Access Press Helps KSTP-
Channel 5 News
By Terri Ricci
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.
