ADA Best Practices Tool Kit for State and Local Governments

I. Ensuring Compliance Now and In the Future

Now that you know some of the basic ADA requirements for providing curb ramps at pedestrian crossings, you can assess whether your entity is in compliance with these requirements. Here are some steps you can take:

• Assess the extent to which your entity has complied with ADA requirements for providing curb ramps at pedestrian crossings and transportation stops. Use the Checklist in the Addendum to this Chapter to guide you in conducting a preliminary assessment. To survey curb ramps in your community, use the Curb Ramps survey form and instructions that will be included in the Appendices to this Tool Kit, which will be released soon. 

• After conducting your assessment to figure out where ADA compliant curb ramps are needed, prioritize the locations. If locations constructed or altered post-ADA do not have ADA-compliant curb ramps, they must be installed at all of those locations. Other priorities include, in descending order, curb ramps at pre-ADA locations with pedestrian crossings providing access to local government facilities, bus stops and other transportation services, public accommodations, business districts, and residential areas. 

• Next, make a long-range plan to provide curb ramps in locations that need them. When making the plan, include other local government staff who will be involved, such as employees from the transportation department and employees in charge of budget matters. Set a series of progress dates for curb ramp compliance based on priorities and reasonable time frames. The actual number of curb ramps installed in any given year may be limited by fiscal constraints, consistent with the fundamental alteration and undue burden limitations discussed in Chapter 1 of the Tool Kit. However, the plan should address the steps your entity will take over a specific time period to come into compliance with Title II requirements. 

• Establish written procedures for soliciting and receiving input on the accessibility of pedestrian crossings and transportation stops from people with disabilities. As part of these procedures, establish an ongoing program for installing curb ramps upon request in both residential and nonresidential areas.¹⁷ Integrate these requests into your long-range plan. This program will put your entity on the right track for the future. 

• Develop a written policy ensuring that, effective immediately, ADA-compliant curb ramps will be provided at any intersection having curbs or other barriers to entry from a sidewalk whenever a street, road, or highway is constructed or altered. If your entity receives federal financial assistance, the policy should also address compliance with Section 504. 

• Develop a written policy ensuring that, effective immediately, ADA-compliant curb ramps will be provided at all newly constructed or altered sidewalks and walkways where they intersect a street, road, or highway, including mid-block pedestrian crossings and public transportation stops. If pedestrians may legally cross a street at an intersection that you are constructing or altering, curb ramps must be provided.

• Working with employees in the transportation department, review the designs for curb ramps and detectable warnings to ensure that they are ADA-compliant. If your entity receives federal financial assistance, they also should be reviewed for compliance with Section 504. Many states and localities have standardized designs for common features such as curb ramps, and sometimes these designs do not comply with ADA and, if applicable, Section 504 requirements. If your curb ramp designs, including the details for detectable warnings, do not comply with Title II requirements your entity needs to change them immediately so they do. 

• Many sidewalks and roads become the responsibility of public entities after they are built by private developers and deeded over to the public entity following construction. Often, in these circumstances, private developers (who are not bound by Title II’s requirements when acting on their own behalf) have not provided the curb ramps at pedestrian crossings, transportation stops, and other locations that the ADA requires public entities to provide. When these facilities are deeded over to them, public entities also receive the legal responsibility for installing ADA-compliant curb ramps which previously may not have existed. But public entities can use their authority under zoning and land use laws, as well as plan review processes, to ensure that private developers comply with the accessibility requirements that public entities deem appropriate. Some communities that understand the liability they can incur in receiving such property refuse to accept property that has not been built in compliance with ADA requirements.

• Most public entities include provisions in their contracts for services with architects, engineers, and contractors requiring compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws. However, many architects, engineers, and contractors do not understand that these provisions require compliance with ADA requirements. When preparing contracts for services by architects, engineers, and contractors involved in building and altering highways, streets, roads, sidewalks, other walkways, transportation stops, and curb ramps, consider including a provision specifically requiring compliance with Title II of the ADA, including compliance with the ADA Standards or UFAS. Remember, public entities may not use the elevator exception contained in ADA Standards, § 4.1.3(5). While elevators will rarely be implicated in the design and construction of pedestrian crossings, they will be implicated in many other types of public facilities constructed by or on behalf of public entities. For this reason, a contractual provision requiring compliance with the ADA Standards should make clear that the elevator exception contained in § 4.1.3(5) of the Standards does not apply. If your entity receives federal financial assistance, consider a similar provision requiring compliance with Section 504 requirements as well. 

• Where compliance with federal law is contractually required, consider requiring your architects, engineers, and contractors to certify ADA compliance, including compliance with the ADA Standards (excluding the elevator exception in § 4.1.3(5) of the Standards) or UFAS, before accepting, and making final payments for, their work. If your entity receives federal financial assistance, consider requiring architects, engineers, and contractors to certify compliance with Section 504 requirements as well.