Advocate fights for accessibility
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- May
- 12
Here’s another report from GNS reporter Dan Osburn, who has been covering events at the Capitol today:
Broome County resident and disability advocate Frank Pennisi received the “Dr. Henry Viscardi, Jr. Advocacy Award” for state lawmakers his work to make polling sites in his county and other locations more handicapped accessible.
“It’s nice to know they actually listened,” Pennisi, who is the chair of the American Demanding Access Committee, said.
Between 1984 and 1990, Pennisi achieved 100 percent accessibility for handicapped voters in Broome County, then turned to other counties to advocate accessibility, he said.
“It took six years of my life,” he said. He was constantly visiting polling sites, writing letters on how to improve access and revisiting sites, he said.
The award was part of the larger state Assembly Legislative Disabilities Awareness Day. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said he is supporting a package of bills aimed at improving life for the disabled. The bills range in purpose from improving ATM machines for the visually impaired to improving gas pumps. Silver said he would work to get the Assembly to pass each of the 17 proposed bills before the end of the week.
“When we allow the rights of this community or that community to be ignored, the rights of all New Yorkers are at risk,” Silver said. “Gov. (David) Paterson has demonstrated that a person with a disability is not a person without ability,” he said, referring to the legally blind governor.
This entry was posted
on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 4:03 pm by Cara Matthews.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
