Industry sign banking new york emergency contact form myself
the title slide fades in the computer center for visually impaired people at Baruch College and CUNY presented a Karen L gorgey conference on visual impairment and employment policy and practice taking action on the left is a picture with ten advocates in CC VIP t-shirts at the disability Pride Parade at the bottom is the Brooke College CUNY logo on the left and the CC VIP logo on the right coming up accessible New York hi I'm iris Rosen and I'm a member of the CC VIP Advisory Board for many years and I'm a licensed clinical social worker in private practice and let's see we I want to thank the conference sponsors the computer center the visually impaired the New York State Commission for the blind rhosync ero sinky & Associates hidden city cafe the Jolson Foundation and a North National Australia Bank Limited I'm supposed to remind everybody to put their cell phones on mute or vibrate okay and I'm going to give you the BIOS for our two presenters today wale is by oh is that he was born in Egypt and raised in New York Wally has significant transitions in his life first on one country to another and then through varying degrees of vision at the digital accessibility coordinator well he makes sure that the city of New York's digital products can be accessed by all whether it's by conducting website audits providing staff awareness trainings or representing the disability community in his everyday life wherever he goes wale is constantly changing perceptions one such one situation of times I pronounced your name right oh yeah okay cool and then jonathan is the outreach manager from the New York City mayor's office for people with disabilities as outreach manager he is responsible for creating digital and print media content to support office initiatives and events he also manages the office website and social media accounts so I understand that they're going to talk and alternate and we'll leave about ten minutes the end for questioning so if you guys can hold your questions till the end that would be great okay so let's welcome them and I it's nice to have this many people here for this presentation good morning everyone it's great to be here thanks to Karen bill and a team at CC vib for inviting us to speak so we like to start with what's called an access check this is something that's been happening in a lot of disability events so am i speaking loud enough awesome am i speaking too fast awesome and for your benefit and for your benefit we will be describing the images and our presentations and we will also describe ourselves so I am 5 foot 11 I'm Middle Eastern I have dark hair brown eyes I'm wearing a striped blue shirt and gray pants I'm also sporting a black cane here's John it's relative good morning everyone my name is John Novick I am a little person I'm about 4 feet tall I am currently wearing a blue button up blue pants and brown shoes although you can't see them because I'm behind a podium so am i speaking loud enough am i speaking too fast alright hopefully it doesn't speed up as I go so currently we're looking I'm gonna be describing all of our slides before we you know talk about them individually so this is our general slide format for our office the mayor's office for people with disabilities in the top left there's our logo in the top right there's a number of accessibility icons that have to do with normally accommodations that you'd find in an event the first one is a person in a wheelchair no its physical accessibility the second is someone who is using a white cane so noting you know blind low vision access the middle is icon for Braille noting that there would be Braille materials available materials available in Braille the next one is a hearing loop or assistive listing sorry not a hearing loop but assistive listening device it's an image of an ear with wave lengths like sound waves coming out of it and the final one or two hands making what looks like - okay symbols like your index finger and your thumb coming together and this notes ASL interpretation would be available in the middle of the slide is our logo once again and our website which is nyc.gov slash disability we're going to be talking today a lot about the work that our office does some of the policies and programs that we've been working on and a number of resources and we encourage you to if not ask questions to us now check out our website we have a contact sheet that's available both the large print and Braille currently on the table in front of the podium at the front of the room right now we're going to be moving into the general table after this presentation but we have a list of contacts for specific members of our office as well as specific program websites that we're going to be speaking about so the New York City mayor's office for people with disabilities does a number of things first we are a referral agency so what that means is people will call us people will email us people will anger lee tweeted us questions and issues that they're having and we try and assist them the best we can by providing information to resources this is ranges from housing programs to transportation like reduced fare MetroCard or a parking permit benefits we provide information on how to go about applying for benefits and what benefits you might qualify for and as well as employment in addition to that we're also a policy office so we work to make sure that the voice of the disability community in New York City is represented and everything the city is doing and this includes also working with City Council members and other other folks to bring about legislation that can assist the disability community we're going to be talking about that as we go and then finally we have two programs that are actually pretty robust that come out of our office the first is a program called project open house this is a program that is a home modification program for people with disabilities living in New York City this is something that you can apply for and we'll do kinds of accommodations renovation projects that can assist people with disabilities living more independently in their own home so this would naturally people start to think of like adding ramps adding you know lifts and things but also we work with each individual person so for example there was a woman who was low vision and she had trouble coming home at night because her stairs needed to be they were very jagged and crumbling as well as her she had a like a metal key in a lock for her door so what we actually did was we went in and we renovated the stairs made the brand new put in a handrail for support and then actually swapped out her locks for like a remote control key fob so it was easier for her to get in so the program really varies so we highly encourage everyone to check it out and you can find out more information on that at nyc.gov slash poh as in project open house and the other program we have is called NYC at work and it's a employment initiative that I'm going to be getting into a little bit more later just somebody asked to look can you repeat that URL for poh oh yes nyc.gov slash P o H as in project open house nyc.gov slash Poh okay so that's a little bit of information about our office I'm gonna turn it back over now to my colleague Wally Sabri all right so I forgot to mention earlier I thought I'm really excited to be here for a few reasons I was actually once a CC VIP student where I learned I took courses on Microsoft Access and PowerPoint and and research and advocacy and those things gave me the tools to get started and and you know helped me get to where I am today so I'm thankful to be here and also I was I briefly worked for CC VIP almost ten years ago I presented at this conference and finally I'm a Baruch alumni so I have a lot of reasons why this is a great place for me to be today so Who am I I'm well a Sabri I'm the digital accessibility coordinator and what that means is I'm tasked with helping city agencies make their digital content accessible and I'll be explaining that in let me just step in and describe this slide if that's okay so this is there's two images one on the left one on the right the image on the left is actually a screenshot from NYC gioves 3-1-1 web site and this is a website full of information and action that you can take you can file complaints you can check the status of a complaint you can make payments you can learn about business education environment employment resources that New York City has to offer so this is just a screenshot of the website on the right hand side is an image of Wally on his computer using a headset doing the work that he does is a digital accessibility coordinator which he will explain alright so in March of 2016 the mayor signed local law 26 which requires city agencies to make a reasonable effort to make their websites accessible as part of that the digital accessibility coordinator position was created and you guys might remember Jenny talked about how having people with disabilities helps us make more accessible products in the mayor's office for people with disabilities a lot of us do have disabilities and that helps us improve the quality of our work so I was hired as a digital accessibility coordinator and I am tasked with the following so there are over 50 city agencies that have websites on NYC gov and there are over 300 websites on NYC gov and those websites are associated with 50,000 different pages so it's not a lot of work not at all so it's a tall order obviously and part of the work that I do is auditing websites so I will go on let's say the Department of Finance website or emergency management and I will test it and I'll create a report and send it to the right people and we'll start a process of going back and forth until those issues are remediated and I've currently have a spreadsheet on my computer it has at least like 30 or 40 different websites that are working on so at the Department of Information Technology and telecommunications or do it as we like to we manage all of most of our websites and we use a content management system called team site and that allows us to create a template or a shell for our websites to be for our websites right so the do-it team is managing that template now each individual agency pours in the content so let's use a metaphor of a building if our NYC gov is a building do it as sort of like the landlord and management and each individual agency are like the tenants that move in and make that space theirs and add all the things in content so there's a - you know it's a two prong approach right so we have to work on our template and that's we have been doing that we have been doing things like adding support for alt text right Jenny I mention that earlier as well and how many of you guys are jaws users and and use headings awesome so if you're a big fan of headings our our new template that we're transitioning to has much better support for headings so you can navigate with headings much easier and and we're also talking to the content creators and making sure that they are including headings into the content that they create we also make sure that there's keyboard access to all the links and the buttons right and and we set up tools so that when content creators are creating forms they're creating accessible forms and they have the tools necessary to do so so that's a little bit about the other type of auditing that I'm doing and part of that is I get a lot of the same questions over and over again so in an attempt to sort of streamline the process we've created some guides slide image description there are six rectangles noting guides and they are they read as follows accessible social media guide website accessibility guide accessible documents guide screen reader reference guy accessible presentations guide and powerpoint guide alright so I've I've worked to create different guides most of them we've been circulating internally right so how do you create a an accessible PowerPoint so we stressed the importance of things like including alt text in your PowerPoint using accessible colors in having contrast using accessible fonts avoid using having large blocks of text and using all caps things like that so we kind of break it down and make it easy to understand and follow for folks and we distribute these to anyone who asks for them but also we preemptively send it to folks that are creating inaccessible content so we we also have you know document accessibility guide web accessibility guide we plan to finalize those and also make them public so we can share them with you guys and everyone wants them currently our social media guide is public so it's on our website it can be downloaded and it just explains on how to create accessible social media posts on Twitter on Facebook and on Instagram so how to add alt text to your Twitter posts how to add alt text to your Facebook post and how to add an image description on Instagram so we we find that these guides are helpful for folks and also help us save time but to go along with these guides we have also created some trainings new slide digital accessibility trainings image of wali standing on a podium in front of a screen as an auditorium of people looks on kind of like right now and that image has a slide yes sorry this is a now an image within an image because it's a PowerPoint within a PowerPoint the slide that is on the screen in the screen is slide on forms there are two images two forms next to each other on the left is your standard form that you would expect to interact with with a label and a text box and a label on the text box and on the right is a very inaccessible form with text boxes all squish together in the top left of the screen without labels so I find that a human approach is very helpful so we try to make people understand why the accessibility work matters and we try to do that by showing what it's like to have something inaccessible to you so those slides are showing what it's like to have a form that has no labels and and it's just hard to navigate and understand in a similar way I actually like to do this activity when I start trainings by heading a sighted person a sheet of Braille and asking them to read it and it is a lot of fun because they're like you know I don't know what this is and I'm like this is you know this is words you know and they're like I'll ask him what what can you read you don't read Braille what do you read and then they're like I read English and I'm like yeah this is unified English Braille so I try to sort of demonstrate what it's like to have something inaccessible to you and also you know go through the social aspect of it of telling them you know prints is that the thing with the ink you know like kind of like what they're like yeah Braille is that the thing with the bumps or people have actually asked me before calling SCI Braille sign language before this happened and and also then I direct them to a form that I found on the internet that actually is screenreader accessible but has no visual labels and that's also a lot of fun because I'll tell them here fill out your form it says name right next to it and they're like I don't see it so you know we have fun with it but we also sort of try to drive the point across that access is important and it can be a bad experience for somebody and it's also it could be a daily experience for people with disabilities to have to experience you know go through these barriers and and ask for things ahead of time and all of that and we incorporate that into our practices we were actually just at the Andrew hi skill library yesterday and we brought plenty of large print and Braille Flyers right and they were having you know we got a lot of good feedback in the end so we also have Braille and large print flyers today so be sure to pick one up it has our contact info alright so trainings right so we have created different types trainings in different groups we have a Digital Inclusion committee which is a group of City professionals interested in learning more about making their websites accessible so we have had four or five different meaning a meeting so far and our goal is to take the daunting task of web accessibility or digital accessibility and turn it into bi
e-sized lessons so we started at the very beginning we started with a brief summary of the report that we published last year on our web accessibility which is on our website you can download it and explaining you know what were the state of our websites is at and also our plan to get to a place where we'd like to be with accessibility on our websites and we also covered should taught them about the guidelines that we use so there is the web content accessibility guidelines 2.0 which have been adopted internationally right and we sort of break those down and explain to them that these are the guidelines that we're using and give them resources to follow up if they need to learn more about them right and as we move towards the new guidelines 2.1 we are also looking forward to those and and adopting those as well another topic that we covered is intruder assistive technology and how to use a screen reader to test the website so that our content creators our developers know a little bit about testing right so that they can maybe you know if they create a Word document or PDF that they can try to at least go read it with a screen reader and see if it's reading the alt text and things like that another one was alt text so we had a whole one and a half hour session on alt text and image descriptions and just teaching folks how to technically add them but also how to conceptually add them right how do you craft a good description of an image and we created guidance around this we gave them four simple questions to answer which is basically where is this day and how many people are in the photo what are they doing and what's the importance of this photo and answering those four questions we find will help you craft a good description and our final topic which was last month in March we had a whole session on creating accessible forms and we focused particularly on the platform that we use the team site so we showed them exactly how to make an accessible form and what they need to include so that includes you know making sure it's has keyboard accessibility making sure it has text labels and making sure that the required fields are noted in an accessible way whether it's a star or using Aria and error validation so if somebody made a mistake in the form they should be able to get some kind of simple message on what they did wrong and how to fix it right so that's the digital inclusion committee and we're going to continue to have these bite-sized classes for city employees and we're going to cover things like maps and how to work with large sets of data and color contrast and and and other topics as well so I've also been doing some intro to digital accessibility trainings for agencies specifically so right now for instance I'm talking to City Planning and they're interested in having me come in and do a digital accessibility training for their marketing and communications team and their developers so this is a great thing because we also get to tailor the training to what their needs are so if they want to learn about websites we can talk about I can do that we can if they want to cover web apps we can cover that or if their specific interest is in documents we can cover that we've also done trainings on audio description and captioning for videos so those are happening as well we've started doing trainings that do it for content creators so those are the people that are actually not managing the template themselves but actually putting the content in there so the words the images the colors right so making sure that they're including heading making sure that they're good putting in good alt text for their images making sure that they're using accessible colors and fonts and so on and so forth and these these are actually happening on a weekly basis there's a around two or three of those trainings happening a week at do it and therefore you know there's small intimate trainings for about four or five people at a time so they kind of get that individual attention and get to ask all the questions that they need so that they learn how to make their websites accessible next slide so this is an image of a room full of people in a few different rows of tables to having discussions over food the text on the bottom says accessibility events and the text in the middle says digital access and inclusion all right so we find that teaching people things takes a lot of repetition so we've taken all the stuff that we've done and add it on to it and we're actually organizing and one day a day-long conference for our city employees around 150 of them it's going to be in May 17th on global accessibility Awareness Day well we're going to cover a lot of the same topics that we've already covered and new ones so just you know more of the same in terms of like just making sure that we're really drilling this into people's heads so I'm gonna describe this slide in a second so obviously we've been talking a lot about what we have been doing to work with city agencies to ensure that they are creating accessible content we've created guides we have worked you created trainings and we've held events and we have started to see or we have been seeing more and more results of people actually internalizing this training so this is an image of a social media post on the left is an image that was posted on Facebook on the right is the text that accompanied it so I'm actually going to read the text on the right first this is from New York City emergency management February 15th oh no say it ain't snow it's been a mild day today but we are looking at a return to winter weather this weekend if you are traveling during this long week stay safe image description if you must travel during winter weather exercise caution allow for extra time and anticipate delays use mass transportation whenever possible if you have to drive drive slowly and use major streets or highways these roadways will be clear first nyc.gov slash emergency management so that's one example of city agencies huge shoutouts to New York City emergency management Department of Transportation do T they have been doing they've been taking the lead I think on internalizing these accessibility image descriptions and making sure that their social media is accessible and more and more gaining steam but we are seeing results in our correspondents from our city partners our fellow city agencies so not only this but in videos as well Wally and I have also been working to make sure that video content is accessible as well not only through subtitling you know captioning but audio description so if it's okay with everybody I'm just gonna play a little clip from video that New York City emergency management put together disabilities access and functional needs inside the partner a woman pours herself a glass of water which will result in dangerous storm surges category 5 level winds and widespread power outages she looks at her TV a mandatory evacuation for residences owned one in two is expected and you can visit New York City dot-com for the evacuation messaging from New York City emergency management to Alex Guerra you have been assigned to work a sheltering system q0 one you will report to the evacuation center at Townsend parents high school located at 149 - 11 Melbourne Avenue in Queens the first shift begins at 8:00 a.m. on August 30th thank you for your support of New York City and its residents she hangs up and dials another number hi mom so this is a 13 minute video I imagine we probably can't do the whole thing I think that it got a little bit clipped in the beginning I apologize for that but this is actually a video in a fully audio described video of emergency shelter information that New York City emergency management has put out and this is we've worked with them to create audio description and taught them so we don't have to assist them every time but they will be continuing to do this and same thing with Department of Transportation so if you want to check out the remaining 13 minutes of this very riveting video you can go to nyc.gov slash emergency management and learn about shelters because that's very important and unlike workers off we don't get to hire a team just to focus on audio description so we have to do what we can in terms of just teaching all these different agencies and communications team to do it and then revisiting it and revisiting and it until you know they do it so but also you know we we we are promoting a culture of accessibility within city government with all our trainings and guides and some of the results of that is like I said these trainings that are happening every week and a lot some of these trainings are now not led by me they're actually led by folks that do it there's actually a training happening right now without me on how to create accessible content for content creators alright so I'm gonna go to the next slide so we've talked a lot about accessible communication and access it's a very big part of the mayor's office for people with disabilities we don't want to ensure that all city information city resources is accessible and this doesn't just stop at the actual communication but extends further than to that into the actual city agencies themselves so this image there's two images next to each other on the left hand side there's Mayor Bill DeBlasio signing a bill surrounded by a few council members and on the right hand side there's a number of city agency logos New York City emergency management New York City Human Rights Department of homeless services NYPD and several others the bottom the title is disability service facilitators so as a result of local law 27 of 2016 each city agency is now required to appoint what's called a disability service facilitator now what this is is a point of contact a public facing point of contact for the community to address disability specific issues so they not only are responsible for you know this kind of correspondence but ensuring that their agencies within you know compliance and is striving toward compliance now these points of contact are not just you know public facing figures which they are but they are network of you know colleagues of ours that we meet with routinely and update on best practices not only on accessible communication but how to make their agency more accessible now I want to note that every single point of contact on this with every single disability service facilitator for each agency has a public-facing point of contact which is available at nyc.gov slash DSF that's nyc.gov slash DSF DSF is an disability service facilitator so this means that if you have let's say a disability specific issue with HPD there's a DSF for that if you have a disability specific issue with Taxi and Limousine Commission or NYPD or emergency management or Human Rights or over 50 agencies there is a specific point of contact as public-facing available ny SEIG of /d SF and that's there's both a phone number and an email of the person that you can get in contact with so in addition to that so the new slide accessible meeting notice guide on the left hand side there's a booklet that says meeting notice guide and on the right there's an image of a physical accessibility a physical accessibility icon personal wheelchair and a sentence that says for accommodation requests please contact blank so in 2016 local law 28 was passed a lot of good local laws in 2016 which was a law that was passed that pertained to adding accessibility information into public events that were being held by city agencies so if a city agency is holding a public event it doesn't matter if it costs money or if it's free if it's open to the general public they are required to add accessibility information on all of their advertisements about what will be available at that event so this starts with physical accessibility you know you could say you know saying that the event will be held in a physical location a physically accessible location an accessible restroom but also the availability of such things as you know Braille or audio description in certain cases we work with you know Department of Cultural Affairs there might be like an art exhibit that's being held so like tactile tours touch guided tours and things like that so these are that's just one small example of like what is at first needs to be available second is a point of contact for individuals to reach out to to ask questions and to make accommodation requests so you can reach out and ask for the availability of these things or make a request that all the materials are available in Braille or the videos that are being played do have audio description so this is something that we have been educating people we have created an accessible meeting notice guide that's available on our website that teaches city agencies and anyone really everyone hopefully how to go about doing this and the best practices for it because we want to make sure all events that are being held in New York City are available and open to every in New York City and this is how we start doing that and we need your help with that if you do see an advertisement if we counter an advertisement by a city agency for a public event that doesn't have this information get in touch with us let us know so we can correct that yes thank you oh we're not done okay well in addition to that a great way to do that is the previous slide the disability services so I tators so if you see that there's an event being held by a city agency that doesn't have this information you can reach directly to the Disability Services silat ATAR and tell us do we want to help also but you know okay so this next slide is accessible dispatch on the right on the bottom right there's an image of a gentleman who is shaking hands with a person who is in a wheelchair standing in front of a taxicab so on the left hand side there's some text that describes what accessible dispatches it's a wheelchair accessible taxi service it services customers in all five boroughs 24/7 on-demand and reserved and you can find out more information at accessible dispatch com so accessible dispatch is a you know a wheelchair accessible taxi service that you can order at any time to come to the front of your door which is great because it's you know it's it's TLC that I'm talking about yellow and green cabs specifically that are offering wheelchair accessible forms of transportation you can you can reserve a cab and call a cab to you by dialing 3-1-1 you can visit their website accessible dispatch com or you can download the at their app accessible dispatch on Google Play or the App Store on your iPhone and part of the work that I do is to making sure that those things are accessible the website and the app we're currently going through them with the folks at MTM the vendor to make sure that they fix things so that they are screen reader accessible and accessible using accessible colors and fonts and things like that now you might be saying I don't need a wheelchair accessible cab on a blind person you don't have to be a wheelchair user to use this service anyone can call a cab and that that cab will come and pick them up where they're at and take them to their destination you can book a cab it just has the added benefit of you know give providing a wheelchair-accessible cab they also have cabs that have induction loops so for those who have hearing disabilities you can request a specific cab that uses an induction loop so you can use your hearing aid or whatever a device they ease great thank you all so this next slide is an image of a woman who is using white cane who is crossing a street in the middle of Manhattan and the bottom is call for innovations and we have an audio clip that goes along with this image does it sound familiar wait-wait-wait all right so how it completely recognizable sound so those are the accessible pedestrian signals how many of you guys use them well they're there for those who want to use them right so so those are helpful so people find them out whom some people don't right but we are trying to increase the amount of those that there are in the city unfortunately the current infrastructure or the current vendor that we use you know places that in such a way where it's super expensive for
us to do so so we end up only installing around 75 to 100 a year and there are thousands of intersections in New York City so what we're doing about that is we're trying to innovate in November we put out a call for innovations to the tech community right we proposed a problem to them right and we well and that problem is how do we create a cost-effective way for blind people to cross the street and also how do we invest in the future technology that is going to help blind people find their way around the city so this could be an app it could be a wearable or it could be something in infrastructure right but we focused on creating this solution and you know this will result in a pilot that will be happening in the next six months to a year on 23rd Street and 7th Avenue and we will be and we will be looking to you guys for testing right so we will be reaching out to you guys so that when it is installed that you guys can test it and let us know what you think of it I'm actually on the judging committee we're choosing the finalists now and we're keeping a lot of folks in mind with this we're not just focusing on the most high-tech solution or the power users we're making sure that whatever the solution we come up with is inclusive of people with different all sorts of abilities or ranges right so some people don't like to use smart phones so our solution is not going to only be a smart phone solution right some people don't have access to wearables right so we will be make sure that our solution is both affordable and accessible to a wide range of people in the blind community so be on the lookout for that you guys might have also seen the link NYC kiosks or heard about them those are replacing the phone booths and you know just to be honest and upfront when they first came out they were not accessible right and there was some legal stuff around that right so we helped the intersection team along with NFB and we gave them feedback on how to enable talkback so that folks with who are blind can use them so now right now if you walk up to any of these kiosks and plug in headphones you can you will receive instructions on how to enable talkback and we've been even work with them so that they've created keyboard shortcuts or keypad shortcuts so that if you don't want to use the screen you can actually use the buttons to navigate around and get the information that you want from the kiosk and it does have it gives you the ability to make free phone calls right so that's great and that feature is accessible currently you can also dial nine-one-one there are other apps on there like Google Maps and 3-1-1 which we are working on addressing in terms of accessibility because they don't work so well with talkback and we're aware of that so that is what's going on in streets slide sure so this slide is called NYC at work there is a logo the NYC at work logo it's an apple with a silhouette of a cityscape and the text reads NYC at work the first public-private partnership to create career pathways for New Yorkers with disabilities now this is an Employment Program that launched about a year ago in our office that works to help people with disabilities connecting people with disabilities with jobs we have a business development council we have a number of partners of agencies not only city agencies but public and private businesses Barclays Center handful of stuff JetBlue Shep who's very big one CVS Uniqlo and and and lots and lots of others so and on the other end we have schools we have colleges public colleges we have Baruch and a handful of other all the other CUNY's that we that are you know working with people with disabilities to connect them with jobs but it's not just for college students it's for people with disabilities that are looking for gainful employment whether that's a part-time position or a full-time position this is a person-centered program this is not just connecting a person with disability with any job moving on but focusing on the specific goals and the specific aspirations of the person with disability and giving them the resources to make them job ready and connect them with that job if anyone is interested or in learning more about the program and referring other people to the program and becoming a part of the program for yourself you can find out more information nyc.gov slash at work that's NYC Giove slash at work and as i colleague mentioned before we have a contact sheet both available in large print and Braille at the table in front of me and it's going to be available at the table with all the other handouts after our presentation that has a handful of the URLs the website addresses that we've been listing as well as email addresses to get in contact with our specific sections of our office but that's nyc.gov slash at work we highly encourage you to get involved we'd love to have you so we did have limited time today we didn't get to cover everything that we wanted to cover but everything that we do for you guys in the city every year we publish in an annual report called accessible NYC and that comes out usually around the summertime we've had three so far and we we basically include all of this information and more in terms of what we're doing to make this a more accessible City for people with disabilities and it does cover all the areas in including housing transportation access to city services and education as well so you can find out more about that and download the report at nyc.gov slash accessible NYC so we have just a few more minutes before we open it up to questions I just want to say a few more things so we have one more program this is actually a well this is actually a partnership with City Community Development Citi Bank which is called empowered cities empowered cities is a nationwide initiative to build financial security for people with people and families with disabilities I'm sorry let me describe the slide it's empowered cities is an e and a see that it's meant to look like a graph like financial graph empowered cities building financial security for people with for people and families with disabilities and the website address is empowered cities calm now this is another part of NYC at work where we're gearing to build financial empowerment for I'm sorry not for with people with disabilities empowering people with disabilities to plan financially for their future so this is you know it's complicated it gets very complicated you know if someone is let's say depending on benef benefits in Social Security and wants to re-enter the workforce and isn't sure how without jeopardizing their benefits this is a program that can help you plan for that and navigate that chaotic environment because it is so this is a new program of ours and we're happy to be partnering with City our specific division is called a powered NYC but you can learn more at empowered cities comm EMP o wer e d CIT IES calm empowered cities comm so that is pretty much the end of our presentation one more plug we have a disability Pride Parade that's coming up has anyone marched in the parade previously alright right great so disability Pride Parade we are coming up on our fourth I believe this will be Pride Parade which is excellent first year we had 3,000 second year we had 5,000 last year we at 7500 this year we are looking for 7500 we want to build we want to get bigger every year and you could be that one so please come out have a great time it's going to be and what is is young its July 15th that's on a Sunday it's at 11 a.m. you can find out more information at nyc.gov slash disability pride where do we March from 2:00 until we march from Union Square Park to Madison Square Park it's July 15th that's a Sunday it starts at 11 a.m. July 15th you can find out more information at nyc.gov slash disability pride you know Jonathan and while he gave us a lot of information so I'm sure some of you guys have some questions so I wanted to make sure we had time for questions who had some questions lady in the pink oh there's microphones if anyone who feels comfortable you guys are gonna pass the microphones good okay lady in the pink you want to say your name by the way jewel grant hi jewel hi you spoke about the project open house in regard to the project open house it is it a grant program in regard to fixing up your house or helping with your house or how would that work the project is funded the project itself is funded by the the federal block development grant federal could be develop Block Grant yes that's how its funded but it is at no cost to the individual that is applying if that answers your question as long as they meet the income requirements there are requirements for the four project open house so if anyone is interested the process will be still um starting July 1st 2018 for applications is a vast program and we you can actually reach it if anyone has project open house questions there's a email a specific email that you can actually address those questions too it's poh at City Hall NYC gov this is available on the handout that we have here and where the hand knows how the handouts are right in front of the podium where I am at the front of the room there are large print and Braille handouts that have that information we also have will leave the handouts also in the vendor area as well some other questions lots of questions ok um lady in the black sweater in the front you want to say your name please my name is Barbara okay alright it's there a general Department if you think you have the legal issues or just so interested in the legality of of certain conduct whether it's in your home or in your business is there such a so if you if you it depends on the issue so like if you reach out to us with issue regarding housing we might share with you some legal resources like housing court answers but if if it's a discrimination issue then you can definitely file a complaint with the City Commission on Human Rights well if it's an issue that you think you're being targeted because of your disability or because of your race or gender then it's a discrimination issue if it's an issue of somebody or landlord let's say not providing access for you that's a discrimination that is the City Commission on Human Rights you can get in touch with them by dialing through on one three one one yep okay what questions here man in the gray sweater in the front hi i'm rick fox and i'd like to know how we can find out if if we can find out which streets are be either considered or designated for installation of audio traffic signals sure so on the department transportation website they do have a list of the existing ApS is you can also contact their commissioner to request one in your area as well on top of that there you can get in touch with d-o-t or their mobility management team to find out more information okay some more questions I saw a bunch of hands on in the middle with the black sweater you yeah oh wait I think I got heard then I'll get you cool I'm sure Lynette is next I'll get you next to promise hi I'm Cathy beater said you have a lot of material up there I don't read Braille or see large print is there any way to get in an electronic format definitely sure maybe John can take your contact info we can email that to you yep be happy to do that okay Kent oh the net Tatum now we'll have the kiosks how do we find them if we're out in the street or do we go to the three one and it'll give a list of locations thank you you can always dial three one one but also I don't remember the website for the link NYC kiosks but they do have a list of all of them there all right so if you google you know Lincoln YC or something like that [Music] Cathy snapper I hope this is the dahle topic I want to say that the city of New York and the state of New York have really been terrific I've had great experiences dealing with the various agencies where have had a terrible time is with the federal government a DEA Act notwithstanding and I'd like to touch on the expertise of the people in the room yeah are there any points of contact if we're having trouble with a federal agency I'm having terrible time with Department of Education Department of Finance and Social Security thank you so generally you know for federal government we were a command maybe reach out the Department of Justice or the access board they're there for that reason in terms of what we're able to do as a city you know we're able to focus on making sure that city agencies are you know being accessible on providing services yeah well I mean I would do what anyone else would do I would reach out to the Department of Justice and put in complaint that way we also found a more direct basis we can also connect with you afterward to see if we can provide additional resources if you want to meet us after we'd be helped hi it's Fritzl sewer how y'all doing my question is really within the confines of the MTA /xs access-a-ride I mean stress the ride is more like are you the ages could we go through you to quite honestly I feel as though we can certainly try to assist MTA is a state agency we are in touch with them we are constantly giving them feedback we do collaborate with them on certain projects so you know but in terms of you know we can only pass on information we do complain we do feel complaints for excessive ride so if you have a confessor ID complaint and you file it first with them and get a give us a ticket number we can follow up with them oh okay I think we have time for maybe one more question because I think we're supposed to end at a quarter to twelve if that sound right so who would like to speak oh there's a lady with a microphone yeah head black and white and orange and orange okay go ahead thank you their name my name is Eleanor Cohen and I would like to know what you recommend we do about subtitles and making them accessible for people who can't read them this happens in films frequently foreign films have been eliminated I have not been able to find a way to compensate for it's a tremendous loss and in the cultural and educational area and it would also assist people who don't have disabilities who might have trouble reading quickly it requires a huge amount of skill and as we know whenever anything is done for the disabled community it helps everybody that is correct and that's actually a great question this is something that is has gotten some attention you know our more work in access recently so in terms of subtitles you know there I have experienced audio description where they it's in a foreign language and you know there's two audio describers one describing what's happening in one reading the subtitles so that is something that is there and it's an option there's also iOS is now supporting the reading out of subtitles so if you have an iPhone you can have your subtitles read out loud by voiceover iPhone so if you have an iPhone right and you're watching a video on an iPhone that has subtitles voiceover the screen reader that's built into that iPhone can actually read them out loud you know I I think we're supposed to end at a quarter - but you guys will be around for a little bit we'll be around for a little bit if you guys want to ask us some questions we'll be in front here handing out some flyers if you haven't gotten one and we'll be leaving flyers also a both Jonathan and Wally they did a great job thank you guys so much for having us thank you dizzy via Jerris hi my name's Heather Schultz we just finished the accessible in New York workshop at the conference and I am a professor at Brook I teach speech communication and also I'm a proud alumna Burk and we have hi I'm dr. Jean wall Qin with the past coalition here in the city we try to make sure that the city streets remain accessible for blind and visually impaired people I was a mobility specialist for about 25 years at the National Center on deafblindness and it's been a terrific conference so far thank you Thank You Jean so given the amount of resources that we learned in this accessible New York workshop there's going to be a disability Pride Parade there are many guides there are trainings what else would you like to see New York City do for the community that's a really good question I'm looking forward to marching in my next
disability Pride Parade I have a visual impairment myself and consider myself part of the community I think one of the things that we want to do these days is to make sure that New York City which has a history of being a very accessible and wonderful place for people who are blind to travel we want to keep it accessible these days there's been so many rapid changes in our streetscape the bicycle lanes the new turning lanes that the d-o-t is putting in different signaling systems that are putting in and moving traffic more quickly a lot of those changes have an impact on people with visual impairments and blind people and we want to make sure that whatever the city does and whatever the state does they keep it as accessible for us as it is for everybody else and not to put you on the spot but if you on a scale from 1 1 to 10 what rating would you give New York City in terms of access for the community in terms of the infrastructure and digitally that is a tough question New York City is usually a 9 or a 10 these days maybe a little less so but I would give kudos to a lot of the agencies that have been very cooperative with the past coalition the Department of Transportation has worked with us we meet with them regularly they've had open minds and it's listened to walk concerns and they have done their best to implement programs that are keeping the city accessible and the MTA is done a pretty good job too we have some issues ongoing issues and keeping the city success of all keeping the accessible pedestrian signals working and so there are issues there are inter inter governmental agency issues that we're dealing with connecting the d-o-t the police department the anti terrorists folks and all these people aware of the needs of blind people as they build new systems to keep New Yorkers safe thank you so much Dean so Wally he's a digital accessibility coordinator and given his own tide in New York City he's also a Baruch alum so he holds New York City agencies accountable and making sure that their content their digital content is accessible but besides wall-e holding the New York City government agencies accountable what can the community do to get involved well first I would say I'm also a proud Baruch graduate I graduated with my BS my home college is the Baroque I graduated through the CUNY BA program so I spent some time here a Brook myself and very happy for that you know speaking about what wally was talking about the most interesting thing to me is what they're developing with the street crossing apps and keeping those things as accessible to New Yorkers you know a lot of us in the blind and visually impaired communities we're not all facile with smartphones you know we can't all buy lit by a thousand dollar iPhone X so we want to make sure that the technology is as accessible and easy to access for everybody in the community and of course accessible pedestrian signals installed at corners the devices that make sounds are the best option that said the community can be involved by contact contacting us at the past coalition and getting involved with us because we are a coalition of blindness professionals O&M instructors and members of the blindness and visually impaired communities and other people with disabilities so contacting us is one way to keep the community involved and the other thing is to show up when the city has hearings show up and let the city know what your needs are go to the community board meetings in your areas all those things keep the city and city entities aware of our needs Thank You genes so there's a lot of Baruch pride in the room I also an alumna of Baruch I am my bachelor's in journalism and my master of Public Administration from this fine College so a lot of Baruch pride uh you just all my questions were there any other takeaways that you would like to share with those tuning in to the live stream thank you very much and with a mention of our website PA SS coalition one word dot org and there you'll find how contact information if you have questions about accessible pedestrian signals or the other things the city is doing let us know because we'd like to be a voice for the community that connects well with the city and we think we're doing that thank you so much thank you for time Gina and thank you to our livestream audience
