Most days, Bob Roth ponders his novel.
”It`s an adventure-love story,” says the 59-year-old Hinsdale resident, ”on its fourth draft.”
But three days a week, Roth works on another kind of book.
He hops into his little white Plymouth Horizon and drives from building to building checking their entrance access routes. He walks up the entry ramps, when they exist, and fiddles with the doors. Sometimes he borrows a wheelchair from one of the area hospitals and sits in it to see if he can get the chair through the doors of a particular building.
Roth and a group of eight volunteers are working on the second edition of a book that lists buildings and businesses in five towns in Du Page and west Cook County that are accessible to those in wheelchairs.
Due to be published in early 1993, the latest version will list, among other things, those features in churches, hotels, medical and public buildings, restaurants, schools, stores, theaters and other places that make them user-friendly to someone in a wheelchair.
”Surprisingly, even some of the new buildings aren`t accessible,” said Roth, a former advertising executive.
The listings in the first edition of ”Access Key,” which came out in 1990, read like Zagat`s survey books: Each address is followed by codes such as E, for ”entranceway 28 inches wide or more”; SD, for ”two-way swinging doors”; and T, for ”public telephone no more than 48 inches from the floor.”
That edition covered Hinsdale, Oak Brook and Clarendon Hills. The new one will add buildings from Burr Ridge and Western Springs.
”This is just something to make it easier for disabled people to know which places to go,” said Roth, who is not paid for his work on the project. ”I`m doing this because it`s the right thing to do.”
Roth never has been wheelchair-bound but became aware of the situation of disabled people through activities in his church.
About 5,000 copies of the publication will be printed with help from area churches, a community newspaper and support groups for the disabled. The free book will be distributed at public places such as libraries and churches. Roth said 3,000 copies of the first edition were printed.
Roth said there was a need for a publication of this type for other towns in Du Page. The five towns were picked more or less because of their familiarity to volunteers.
”You can only bite off so much,” he said.
