MS Support Group Waits in Limbo for Handicap Access at Library

Members of a Multiple Sclerosis Support Group in Attleboro, who have their monthly meetings at the Attleboro Public Library, are still waiting for a response from the city on their request to make the library's doors handicapped accessible.

After sitting through three hours of a city council meeting, Polly Hayward, MS Support Group leader of Attleboro, and Elizabeth St. Pierre, a MS Support Group member, approached the council during a public hearing to share their frustration over the request that has gone unresolved for nearly four years and to ask whether federal grants could be used to update the doors.

It all began on July 19, 2007, when Hayward sent her first letter to Mayor Kevin Dumas requesting that the city make the heavy doors of the Attleboro Public Library handicapped accessible. Walter Stitt, director of the was sent a carbon copy of the letter.

"Those of us with walkers or wheelchairs need assistance to get through the doors," Hayward wrote in her first letter to Dumas and Stitt. "Even those of us with canes find the doors difficult to open."

Included in her letter was a petition with more than 70 signatures by Attleboro residents, members of her MS Support Group and physical therapists at

In his August 2007 reply to Hayward, Library Director Walter Stitt acknowledged that the doors were heavy and awkward, but said they met technical standards for access. Still, he wrote that he would investigate solutions, including automatic doors. 

The library adjusted the "closers" on three sets of doors, including the main doors, the lobby doors and the doors to the Balfour room. In September 2007, Stitt said the library trustees instructed him to pursue plans and costs for installation of new doors. 

Two more letters to Dumas and Stitt, four members with walkers and 18 months later, Hayward again asked about the doors.

In her January 2010 letter to Stitt and Dumas, Hayward said the question of who would pay for the doors – the library or the City of Attleboro – had left the issue in limbo.

"Recently, I have found it necessary to, on occasion, use a walker," Hayward wrote. "On one of those occasions I was approaching the library doors and was lucky enough to have someone come along and open the door for me.

"To make matters worse, because of the MS, I am losing the strength in my arms, which makes it that much harder to get into the library doors," she added.

Hayward and St. Pierre said they hope their support for the  library's application for the Community Development Block Grants will result in handicapped accessible doors. 

The ladies left the meeting hopeful that the library, similar to will soon have automatic doors that are accessible to not only their support group, but to mothers pushing children in strollers.