Activist Janice Sangle GETS RESULTS IN HER HOMETOWN!

Election Day, 1996, and Janice Sangle wheeled briskly to her polling place, Town Hall in West Milford, New Jersey. The only accessible entrance was blocked--by a voting machine. Moreover, it couldn't be unplugged without losing already recorded votes. She wasn't deterred. The machine was shoved aside, while her husband Steve marshaled volunteers to hold the cord aloft. It was quite a spectacle.

It got worse, Mrs. Sangle said. "After I was finished voting, I saw the election officials pushing the machine back, right in front of the door. I called Town Hall to complain. They said voters like me could use a write-in ballot, or come with a personal assistant."

Janice Sangle went to the public library to read up on the Americans with Disabilities Act. She wanted to read up, but she couldn't get in.

"I realized then I needed some allies," she said. MS, diagnosed in 1992, had spelled the end of her career as a medical surgical nurse but had not changed her can-do nature. She found allies at the National Society's Greater North Jersey Chapter and the federally supported Northeast Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center. And she used the Internet to educate herself.

"I learned that every municipality is to have an ADA coordinator working on an accessibility transition plan. Town Hall wasn't quite sure what ADA stood for when I asked about it. American Dental Association?"

But there was an ADA committee. It hadn't met since 1992. Janice Sangle jumped in, volunteered, and was appointed to the committee by the town council. She made her first mission education. She and Huntley Forrester of the Northeast Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center offered a seminar on access issues for West Milford Township department heads, and the ADA committee became a working reality.

Today, the 10-member committee includes 3 citizens with disabilities; members of the town departments of Buildings, Parks and Recreation, and the Board of Education; the construction engineer; and Janice Sangle, who as an RN is the medical representative.

Today, when citizens who use mobility aids visit Town Hall they roll up a ramp and touch a push-pad to open the doors. Local shopping centers are up to code, and so is the post office, which is even equipped with a low-level writing table and accessible racks for supplies. The next challenge is ball fields that block parents with disabilities from getting to their kids' games. In November, the Society recognized Mrs. Sangle with the 1999 MS National Achievement Award.

The unstoppable Mrs. Sangle is quite philosophical about occasional negative attitudes she has encountered: "Most people are just trying to get through their lives," she said. "They don't know it's impossible to get a wheelchair into the school ball field. They aren't mind readers. It's up to us, the people who live with disabilities, to speak up. People need to be reminded that their lives could change in a second. We're doing a good thing if we pass on our special insight to others. Besides, the more access there is, the more visible we are."

And visible is what Mrs. Sangle intends to be. In conjunction with the Greater North Jersey Chapter, she created the Squeaky Wheels support group,. which meets once a month. She is also a member of the chapter's Government Relations Committee, is a trained peer counselor, and does community outreach. When she isn't in her wheelchair, she tools around in a car with vanity plates. They say WHY NOT.

"When people tell me I can't do something, that's what I always say first."

Winston Davis is a freelance journalist.