News Updates

Regional Mobility Council supports accessibility decisions across northeastern Illinois

Between April 2025 and May 2026, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) convened the Regional Mobility Council, an advisory committee that helped shape decisions on issues related to Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance. The council assessed CMAP’s work, offered feedback and recommendations, and helped ensure that initiatives aligned with community needs.

The council included members from nonprofits, learning centers, business-to-business associations, and more, which work with people with disabilities. Over the course of 12 meetings, representatives from 9 community-based organizations explored:

• Actionable strategies to enhance mobility and accessibility across the region
• Collaboration across all levels of government to address shared mobility and accessibility challenges
• Constructive feedback on CMAP’s priorities, including programs and initiatives that promote inclusive growth, resilience, and investment
• Data-driven recommendations and resources for improving mobility and accessibility challenges across the region

Informed and improved accessibility work

The Regional Mobility Council achieved its goals by emphasizing open dialogue, peer learning, and constructive feedback on planning efforts. Some examples of the work they supported include:

• Learning about CMAP’s role in the region and its core focus areas for deeper context-setting, as well as presentations on each member’s respective agency and work.
• Meeting with ADA coordinators to discuss collaboration around community engagement, physical accessibility, and resource sharing.
• Developing priority actions for strengthening accessibility between municipalities and the disability community.
• Understanding what transportation is like for people with disabilities by mapping out each step of a journey — whether walking or rolling, using transit, or driving. Council members talked through related emotions and challenges, ideas for improvement, and how the experience changed depending on the type of disability and whether someone lived in an urban, suburban, or rural area. This exercise helped CMAP gather a wide range of insights to shape the Regional Transportation Plan.
• Creating personas for people with disabilities searching for housing during a scenario-building exercise. Council members worked through barriers related to affordability, accessibility, transportation access, financial trade-offs, and long-term housing goals. They helped refine and strengthen ideas to ensure disability perspectives were meaningfully reflected in CMAP’s housing readiness strategies.
• Engaging with The Century Plan, CMAP’s long-term vision for northeastern Illinois, to ensure disability perspectives were considered.

Regional Mobility Council members received a stipend of $3,600 to support their time, expertise, and commitment to improving accessibility in northeastern Illinois. We’re grateful to the council members for their contributions, their trust, and the expertise they invested in CMAP’s work.

Continued learning and connections

CMAP continues to provide accessibility resources for its all of its regional partners.

Explore ADA resources and online trainings: Recorded training and supporting materials cover accessible public engagement, the ADA and Title II, the ADA coordinator’s role, self-evaluations, transition plans, the Public Right-of-way Accessibility Guidelines, and the Illinois Accessibility Code.

Use ADA templates: Customizable language for an ADA public notice, ADA coordinator designation, and grievance procedure, as well as resources for developing self-evaluations and transition plans.

Discover lasting foundations for accessibility: Insights from the Regional ADA Coordinators Group series.

If you have any questions about CMAP’s accessibility resources, please reach out to accessibility@cmap.illinois.gov.