SALEM, Ore. — A small upgrade added near the end of the nearly $600 million overhaul of the state Capitol is providing dignity for Oregonians with severe disabilities who visit the building to lobby lawmakers.
The new universal changing table tucked into an accessible bathroom on the main floor of the Capitol is the first dedicated space for family members and other caregivers to remove and replace the undergarments of older children and adults who require assistance.
As recently as 2025, families had to ask lawmakers to use their offices as impromptu changing rooms. The lack of dedicated space and changing equipment led to a memorable low point last year when mothers said they were chastised by a passerby for changing the briefs of an older boy in a Capitol hallway because they could find nowhere else to do so.
Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
“We just wanted (the Capitol) to be accessible for all people to come and advocate with dignity,” said Calli Ross, a Sherwood mother who co-founded the political action committee Advocates for Disability Supports and pushed for the installation of the table. Ross’ 11-year-old son is non-mobile, depends on a ventilator and uses a wheelchair.
Ross and other parent advocates have regularly gone to the Capitol in recent years, including to push lawmakers to increase the budget for a Medicaid program that pays parents for up to 20 hours a week of the care they provide to their children with disabilities and complex medical needs. During a day of lobbying with her son, Ross said she always faced the dilemma of “where am I going to change his pants?”
Jodie Jones, the project director for the Capitol renovation, said the team working on the massive overhaul — which focused on improving accessibility, as well as seismically retrofitting and reimagining parts of the building — was able to add the changing facility while designing bathrooms for a final phase last year.
“Timing was perfect when the need was brought to our attention” in early 2025, Jones wrote in an email.
The commercial grade, motorized, wall mounted changing table cost $10,500, a relatively tiny price tag in a project with a total budget of $598 million.
Ross said the fact that the Capitol still lacked an accessible changing space in 2025, years into the renovation and accessibility project, is a reminder to consider the needs of everyone who will use a public building. Lawmakers approved the first of the three phases of the project in 2016.
In the Portland area, public facilities with universal changing tables include the Oregon Zoo, which has five according to a Metro spokesperson, and the Portland International Airport which currently has a single mobile adult changing table that can be deployed upon request. The Port of Portland is in the process of adding four permanent universal changing stations, two pre-security and two post-security, with construction expected to begin as soon as this fall, spokesperson Molly Prescott wrote in an email.
Although Ross had been telling lawmakers for years that the Capitol needed a changing facility for people larger than babies — and driving home the need by asking to use legislators’ offices to take care of her son’s needs — the incident in a Capitol hallway in early 2025 “lit a fire” for her to press the issue.
Early in the 2025 legislative session, Kelsey Smith, of Portland, and her then-12-year-old son joined other families at the Capitol to advocate for the needs of children with disabilities. The “very happy and sunny” boy is nonverbal, medically fragile and fully dependent on a caregiver in every aspect of his life, Smith said.
This time when Smith’s son needed a change, “it was really, really busy and we couldn’t find anywhere.” She decided to make do in a Capitol building hallway, with other parents and caregivers standing around her son in an attempt to provide some privacy. Just then, a man came down a nearby stairwell and with a disgusted look on his face told the caregivers they should find somewhere else to care for Smith’s son.
Smith said another caregiver shot back, “Sure, where should that be?”
“I was embarrassed for my child and it was just awful,” Smith said. “He suffers a lot of indignities in every aspect of his life on a daily basis, but the worst is when we go out in public and something like this happens.”
She said the situation highlighted the needs of a group of people who are often not considered during the design process for public spaces.
“People consider having changing stations for infants and then they don’t consider what happens when you need to have a space for a larger child or an adult,” Smith said. “And the reality is there’s an entire population of larger children and adults that also need to have a space for those situations.”
© 2026 Advance Local Media LLC
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
