On September 20, 2005, Access Press received a call from Veneda Sacar of Channel 5 news regarding a story they were doing on the Hennepin County Smoking Ban. For their upcoming TV segment they wanted to focus on how the ban was forcing downtown Minneapolis restaurants to create more patio seating for their smoking patrons. More specifically, how the creation of more outdoor seating is affecting the walkway for pedestrians, especially people who use wheelchairs. Because of the connections that Access Press has made with KSTP News over the past years, Sacar contacted us to find a person who uses a wheelchair. This would help create an understanding to their viewers of how the increased seating on the walkways actually does hinder the pedestrian, especially a pedestrian in a wheelchair.

If you missed the 5:00 pm or 10:00 pm newscast on KSTP on September 20, 2005, or the Midday program on September 21, 2005 at 11:00 am. The story showed Mike Chevrette, our Board Chair, assessing the accessibility conditions of the Downtown Minneapolis patios.

As reported in our article last year with Joe Schmidt, our hope is to have a larger partnership with mainstream media so they can correctly portray people with disabilities in the news.

We’d like to announce two great victories: (1) KSTP has recognized Access Press as a partner for helping them with their stories on people with disabilities, and more importantly, (2) KSTP, a mainstream media, has acknowledged the disability community as consumers.

We at Access Press are thrilled to help the mainstream media and plan to continue to provide information in the future to any interested parties to continue bringing attention to the concerns of the disability community.