Research in Motion

Abstract

Although the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed by Congress two decades ago, there are still public facilities that have a long way to go in order to meet the goal of being “barrier-free.” Unfortunately, some of these places include public transportation systems that many people with disabilities rely on daily. During a recent consulting job regarding accessibility and environmental design, we decided to put the public Metro system in Washington, DC to the test. We wanted to determine how easy it is to access and use the system for people who rely on wheelchairs. We were surprised that this case study revealed serious and multiple barriers to accessibility. We learned that many human factors issues regarding accessible design were not achieved by this system, even at a modest level.