Soon Colorado will get its first state lawmaker known to use a wheelchair. Democrat David Ortiz was elected by voters in south Metro Denver and will be sworn into office in January. But the Capitol building, where he’ll work and where he’s supposed to interact with his colleagues and the people he serves, is not fully accessible to him.
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Colorado’s not the only state where it took electing someone in a wheelchair to galvanize efforts to improve access for others. Arizona said it has completed extensive renovations after Democratic Rep. Jennifer Longdon won office two years ago. The state relocated desks, added electronic doors, remodeled bathrooms and added a cable sound system that cuts out background noise to help people who use hearing aids.

Longdon said the renovations are a vast improvement and remembers when Arizona’s Capitol had only one wheelchair accessible bathroom.

“There was another one that was supposed to be accessible and I was visiting and tried to use it and ended up breaking my hand because it was just too narrow. How often do you expect to, you know, break a body part, trying to get into a restroom?”

Longdon said she was keeping track of Ortiz’s election victory in Colorado. She describes state lawmakers with physical disabilities as kind of like unicorns because they’re so rare; she said there are only a handful out of more than 7,000 state lawmakers across the country.

“Because of that, I think that this community, the disability community, which is the largest minority population in our nation, really gets woefully underrepresented.”