What does the Americans with Disabilities Act require from local governments?

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), enacted on July 26, 1990, is a civil rights law prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities. Under Title II of the ADA, people with disabilities must have an equal opportunity to participate in and benefit from state and local governments' programs, services, and activities. There are several requirements that entities receiving federal funding (i.e. local governments) must meet, including conducting a self-evaluation and developing a transition plan.*

*Transition plan is required only for public entities with 50 or more employees.

Why is CMAP tracking accessibility compliance in the region?

When the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) created its Accessible Communities program in 2022, with funding from the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT), one of our first tasks was to establish a baseline of municipal compliance with the ADA. Despite the federal law being more than 30 years old, there is limited data on compliance in the region. As the metropolitan planning organization for northeastern Illinois, CMAP is committed to the collection, sharing, and analysis of transportation data as a regional priority. That's why the agency is tracking whether communities have completed a self-evaluation and transition plan.

These are meaningful data points because research shows that communities with self-evaluations and transition plans are more accessible. Using aerial imagining technology to inspect the quality of sidewalks and curb ramps, researchers found that cities with barrier removal plans (i.e. self-evaluation and transition plan) are more likely to have accessible downtowns and government complexes.

How many municipalities in the region have a self-evaluation and transition plan?

Of the 284 municipalities in the region — all of which are required to have a self-evaluation under Title II of the ADA — only 14 percent have this documentation of barriers to equal access in their programs, services, and activities.

Of the 241 municipalities required to also have a transition plan (those with 50 or more employees), about 16 percent have this documentation to remedy barriers to accessibility identified in their community.

So, what about the people living in these communities? 99 percent of the people living in northeastern Illinois live in municipalities that are required to have a transition plan. Only 1.4 million, or 17 percent, of those nearly 8 million people live in a community with a transition plan.

How did CMAP collect this data?

In the fall of 2022, CMAP emailed and called all 284 municipalities in the region to ask about their compliance with Title II of the ADA. CMAP received 189 responses — a 67 percent response rate. In January 2024, IDOT provided CMAP with additional data from a separate ADA survey. In March 2024, CMAP performed a web-scan of municipal sites to check for ADA documentation.

Get in touch! If you represent a community in the CMAP region (Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, and Will counties) and have questions about our data or want to share information on your organization's compliance, please contact Michael Collins at mcollins@cmap.illinois.gov.

How can municipalities improve accessibility and ADA compliance?

CMAP is working with communities in northeastern Illinois to improve accessibility and compliance with the ADA. Learn more about CMAP's accessibility work, including training materials and captioned workshop recordings on accessibility compliance in the public right-of-way.