With Wisconsin primary elections tomorrow, city officials announced Friday they will visit every polling place in Madison as part of an accessibility survey.

Angela Bennet, coordinator of the Disability Rights and Services Program, said she, along with members of the city?s assessor?s office, will visit all 76 polling places in Madison to check if they are ready to accommodate voters with disabilities.

Standards for accessibility have been around since 1973 and were formally established with the Help America Vote Act of 2002, Bennet said.

According to George Twigg, spokesperson for Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, Madison is the first municipality in Wisconsin to pilot a revised version of the Polling Place Accessibility Survey created by the Government Accountability Board.

?It will be a good analysis of our strengths and weaknesses at different polling places,? Twigg said.

The accessibility checklist includes standards for all voters including those with visual impairments and people using wheelchairs, according to Twigg.

?A lot of our polling places are in public institutions which already have high levels of accessibility,? he added.

Bennet said accessibility is an ongoing standard, and officials have been surveying polling places for the past three elections to ensure they are set up correctly, have enough handicap parking and provide enough lighting.

?What we are using is nothing new, it is just a revised copy of what the accountability board has used in the past,? Bennet said. ?As we work toward greater accessibility, it just gets better and better and better.?

According to Bennet, poll workers have been trained about accessibility issues and know how to use new voting technologies for people with disabilities like the AutoMARK machine, which makes independent voting possible for the blind.

?Making sure these polling places meet accessibility standards is a very important part of civil rights,? Bennet said, adding that polling places also use Braille keypads and touch screens.

In a release, Elections Division Administrator Nat Robinson said staff from the elections division would visit polling places all around Wisconsin to check for the levels of accessibility.

?All Wisconsin voters should be able to vote without difficulty at their polling places on Election Day,? Robinson said.

Municipalities with the greatest need to upgrade its polling places will be able to receive grants from the state to improve polling places up to current standards.

Bennet said she is assisting the city clerk, Meribeth Witzel-Behl, to monitor the accessibility of every city polling place.

Witzel-Behl is in charge of organizing the election process at the city level, Bennet said, and if people have trouble accessing a polling place tomorrow, they should call the Clerks Office at 608-266-4601 or Disability Rights Wisconsin at 608-267-0214.