Oregon officials to undertake courthouse accessibility survey.

Byline: Bill Bishop The Register-Guard

Oregonians with disabilities do not have to crawl into any of Oregon's 37 courthouses, unlike the man who crawled into a Tennessee courtroom in 1996 and then filed a discrimination case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday.

But no one knows how well courthouses statewide meet accessibility standards set out in the Americans With Disabilities Act, said Debra Maryanov, the Oregon Judicial Department's statewide coordinator for ADA compliance. The department is about to begin a statewide accessibility survey, the first since the initial survey required after Congress enacted the ADA in 1990.

"There are some problems," Maryanov said.

To complicate the matter, the state owns only one courthouse - the Supreme Court building in Salem. Counties own the other 37 state courthouses and are responsible for maintenance and improve- ments.

Maryanov said no Oregon courthouse currently is embroiled in a lawsuit over access by people with disabilities.

While most Oregon courthouses are "fairly functional" for people in wheelchairs, many do not meet building codes for accessibility, said Darrell Ackerman, a longtime consultant who works for the Oregon Disabilities Commission to assess how well buildings comply with state and federal accessibility codes.

One example is the Linn County Courthouse in Albany, which Ackerman recently inspected. He noted that new curb cuts done by the Oregon Department of Transportation fail to meet standards - not for the slope of the wheelchair ramp itself, but because the sides of the ramp are too steep and pose a hazard for walkers.

As governments strive to comply, accessibility is as much about attitude as it is about meeting codes, said Eugene Organ, a past executive director of the Oregon Disabilities Commission for 13 years and current president of the Lane Independent Living Alliance. Progress is incremental, he said.

The Lane County Courthouse at the intersection of Eighth Avenue and Oak Street in Eugene is a prime example, he said.

Its 1960s design had no wheelchair ramp. The ramp on the building's Eighth Avenue side is actually a bicycle ramp and ill-suited to wheelchair users. People unable to use stairs are directed to the street-level side entry on Oak Street. From there, they ride an elevator up to the courtrooms and public records areas.

County officials have tried several approaches to improve access, including automatic door openers and restroom retrofits. This summer, they plan to build wheelchair ramps to serve the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza, the courthouse main entrance and Harris Hall.

"There are problems, obviously," Organ said. "They truly are trying to find ways to make the Lane County Courthouse and Lane County government as accessible as possible. I suspect courthouses around the state are not really very accessible."