I’m disabled. The law says I deserve access to venues, so why do they charge me double?

Coping with a physical disability is difficult enough without people creating additional obstacles. But that is exactly what many entertainment venues in Pennsylvania have been doing to me and others like me.

Because I have cerebral palsy, I need help from a personal care attendant with all of my activities of daily living — things like getting dressed, going to the bathroom, eating, and moving around in my manual wheelchair.

Whenever I go outside my home, I need my attendant to come with me. But if I visit certain venues, I am often asked to pay for myself and for my attendant to enter. That means it costs me twice as much to enter the facility as anyone else.

I can’t ask my attendants to pay, of course, because their wages are already too low — so low, in fact, that our state legislature recently held a hearing to investigate the poverty wages paid to these essential workers. Besides, many attendants aren’t really interested in some of the places I want to visit — they’re just doing their job by accompanying me.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that facilities open to the public must provide equal access for people with disabilities. Charging twice as much certainly doesn’t seem like equal access to me.

Several years ago, following a series of day trips to the Franklin Institute, where I was forced to spend my limited funds on admission fees for both myself and my attendants, I decided that enough was enough.

So I sued the Franklin Institute. And three years later, in 2016, I won. The museum was required to allow me and all other people with disabilities who needed an attendant to pay only a single admission fee.

Unfortunately, the ruling was only binding on the Franklin Institute. It was just for my case. Only a decision by a federal appeals court could make this rule binding on other facilities, but the institute chose not to appeal the decision.

I was successful, however, in convincing other venues in the area — including the Philadelphia Zoo, the Kimmel Center, and all of the major sports arenas — to adopt voluntary policies allowing for free admission for attendants.

But precisely because these policies are voluntary, they can be changed at any time. In addition, there are many venues, especially those outside the Philadelphia area, that have never even heard of my case and are still charging attendants to accompany their clients.

Last fall, for example, I went to my first Penn State football game in State College, Pa., and they made me pay for my attendant. And just last week, I heard that a local museum I was very familiar with was once again charging additional admissions fees to personal care attendants.

I believe the time has come to enact legislation requiring all venues in the commonwealth to admit personal care attendants for people with disabilities free of charge.

State Rep. Tarik Khan (D., Philadelphia) and State Sen. Art Haywood (D., Philadelphia/Montgomery) and their colleagues introduced such a bill in the state legislature (HB 1104), named after me. Let’s make sure that people with disabilities have equal access to all entertainment and educational venues throughout the state. Please join me in calling your state representative and state senator and asking them to support “Michael’s Law.”

Michael Anderson is the legislative advocate at ARC of Philadelphia