extended it or not but it was big enough for him to fit through, so the ramp was the big thing for him to get into the house.

[DANA]: So, if houses are built with the concept of visitability we wouldn’t have to retro fit them with these ramps, which can be quite expensive and then when you’re talking about widening doorways especially interior doorways your talking major expense. So, if they’re designed to be minimally accessible, visitability is minimal accessibility, then that’s already in place.

[REN]: But I thought we already had the whole ADA thing, like a whole thing saying homes had to be accessible. Is that not the same thing?

[DANA]: Not personal private family homes. And the ADA doesn’t cover housing so much. That’s the Fair Housing Act and all of these federal laws tend to cover multi-family housing. Apartments, developments not the house down the street because that’s a private home. So, when we’re talking about visitability we’re trying to get the word out to people who are thinking about building their own home and those people who are designing and building them. And there are a few organizations in Virginia that are both talking about visitability and accessibility of new homes. So, the idea is out there but the general population doesn’t know about it.

[REN]: Its sounds like it’s a new concept.

[DANA]: It’s been around since the 80s so it depends on how- (laugh)

[REN]: Oh, I just showed my ignorance. I apologize!

[DANA]: You make an excellent point; it’s been around since the 80s and we work in this field and people that work in this field don’t know about it. So, getting the word out, a pod cast like this. Or bring it up at social gatherings. “Do you know I learned about visitability?” It’ll make you really popular and stuff at parties.

[REN]: The coolest kid at the party!

[DANA]: Yes, the coolest kid at the party. But just getting the word out to folks, because they don’t think about it, I didn’t think about it.

[VIRGINIA]: So that being the case, what makes you so passionate about this topic?

[DANA]: So, there were a couple things that happened. First off over 20 years ago I got to being really good friends with this guy named James and James had been in a car- I mean motorcycle accident when he was young, he was like 18 or 19 and he had quadriplegia. So, he used a wheelchair to get around, and it was a fairly large power wheelchair. And we would go and hang out, we’d go out my wife and I and James. We’d hang out and go to dinner, we’d go to movies and one night we wanted to have him over and watch movies and play cards or something at the house. And at the time my wife and I rode motorcycles so we had a ramp that we used for our motorcycles and so we thought no problem it’s just two steps up to the door, we’ll just put that ramp, we’ll get him up the two steps, um yeah that didn’t work, it didn’t work. His wheelchair was too heavy, the ramp was too short.

Not only did we not get him up on the front porch we almost tipped him over off of the sidewalk. We were mortified, terrified. He was laughing hysterically. He had been through a lot of these things before trying to get into places that aren’t accessible. But the thing is even if we had gotten him onto the front porch, we hadn’t thought about the fact that once you get on the front porch there’s a lip, a three inch lip going into the front door and had we gotten his wheelchair on the front porch there was not space at that point to put the ramp to get up the lip and then our front door probably wasn’t wide enough anyway . So here we had this friend who we really liked hanging out with who could never come over to our house. We could never have him over for dinner, so that put the idea in to my head. Why do we have houses that people can’t get into?

And I started working here and I was doing some research on fair housing and I was reading this article about a woman who had polio as a kid and as an adult she was being interviewed by a, I don’t know, newspaper or radio something and she was driving around this street in her home town and she was pointing out “Yeah, at that house Suzy lived there and I couldn’t go to her slumber party. Tommy lived there and I couldn’t go to his pool party. So and so lived there and I couldn’t go there for Halloween even though it was the coolest house.” You know, so it just made me think, “Why do we build houses automatically from the get go that exclude people when it doesn’t cost any more when you’re building a house to include these accessibility features.”

[REN]: I mean that shows a really good thing to think about particularly with the aging generation. The boomers are going to be the largest aging generation America has had in terms of retirement and elderly and things of that nature. There are disabilities that occur because you’re just older. These houses that when you’re young and abled that you’re able to access and have no problem maneuvering inside and you’re older and have disabilities that come with that then suddenly your house isn’t anymore.

[DANA]: That’s exactly right and it could ne- you know you think about these features for people with disabilities but I have two babies and I know if I go for a walk around the block with the stroller and get back to the house, there are those two steps and the three inch lip up to the front door. When you’re moving furniture and the doorway’s narrow. Yeah, widen the doorway for people with disabilities but it also makes our lives easier.

[REN]: Yeah, my niece is disabled and my sister recently purchased a house. They ended up not going with the house that had the updated elevator because they couldn’t afford the elevator but the front doors are wide enough that when they do put a ramp in the front. Right now, my niece is only 2 so they can transport her but they know that’s not always going to be the case. So, they looked for a house that had wide doorways, that had a downstairs bedroom, that has places for her to maneuver and my brother in law built a treehouse that has a ramp all the way up so can get in here.

[DANA]: Wow what a cool dad!

[VIRGINIA]: You know I think that’s something, we are coming into a time that disability awareness is growing but this idea that disability isn’t just to the person who has it we need to be neighbors and accommodate everyone in the community that way.

[DANA]: And think about your niece, unfortunately she’ll probably face some of the same things that woman did, in that interview. Is she going to be able to go to slumber parties? Is she going to be able to go trick or treating at the coolest house in the neighborhood because there are steps going up to the front door? And the aging thing. I have a friend who helped her mom move to Virginia and build a house. Her mom was in her 80s at the time. They built this house up on this hill where she’d have to walk down a pretty steep hill just to even get her mail and steps going into the house. The very narrow doorway, even I could tell it was a very narrow doorway. And I’m thinking, ok maybe the daughter didn’t know, maybe the mother didn’t now, but the developer. Does he even think about, are these issues even on his mind?

Virginia” Even if its just for the safety of the people living in the houses. A visitable house, an accessible house is good for everyone involved in that.

[REN]: Well again when we’re talking about things like ramps and widened doorways and bathrooms you can turn around in. These are things that aren’t hardships for able-bodied people to have. It’s not like it will make able bodied people’s lives difficult to have a wider doorway. So, it’s interesting it’s not just a standard. But I imagine it’s not- like you said earlier its not like a legal thing.

[DANA]: So, the most recent bill, the name of it is the Eleanor Smith Inclusive Home Act of 2019 which is still an open bill in Congress. It would require developments receiving government funds to be built with visitability features. I was reading a political website, which I try to stay away from, but I was doing research for this podcast. And it said that this bill has about a 2 percent chance of being passed.

[REN]: So there’s still a chance!

[DANA]: Glass half full person (laughs)

[REN]: Call your representative!

[DANA]: Exactly the person who put the 2019 bill in is Senator Tammy Duckworth, the first person with a major visible disability in Congress. But like I said its been in there since 2003. I don’t know if it’s been every year but it’s been several times they’ve tried to get a bill like this through.

[VIRGINIA]: So that’s at the federal level. What about in Virginia?

[DANA]: I don’t know if its ever been tried in Virginia. I’ll be honest I don’t know. I don’t know if they’ve ever tried to put any bill in place in Virginia, you stumped me there. So, there’s no law in Virginia and to be honest I don’t know if it’s ever been tried but there are organizations in Virginia who focus on this topic. There are different builders and designers who focus on visitability. And one thing that we do have, we don’t have a law but we do have a tax credit for people who design accessible features, universal design and visitability features in new developments, there’s a tax credit for that. There’s also a tax credit for anyone who retrofits a house with accessibility features. So that’s something we do have in Virginia that gives people some incentive and some reimbursement because it can get expensive, especially the retrofitting piece.

[REN]: I know that’s something that my husband and I discussed with the house that we bought which, we could afford it which was one of the first steps, but our house is a rancher and we have talked about doing the kind of thing that my dad did which was extending the deck and making a ramp because eventually we would like my niece to be able to access our home. Right now, again being two-years-old and the variety of things she’s dealing with, she doesn’t really travel much but it’s something I want to consider in the future and its not just for her it’s for any person who would be able to visit the home. I think that’s something that people can start thinking about. I like the idea of tax credits because I am poor and I imagine other people are poor too and I imagine it can be expensive to think about those things when developments aren’t already putting them in.

[VIRGINIA]: So, you know obviously retrofitting our own homes that aren’t necessarily accessible is a step we can take but what else can we do about it to make homes accessible to everyone?

[DANA]: I think the more important thing is to talk about it. So, this podcast is great. Anytime we can get information out there because people don’t think about it. I certainly didn’t. When we bought our house just a few years before we met our friend James and I didn’t think about the face that a person in a wheelchair couldn’t get into our home, and since knowing James I now have other friends in wheelchairs and I know they can’t get into our home. When my wife’s father had a stroke and started using a walker, he could no longer visit us because he couldn’t handle the 2 steps up to the door way. He just didn’t have the mobility to do that. We didn’t know that was going to happen. Something could happen tomorrow that I didn’t think about. Its just something that we need to put in the forefront of people minds.

[REN]: Yes, I think it’s a matter of being aware. And again I’ve really seen in the last 5 or 10 years, obviously disability advocacy has been around for decades, I’ve certainly seen a real movement about talking about it publicly and really including it in the media especially in young communities. But I think its about incorporating it into daily conversation. Incorporating it into our daily awareness about how people live. I think so often with disability “it’s something that only happens to other people” and if we don’t see it we don’t think about it and I think that if this conversation is about incorporating about how we think about everybody and just how we are aware of the people around us.

[DANA]: I don’t want to end this podcast without talking about Eleanor Smith, the person the bill is named, The Eleanor Smith Inclusive Home Design Act of 2009. Eleanor Smith was an activist. She was also, we talked earlier about it, a survivor of polio. She was really involved in the early 80s when there wasn’t really a name for it, in designing homes that anyone can enter. Inclusive homes not exclusive homes and the whole idea that every house not special houses. There isn’t a special house that’s accessible to her, that every house could be accessible to her, and people that have similar issues ad similar needs. She started a group called Concrete Change, and it was interesting because she was talking to someone from Japan and they were the ones who came up with the word visitable.

What I don’t know is, was it the Japanese version of that word, but she was like I love that! So that was where we got the word visitable was from her and her advocacy and talking about what we can do. So she was one person who started Concrete Change and right now in Atlanta, Georgia there are over 800 Habitat for Humanity homes that were built with visitability features because of her advocacy. She worked with Habitat for Humanity and said “why are you building homes that don’t already have minimal accessibility?” So, that became their policy, we’re going to build homes that have visitability features. The other thing I want to talk about is that we used words visitability, accessibility and universal design. They aren’t all the same thing. Visitability is minimal accessibility.

It’s those three things we talked about 0 step entrance, wide doorway to get in and an accessible bathroom or a bathroom where someone can at least get their wheelchair in and turn around. Accessible home, that would be for someone who is more, they probably spend more time there then just over for dinner. They need the accessibility features. They’re also going to need to able to get into the kitchen, get into the tub or shower. Things that your dinner guests don’t need accessible to them. And then universal design takes it a step further and includes things like lowered counter tops, lowered light switches, raised electrical outlets. Things that would be for not just j for people with mobility impairments but for any sort of disability or age for that matter. So, it’s a kind of hierarchy with visitability being the lowest of that hierarchy.

[REN]: So, its sounds like universal design is an excellent idea and every place should be visitable and you’re going to spear head this utopia, so I believe in you Dana!

[DANA]: With help (laughs)

[VIRGINIA]: So, thank you so much for sitting down with us. I know that this is a topic that walking into it I didn’t know what to expect and now I’m all riled up and hopefully our listeners are too!

[REN]: You riled up? That doesn’t sound like you! (laughs)

[VIRGINIA]: Well we hope to have you back soon Dana thank you so much!

Now for a dLCV Highlight:
Mark your calendars for Super Tuesday March 3, 2020 presidential primaries. Did you know that on average 40% of polling locations are accessible? Part of dLCV’s mission is to ensure that all Virginians have full access to their right to vote. Join the cause by surveying your polling place. You can print out the survey or fill it out online at dlcv.org and searching voting rights survey.

[DANA]: Well that was quite a lively episode.

[VIRGINIA]: Yes it was! And thank you again to Dana for coming in and telling us about something that I didn’t really know about, think about but that will now be on the forefront of my mind for a while now.

[REN]: Yeah it was really important and I think again its part of our overarching mission to have people with disabilities in all areas of the community.

[VIRGINIA]: So, thank you for listing to this episode of Rights Here, Rights now. Brought to you by the disAbility Law Center of Virginia. We are available on Apple podcast, Spotify or where ever you get your podcasts. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review.

[REN]: If you need assistance or want more information on DLCV and what we do visit online at www.dlcv.org

[VIRGINIA]: Follow us on twitter at DisabilityLawVA and share us with your friends.

[REN]: Until next time I’m Ren.

[VIRGINIA]: And I’m Virginia, this has been…

(Same time) Rights here, Rights now.