Lawsuit Settled, Red Rocks Continuing to Improve Accessibility

In 2016, Alison Butler, then the director of legal services at Disability Law Colorado, filed a lawsuit against the City of Denver regarding the lack of accessibility at Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre. The United States Attorney's Office found that Red Rocks was overcharging for wheelchair-accessible seats, and the result was a settlement this summer that called for Denver to pay nearly $48,000 to concert-goers who'd paid too much for accessible-seating tickets.

On October 18, Butler was again focusing on accessibility at Red Rocks. But this time, she was doing so as the director of the Division of Disability Rights for Denver, a job she took in March. "I think it says a lot that the city hired me, because I was literally one of the attorneys who filed the suit against the city about Red Rocks," she says. "So I do think their heart is in the right place and they’re trying."

Along with Red Rocks venue director Tad Bowman, Butler presented accessibility improvement projects planned for 2023 through 2025. The crowd included members of the disabled community, including Frank Mango, a plaintiff in the 2016 lawsuit. "We took those legal issues and then worked directly with the community," Butler told the crowd at the venue. "We had multiple meetings with the community and said, 'What do you like? What do you not like? What will work best for you?'"

Over the past year, representatives from Project Civic Access, an initiative through the Department of Justice that aims to bring cities into compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act, had visited Red Rocks and pointed out areas that still needed accessibility fixes. Red Rocks had already implemented changes in 2018 to correct issues with ticketing that had allowed scalpers to buy accessible seating and resell those tickets, and also changed the system to ensure that accessible ticket prices were always at the lowest point. Changes still needed to be made in the physical venue, however.

Red Rocks will now widen the first row of seats to make the entire row accessible to wheelchairs; it's currently so narrow that wheelchairs can't turn around. There will also be more seats available in rows two and three for those with limited mobility, and seats for the deaf and hard of hearing are going to be moved directly in front of interpreters.

There will also be paving at the upper-south parking lot to double the number of van-accessible spaces. By 2025, the venue is hoping to have completed the construction of better slopes, landings and guardrails for those going to row one from the shuttle drop-off and row seventy from the top circle lot. "Right now it’s just a steady ramp," Butler noted. "It’s gonna be a slight ramp, landing, slight ramp, landing and more handrails."

Erin Nichols, a contractor who suffers from hearing loss, was at the event to push for changes for the hard-of-hearing community. "I personally would like to see a hearing loop or an induction loop," she said, referring to a cable placed around a venue that picks up audio signals and transfers them to a hearing aid.

"If I have a hearing aid and everyone’s chatting around me, that’s all I can hear because a hearing aid only gives you a six-foot bubble of optimal hearing, and then we use different technology to help us hear better depending on the situation," Nichols explained. "If I have a hearing loop or a hearing assistive technology it’s gonna filter out those people behind me, and it would sound great with a hearing loop."

The venue currently provides sign-language interpreters and captions for all movies; last year it introduced a new technology from Mixhalo, a California-based tech company. Concert-goers can connect their headphones to the Mixhalo app, which connects to Red Rocks' sound mixer, and they can then choose the volume to listen to the concert through their own noise-canceling headphones.

But for people with hearing loss, the solution isn't as simple as increasing or decreasing volume, Nichols said: "Louder is not better for people with hearing loss. We use different forms of technology with our hearing aid to hear better."

Creating a hearing loop would be challenging at Red Rocks, since installers would have to get creative about looping cables at an outdoor venue with no ceiling. But Bowmen told Nichols that they would look into it.

Andre Lindblom is a community member whose MS has recently gotten worse; she will need accessible seating the next time she comes to Red Rocks. "How I could attend a concert before is different than how I can attend now," she said, noting that she'd tried to get accessible seating at Red Rocks before, but the tickets were never available. She said she's pleased by many of the changes that Denver has made, both around the city (she was able to attend the Avalanche parade) and at Red Rocks.

"It is a unique venue that is never going to be accessible to the standards that we want," Butler concluded, "but we are trying to listen to the community and do everything we can."