The Capitol Crawl: the accessibility duty on what you own

On 12 March 1990, a group of disability rights campaigners arrived at the west front of the United States Capitol, left their wheelchairs at the bottom of the steps, and climbed them on their hands and elbows. An eight-year-old girl took most of an hour. It made an argument that years of committee testimony had not: the building where the law was made could not be entered by the people the law was about.

That girl was Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins, who had cerebral palsy and had been coming to protests since she was six. She climbed on her elbows and knees and said she would take all night if she had to. Around sixty people made the climb. Some of them had been arrested the year before for blocking buses that they could not board, and several had spent parts of their childhood in institutions because there was nowhere accessible to live.

Four months from the steps to the statute

The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed on 26 July 1990. Four months is extraordinarily fast for a statute of that scope, and it is worth being honest about why: the legislation was already drafted and already moving. What the Capitol Crawl did was remove the option of further delay.

The provision that matters to anyone holding buildings is the one about existing premises. New construction had to be accessible, which is easy to legislate. But places of public accommodation also had to remove architectural barriers where removal was readily achievable — a duty attached to the building you already own, funded from money you had already spent.

The British version arrived by a different route

The Equality Act 2010 places a duty on service providers to make reasonable adjustments, including to physical features, and it is anticipatory: you are expected to have thought about it before a disabled person turns up, not to respond once they complain. That is a higher bar than most estates are managed to.

The practical failure is almost never the lift. It is the accessible WC used as a store cupboard, the ramp with a gradient that was fine on the drawing, the reception desk at a height that requires someone to stand, the fire evacuation plan with no personal emergency evacuation plans in it, and the step at the entrance that has been the subject of a quotation for three years.

Why this one is different from every other duty you hold

Accessibility is also the most heavily litigated building duty in the world. In the United States, federal ADA Title III lawsuits ran to 8,667 filings in 2025, with New York and Florida each filing around a thousand, and website accessibility cases now account for more than a third of the total. Most settle quickly and quietly, for legal costs plus remediation, which is exactly why the volume stays high: it is cheaper to settle than to argue, so the claims keep coming.

In Britain the litigation volume is far lower, and that is not a comfort — it means the cost arrives in another form. It arrives as a procurement question you fail, a public sector tender with an accessibility schedule you cannot answer, an occupier who moves because their staff cannot use the building, and an experience that gets described publicly by the person who could not get in. The step at your entrance has a quotation attached to it. The cost of leaving it there does not, which is the only reason it is still there.

Most compliance is invisible to your occupiers. Nobody walks into your building and audits your water temperature records. Accessibility is the exception: it is assessed from the pavement, by anybody, without notice, and the assessment is published on review sites and in the experience of every visitor who could not get in.

Accessibility is a set of dimensions, not a sentiment

What the ADA made enforceable was a technical standard, and the reason it works is that its requirements are measurable by anyone with a tape. A ramp rises no more than one unit in twelve, with landings at defined intervals and handrails to both sides. A doorway provides a minimum clear width measured with the door open, not the leaf size on the drawing. A wheelchair user needs a turning space of defined diameter, controls within a defined reach range, and an accessible route that is continuous and unobstructed from the boundary to the facility.

Those numbers are what turn a good intention into an obligation. "Reasonably accessible" is arguable. A gradient is not.

Where a British estate fails the measurement

In the UK the equivalent technical detail sits in Approved Document M, while the duty itself comes from the Equality Act's requirement to make reasonable adjustments to physical features — and that duty is anticipatory, meaning you are expected to have considered it before a disabled person arrives rather than in response to a complaint.

The failures in a managed estate are rarely the big-ticket items. They are: an accessible WC used for storage, so the turning circle no longer exists; a new door closer set so heavily that the opening force exceeds what a wheelchair user can apply; a resurfaced entrance whose gradient crept past the limit; a reception desk with no lowered section; an evacuation lift with no procedure and nobody trained to operate it; and a fire strategy with no personal emergency evacuation plans in it, which means your accessible building has an inaccessible exit.

Your 60-second self-check

• Is every accessible WC on your estate available for use today, or is one of them holding cleaning equipment?
• Do you hold personal emergency evacuation plans for occupiers who need them, and has anyone tested one?
• When did somebody last approach your main entrance as a wheelchair user would, and write down what happened?

This is the one duty your occupiers can audit without asking you first. The free 5-minute Director's Risk Check maps which duties and deadlines apply to your portfolio, each with its official source, so you can see where the exposure sits before someone else finds it for you. Run it at the Director's Risk Check, or send it to whoever holds the files. This is the duty a visitor audits from the pavement, without notice and without asking you first.

Herman's verdict

A law that had been argued for decades moved in four months because somebody made the barrier impossible to look away from. Accessibility is not a kindness in your building. It is a duty attached to the building you already own.

— Herman