The for-hire vehicle industry has come up with a plan to impose wheelchair accessibility—which now applies mainly to yellow and green cabs—on Uber and other app-based car services.

An informal coalition of taxi, black car and livery cab operators, trade group members and lobbyists, along with disability advocates, has been working on a bill that would bring parts of the industry in line with yellow cabs. A draft obtained by Crain’s shows it would target services that do 75% of their business through a “publicly available, passenger-facing booking tool.”

Those services would be required to make 50% of vehicles operating under their umbrella wheelchair-accessible by January 1, 2020—matching the ratio and timing set by the Taxi and Limousine Commission for yellow cabs.

The proposed bill never mentions Uber or Lyft, but it does make clear that they are the targets. On the first of its three pages, the draft states that the city’s efforts to improve transportation options for people with disabilities have been thwarted by the “30,000 for-hire vehicles … that book fares through handheld electronic devices and are excluded from a 50% accessibility requirement.”

Uber has a feature on its app that allows users to hail wheelchair-accessible taxis, but no vehicles driving for Uber are accessible. Taxi interests have said that contributes to the uneven playing field because some drivers don't like the accessible vehicles and have to spend extra time picking up the occasional wheelchair user. Taxi medallion owners have been losing revenue for lack of drivers.

The bill's crafters hope it will be sponsored by Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, a Manhattan Democrat who chairs the council's Transportation Committee. A spokesman for Rodriguez said the councilman has not seen the draft.

“It’s a good start,” said James Weisman, chief executive of the United Spinal Association, which has been working on the proposal. “I hope the TLC and the City Council pay attention.”

The Taxi and Limousine Commission is itself working on a new accessibility plan, which could be announced as early as July, according to an industry executive familiar with it. As formulated by Commissioner Meera Joshi, it would require for-hire vehicle companies to have wheelchair-accessible vehicles make up a certain percentage of their activity—whether or not the rides are for wheelchair-bound passengers.

The percentage would vary depending on the company. The belief is that the approach would bring more visibility and acceptance to wheelchair-accessible services, and better meet with the city's requirement that the companies provide accessible rides on request.

The issue of wheelchair accessibility has given the beleaguered taxi industry some much-needed traction in its war with Uber—uniting medallion owners with disability activists and presenting the public with a simple illustration of what the industry describes as unfair competition.

Many drivers regard wheelchair-accessible cabs as expensive-to-maintain gas guzzlers. Disability advocates, who had thought the 50% mandate represented victory, see their gains shrinking along with taxis' market share.

Meanwhile, drivers for Uber, which is regulated as part of the black-car sector, have their choice of vehicles. The flexibility of driving for Uber has been a strong recruiting tool.

The tech giant sees its accessibility solution, called UberWAV, as a success and argues that it’s no small thing to enable disabled riders to hail cabs with the push of a button. Hailing accessible cabs by sight would otherwise be an exercise in futility.

"Uber has helped make the accessible taxi system work,” a spokesman said in a statement. “There is always more work to do to better serve this community, but it is worth pointing out that Uber has been commended for increasing the freedom, flexibility, and mobility of riders and drivers with disabilities."

But wheelchair users say equality requires accessible Uber cars—an argument that Uber senses is resonating. To head off burdensome regulation such as its rivals and perhaps its regulator are developing, Uber is working on a compromise plan in which fees on all rides would pay for a new service for wheelchair users.

The thinking behind Uber rivals' proposed bill seems to be that on-demand car services that deal directly with the public need to share responsibility for serving wheelchair users. Livery cabs, which do most of their bookings by phone, and traditional black cars, which primarily work through corporate accounts, would not be subject to the same requirements.

The taxi industry has made the argument before, however, that picking up riders on an on-demand basis via e-hails is roughly the same as a street hail—a privilege restricted to medallion-owners. A Queens Supreme Court judge disagreed with that view last year, ruling that cabs must compete.

A representative of the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade acknowledged the group was consulted on the draft proposal, but otherwise declined to comment. Sources say the Committee for Taxi Safety also played a role in the draft. The group did not respond to a request for comment.