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Speaker’s rostrum in US House to be made wheelchair accessible
Representative Jim Langevin, a quadriplegic since a gun accident when he was 16, could not get his chair through the doors of many meeting rooms or Capitol Hill offices.
(Melina Mara/Washington Post)
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By
Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post
/
July 9, 2008
WASHINGTON – When Jim Langevin first rolled his wheelchair onto Capitol Hill in 1984 as a young Senate intern, barriers to the disabled in this city were even more common than the security bollards that now circle its monuments.
Langevin, a quadriplegic since a gun accident when he was 16, could not get his chair through the doors of many meeting rooms or Capitol Hill offices. It was a challenge to find a restroom he could enter, much less a shower.
Now a US congressman, Langevin soon will have access to a long-unattainable spot: the speaker’s rostrum at the front of the House chamber. The House [...]