A Syracuse advocate is pushing local businesses and government officials to go beyond the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

Agnes McCray, who has Cerebral Palsy, says the City of Syracuse is in a pretty good spot when it comes to accessibility for individuals with disabilities, but there is always room to improve. 

“When I was in high school there was only three places accessible in Syracuse,” McCray said.

McCray has seen almost the entirety of the city’s evolution when it comes to accessibility, and is continuing to be an advocate, day after day. 

“To march down the street to teach people about the ADA and the different ways it’ll help all of us,” she said of her advocacy work.

She is also President of the board at Arise, an independent living center that was at the forefront of pushing local leaders and organizations to make changes even before the ADA was passed in 1990. She says Arise took on the task of training individuals within the community when the ADA was passed, and continues to offer guidance to this day.

“It wasn’t easy,” she said. “It took the independent living movement, and advocates in Syracuse, the community and the government.”

McCray says she has been arrested as part of her advocacy work more than three hundred times, including at the state capitol in Albany. her son even showed us one of the reports. 

In her late teens, McCray was a leading force in making Syracuse city buses accessible. 

“We won and we won the right to have accessible buses,” she said.

With the ADA now firmly established, McCray is advocating for cities and organizations to go further.

“It’s more than the automatic doors,” she said. “It’s about the attitude, and it’s about system change.”

At Arise, that means having an entire workshop devoted to coming up with unique and inexpensive solutions to challenges individuals with disabilities face on a daily basis. They help individuals and families with adaptive design requests by building individualized solutions to fit their accessibility needs.

On a community wide level, she says it means pushing the city to continue making improvements. On a walk down James Street, she showed us why a large part of her push these days is improving sidewalks that she says are in some cases impassable.

“I cannot tell you how many times I’ve broken my axle to my wheels on these bumps,” she said. “and then it takes forever to get it repaired.”

She says another push is changing the language used on public buses to make it more clear that individuals with disabilities have a choice as to whether or not to wear a seatbelt, just as other passengers do.

That said, as she gets on the bus to go home, while she knows there’s still work to do the city of Syracuse, she knows things are a whole lot better thanks to her efforts.

“To see the changes that everyone has made and everyone has embraced,” she said.

In the City of Syracuse, Sidewalks are maintained by the property owner. We have reached out to the City for comment on maintenance enforcement policies, and have yet to hear back.