Committee backs substitute to create a state Office of Accessibility housed in Department of Health

Representative Kathleen Cates reintroduced House Bill 295 and presented a committee substitute that would create a centralized Office of Accessibility inside a Department of Health unit (community engagement and inclusion). The sponsor told the committee the office would centralize reporting on building and digital accessibility, provide technical assistance to agencies, and produce an annual report for the executive, general services and the legislature to inform budget decisions.

Eli Preskus (identified in testimony as an attorney and accessibility expert) described the office as a central source of technical assistance for both physical and digital accessibility and said new federal website requirements make a centralized resource timely. Several disability-advocacy groups testified in favor, saying the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has not produced consistent compliance and that state agencies would benefit from training and coordination.

Karen Kushner testified in opposition, calling the bill duplicative of existing federal law and raising enforcement concerns: "If there's no enforcement in the state, there's nobody here that's gonna say to the agency...that's violating a right for us to have accessibility," she said.

Committee members pressed why the office was proposed in DOH rather than the governor's commission on disability; sponsors said the commission had supported the idea but the governor issued a veto message last year, and DOH has the staffing resources and an existing community-engagement structure to host the position. The committee adopted the substitute and then recorded a roll-call vote that produced a committee recommendation to "do not pass" the original bill and to "do pass" the committee substitute; the chair announced the committee recommendation on the substitute (roll-call details were recorded on the transcript). The substitute included a modest funding line (the sponsor described it as roughly $300,000 and change) to stand up the position within DOH.