Comments on: Pondering Ann Arbor Poll Accessibility

By: Rici

Rici — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:46:57 +0000

What does it mean to provide parking at Slauson? Does that mean make accessibility improvements in the existing parking lot? Mark it better? Something else? Because there certainly isn’t any room to *add* parking…

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By: Jackie Beaudry

Jackie Beaudry — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:02:23 +0000

Many of the non-compliant door thresholds at the school buildings are currently being fixed or replaced by the schools. While the existing thresholds identified do not comply with the standards for polling place accessibility, I’m not aware of any instances where they actually prevented a voter from gaining access to a building. In some cases, a rug or mat can be placed over the threshold as a temporary solution.

We do not provide “curbside voting” as this is not approved by the Michigan Bureau of Elections. At several polling locations, we do have a “door bell” that a voter can ring for assistance.

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By: David Cahill

David Cahill — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:34:43 +0000

Thanks!

I think “threshold” and “vestibule” problems mean that wheelchair users can’t get into the polling places by themselves. Dave, did you ask Beaudry what, if any, temporary solutions her people use for a wheelchair user who comes to the polls? For example, does an election worker assist such a person over the threshold? Or bring one of the portable voting stations out so that the voter need not enter the polling place at all?

If not, are these citizens simply unable to vote at all?

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By: Dave Askins

Dave Askins — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 17:34:05 +0000

Re: [2] Thanks for the heads up about the broken link. The issue was not isolated to that document’s link alone. For reasons unclear to me, for all document links in the article, WordPress — at some point between Preview and Publish — seems to have trimmed out the domain name in the target, swapping out two dots (http://.. ) which should theoretically point to the next directory up, but somehow did not.

In any case, the links to the docs are fixed. Thanks for alerting us to that.

As for the other question about a different version of the first paragraph, what you saw was the “excerpt” of the article — not an alternate introduction. In our scheme these “excerpts” are supposed to be a short two-sentence synopsis, as opposed to a literal excerpt. What is the story with these “excerpts”?

On the home page, first four articles displayed in the center column include the first few paragraphs — whatever they are — down to the specified break point. But the next 30 or so articles appear with just their headlines and the “excerpt.”

These “excerpts” are also the summary text we use in the weekly email updates — those updates go out every Saturday to anyone who has signed up specifically for that.

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By: David Cahill

David Cahill — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 17:04:36 +0000

I took the link to the September 1 letter and got an error message that it was not found. Below that error message were a series of lead paragraphs to various recent Chronicle stories – including what seems to be a *different* version of this story:

Pondering Ann Arbor Poll Accessibility
September 11 | A stern letter to the city of Ann Arbor from a nonprofit that advocates for accessibility provides a chance to reflect on the city’s polling places. The Chronicle takes a look at how the city ensures accessibility and why the kerfuffle reflected in the letter arose.

What’s the story here (so to speak)?

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By: TeacherPatti

TeacherPatti — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:43:34 +0000

Thank you for this article. It just occurred to me–and I need to find this out–that I am not sure what the accommodations for the visually impaired or learning disabled are. I teach K-8, so I don’t see the high school kids, but I do know that a student with disabilities SHOULD get a Transition Plan in high school. One of the things on the transition plan is voting access. I presume that our high school teachers in my district (not in this county) are helping the kids with voting issues, but I don’t know.

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