Universal Designers & Consultants

The Access Board's David Capozzi: Rising Through the Ranks

David Capozzi has a level of optimism and energy that you don’t expect to see in someone who has worked for the federal government for 16 years. Described as both determined and deliberate, Capozzi has a long record of getting things done. It is not surprising he was named as the new Executive Director of the US Architectural & Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (Access Board) in November.
Capozzi takes over the helm from Larry Roffee who retired in August after leading the Access Board for the last 20 years. While Capozzi may be new to the job of Executive Director, he is not new to the board. He has been the Director of Technical & Information Services for 16 years. His efforts have helped build the board’s technical assistance efforts into a comprehensive, reliable and relevant resource for Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance. David Capozzi
Road to the Access Board
With an undergraduate degree in psychology, Capozzi decided to go to law school. After graduating from the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School, his interest in public policy led him to a position in the advocacy program of the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA). In 1989, he was offered a job with Easter Seals’ Project Action, which allowed him to focus on transportation access issues.
He was hired by the Access Board in 1992 after it had been given the responsibility to write the guidelines for the ADA.
Among his proudest career accomplishments was his early work on the Air Carrier Access Act. His involvement began long before the Act was even a twinkle in its Congressional sponsor’s eye. Capozzi helped argue PVA’s side in a lawsuit against the US Department of Transportation (DOT) when the case ended up in the US Supreme Court. The suit was PVA’s effort to require airlines to comply with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. PVA’s loss spurred the organization and its supporters in Congress into action. Less than three months after the Supreme Court case was concluded, Congress passed the Air Carriers Access Act, calling for the DOT to write accessibility regulations for airlines.
Capozzi and his colleagues at PVA were determined to make the law meaningful. They weren’t willing to sit on the sidelines while DOT proceeded with the typical “top down” federal agency regulation development process that was common at the time. So, according to Capozzi, they met with DOT senior staff and persuaded them to do their business differently and use a regulatory negotiation committee. The committee, made up of representatives from disability advocacy groups, industry groups and the government, was charged with negotiating the regulations. Capozzi was the lead negotiator for the disability community. It was an effective process but as it neared the end, there was a major glitch.
On the last day of the last meeting, after months of negotiations, DOT pulled an issue off the table that was very important to the blindness community, according to Capozzi. The issue was related to exit row seating -- the policy that allows passengers to change seats if they are in an exit row and are unwilling or unable to perform the duties required of those passengers. “As a sign of solidarity [all] the disabilities groups involved in the negotiations walked out on literally the last day of the meeting,” says Capozzi. “So there it was. We had negotiated for months with DOT to draft a proposed rule and gotten very close to the end.”
DOT wrapped up the regulations on its own, but then they sat -- unpublished. Shortly thereafter, as fate would have it, Capozzi, who uses a wheelchair, was flying from Washington, DC to Orlando, FL for a President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities conference when an employee on one of the airport’s mobile lounges that ferried passengers to the midfield terminal at Dulles Airport told him that he couldn’t ride in the lounge without an attendant.
“I told him ‘I drove here, I’m about to get on the airplane without an attendant, why do I need an attendant to ride this little bus to get me out to the airplane?,’” recalls Capozzi. “I was told, ‘It’s the rule.’ Sure enough, it was the rule of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.” Capozzi sued the airports authority, Dulles Airport and DOT for failure to issue the Air Carrier Access Act regulations. The case was settled and within 90 days DOT issued the final regulations. “When I say we saw it all through from start to finish -- it was literally from start to finish,” he says.
When he arrived at the Access Board in 1992, guideline development was in full swing. What rulemaking had been done previously by the Access Board was carried out in the old “command and control,” authoritative style. He used his experience with DOT’s regulatory negotiation process to help shape a new participatory model for the board. The agency began to use advisory committees or regulatory negotiation committees made up of a mix of stakeholders. Since 1993, the board has created 12 advisory committees and drawn in more than 300 organizations into the process. “It helps us gather the information we need and it helps us build support for our regulations,” says Capozzi. “And most importantly… the people involved in those committees become almost like ambassadors for the topic… because they were part of the process and because they felt a stake and an ownership in it.”
One of those ambassadors is John McGovern, President of Recreation Accessibility Consultants LLC, Hoffman Estates, IL. McGovern, who has known Capozzi since 1993, has served on three federal advisory committees as a representative of the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA).
“In his role then as head of technical information services, he was an integral part of our deliberations,” says McGovern. “David, it goes without saying, knows [the Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines (ADAAG)]. In 1993, many of us on those early committees did not. We knew access…some more than others…but we did not as a group know ADAAG. It was critical that the knowledge, inspiration, and creativity we brought to the table mesh within the structure and universe of accessible design embodied in ADAAG.”
Known as a consensus builder who can, if need be, make the decision himself and a master negotiator who is both deliberative and a good listener, Capozzi is often described as “fair.”
“I have had some -- I thought -- great ideas about Access Board issues and David or his coworkers have gently poured water on them,” says McGovern. “He explains why, and I have never known him in 15 years to tell me one thing and then do another…it just isn’t in his chemistry.”
Jim Dejong, Director of the DBTAC-Great Plains ADA Center, who has known Capozzi for 20 years, agrees, “[Capozzi] is very conscientious and deliberate in making important decisions and researches all angles of the issue at hand before making those decisions. He is a team player who works well with staff, advisory groups and industry representatives while ensuring the input of citizens with disabilities…. He is not one to seek the limelight but effectively motivates others and gives credit to others freely and honestly. His legal background is put to great use in maneuvering new standards into reality.”
Vision for the Board
The Access Board evolved under the leadership of Larry Roffee and the evolution is expected to continue under Capozzi.
According to Capozzi, the board’s role in writing the accessibility guidelines for telecommunications products in 1996 and then writing the standards for information technology under Section 508 of the of the Telecommunications Act, transformed the agency. It expanded its focus from bricks and mortar and vehicles to information technology – which “put us on the global map.”
Section 508 requires federal departments and agencies that develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology to ensure that federal employees and members of the public with disabilities have access to and use of information and data, comparable to that of the employees and members of the public without disabilities.....
“[The internet] was beginning to be very popular and there was a need for standards for accessibility,” he says. “Countries all over the world were looking for something to point to, so they really looked at our work.” States also began to adopt the standards, which extended the board’s impact and made the board a “player in terms of other groups that we hadn’t yet reached out to.”
Its scope continues to expand. Congress included the board in the Help America Vote Act. The board participated in developing voluntary voting system guidelines.
Currently, the board staff is consumed with developing six different accessibility guidelines, simultaneously: outdoor developed areas, passenger vessels, public rights of way, update of transportation vehicle guidelines, update of technology guidelines (Section 508 and Section 255), and emergency portable housing, i.e. Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers.
Capozzi sees the era of guideline development coming to a close, “I can see the day, five or six years from now… where most of our guideline development work will be mostly completed and we will be in guideline maintenance mode. And so we’ll need to transform into yet another type of agency… one that focuses on outreach and training and technical assistance and less on developing guidelines,” he says.
The Next Generation
The board, which fields nearly 13,000 technical inquiries a year, has already begun to explore the next generation of technical assistance.
In September, the board received funding for the first phase of a project to develop an online technical assistance tool. The idea is to provide technical assistance in online interactive, three-dimensional, video format. The project is being conducted with accessibility-conscious media production powerhouse WGBH in Boston. “We want to explain the ‘why’ behind a variety of provisions in [Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines (ADAAG)]. Why is it important for a toilet to be between 17 and 19 inches high? Why is it important to have an access aisle in a parking spot relatively level? Why is it important to have doorways of a certain width? …Architects without any knowledge of disability issues need to see it and experience it…the 3-D modeling videos, images, sound clips [can help] get the idea across of why something is written the way it is. So that when they see it, they say, ‘aha’ and they get it and won’t make the common mistakes that we are still seeing today. A roll in shower doesn’t work if you can’t reach the controls because they are one the wrong wall. If we can explain that in a way that people can understand, it will go a long way to helping the implementation.”
What Will Change?
Chief among Capozzi’s goals as the new Executive Director is to get guidelines done faster. First up, at the January meeting, the board will vote on the text for the Rights of Way Rule and on the final rule for Outdoor Developed Areas. “I intend to keep pushing rules out the door,” he says. “Then it becomes incumbent upon others to adopt them as the enforceable standard. It’s a two-step process -- where we write guidelines and other [federal agencies] have to adopt them” as the enforceable standard.
He sees that second step as the biggest challenge with the new ADAAG. “We finished our work in 2004. We melded everything into one document -- so it’s not only the new ADAAG but it’s the ADA and Architectural Barriers Act Accessibility Guidelines. To make it fully enforceable, six other agencies had to take action to adopt those guidelines as the enforceable standard. Four of the six agencies have finished their work.” He noted that the DOJ has a final rule that’s pending at the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Housing and Urban Development hasn’t initiated anything yet.
With six new rules in the pipeline, the drawn out process is set to repeat itself.
“Because there’s that two-step process… once we’re finished with our work the work really isn’t finished,” says Capozzi.
By all accounts Capozzi is unflappable. His even temperament, perhaps honed at home as the father of four teenagers, three of whom are 14-year-old triplets, is as appreciated as his patience. But even he gets frustrated by the length of time it takes to make federal regulations reality. He admits it’s the nature of the beast -- drawn out time frames are consistent in federal regulatory work and not unique to the Access Board. But still, it’s tough. “It takes a long time… sometimes up to 10 years to finalize our guidelines. One reason is because some of the things that we do, others haven’t ever done, for example, playground accessibility. We were the first in the world to address access to playgrounds, playground equipment and playground surfacing. To do that, we had to take our time and we had to do it right. We had to form an advisory committee, draft rules… so sometimes it take so long because you have to build the support to make it welcomed.”
Another part of the process that takes up a big chunk of time and money is the development of the cost/benefit analysis… the regulatory assessment. It’s an overlooked part of the process that the general public is not aware of… and it’s hard for them to appreciate the complexity of that process. It takes almost as long as just doing the rulemaking process.”
Capozzi intends to argue for additional funding to pay for research projects that have been put on hold as fixed costs rise. The research agenda is backlogged because of our limited research budget, he says. “A lot of [the back log] are continuation projects where we are going to be finishing up.” He noted that the research budget money is also used to pay for regulatory assessment. “Those are not cheap,” he says, especially when you’re doing six rules at the same time. “They can cost anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000.”
The Future
Capozzi, who reports having had positive meetings with Obama transition team members, intends to build on the foundation established by his predecessors, but in a style that is all his own.
“David realizes the enormity of the task of making universal design an accepted standard and institutionalized practice in the design world,” says Dejong of the DBTAC-Great Plains ADA who applauds the choice of Capozzi to lead the board. “He exemplifies the independence that this concept offers to all citizens. He acknowledges the impact of the US Access Board and is constantly seeking ways to collaborate with others within and outside of government.”

Bonus Feature: Capozzi Talks About the New ADAAG
Universal Design Newsletter asked new Access Board Executive Director David Capozzi about some significant changes found in the 2004 Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines (2004 ADAAG).
“Everything is covered.” In the 1991 ADAAG things that are not described are not covered, and many non-fixed items, such as dining tables are exempted. In the new
standards cover everything (fixed or not) even if not described.
“You can’t regulate everything, that is why we have a robust technical assistance line,” says Capozzi. “…We get those calls often. ‘I’m building X and how do I apply your guidelines to that?’”
He says that the staff that write the guidelines are the same staff that answer the technical assistance questions and go out and provide training. Aside from having highly qualified personnel consistently and confidently answering questions, the process helps the staff identify issues that might need to be regulated. “You can’t nor should you ever try to regulate everything,” says Capozzi.
“Tolerances.” According to Capozzi, “What we tried to do in 2004 is eliminate the ranges that we had before or the exact numbers. Instead of saying that a toilet had to be 18 inches on center [as in the 1991 ADAAG], and then the question would be ‘what’s the tolerance around 18 inches?’ -- we tried to get rid of all those hard and fast numbers and provide ranges. So instead of 18 inches on center, now we say 16 to18 inches. Then, if we give a range there is no tolerance on the outside. So you really need to design within that range. We were very careful in trying to eliminate any hard and fast numbers to the extent that we could. There are still a few that remain.”
He noted that there are court cases arguing over dimensions that are off by a half an inch. “Not a good use of resources,” he says. The feedback on eliminating the hard and fast numbers has been positive. “One of the things we pride ourselves on is listening to the public. And we do a lot of different things that other agencies don’t… multiple drafts, public hearings, and I think as a result of that we usually get it right,” he says.
A New ADAAG Manual for the 2004 edition? “We are going to take information from the ADAAG Manual and turn it into this online technical assistance series of documents that will be a whole lot more interactive,” says Capozzi of the WGBH project.. “Once we do the online technical assistance, we may still wind up with pieces in a paper based document. I think the best way to deliver technical assistance is in a way that is living and breathing and can be changed based on feedback that we get -- and paper doesn’t offer that…..”

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