October is national Disability [ Employment ] Awareness Month. It's widely proclaimed, both in announcements from the federal government and posts in such respected blogs as the Huffington Post. Somehow, San Francisco City Hall slipped back decades in time, and avoided functionally responding to this. On the afternoon of Friday, 19 October, there was a special ceremonial event in one of the first floor light courts. Despite long-standing city policy, 1] seating space for people in wheelchairs / scooters was not supplied. Even after a complaint was quickly passed along to event staff, a woman who has been a City Hall professional and insider for over a dozen years messed up responding to the complaint; and 2] the stage was NOT accessible. Everyone had to climb up steps to speak.

Officials who should have known better --such as Mayor Lee, members of the Democratic County Central Committee [ DCCC] , and even a Supervisor all ignored this. Though the DCCC policy requiring accessibility to / at all events long pre-dates the City counterpart policy about making stages accessible, all these various officials said and did nothing about what was obviously non-compliant about the stage.

It's been more than 2 decades since passage of the A.D.A.; yet still City Hall officials fail to respond to such simple access matters as this.

Makes you wonder what other, simple matters that these various officials overlook, fail to understand, or just ignore.

It may be that the Mayor's Disability Council has to take up a new educational task--asking their appointing authority, Mayor Lee himself, to monitor City Hall events for compliance with long-standing policy on disability access.

If such change towards disability access compliance doesn't come from the top, then City Hall staff may continue to avoid and mess up on proper access to City Hall events.