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(This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.)
>> CHRISTENA GUNTHER: Hi, everybody. If anyone can hear me
outside, we're going to get started. Welcome to Chicago
Cultural Accessibility Consortium's kickoff program. We're
so delighted to see so many people here for our first
program which was rescheduled thanks to this great Chicago
weather. So thank you for coming to the rescheduled date.
My name is Christena Gunther, I'm the founder and cochair of
the CCAC. It is a volunteer group of cultural
administrators and disability advocates whose mission is to
empower Chicago's cultural spaces to become more accessible
to visitors with disabilities.
We're just starting out. We're very new and young. But our
main priority is to create and present programs focused
around different aspects of cultural accessibility ranging
from basic ADA information like tonight and ensuring you
know your rights and obligations, and also exploring
innovative accessibility programming happening here and
around the country.
I would like at this time to make sure I thank my cochairs,
Evan Hatfield and Lynn Walsh and their time and energy in
helping me get started with the CCAC. It is a brain child
of mine less than a year ago.
We also want to thank the members of our steering committee
for their dedication and hard work.
Before we begin we want to make it clear that this space is
a safe space and that there are no perfect institutions in
terms of accessibility and learning about accessibility is a
life long process. So we ask that everyone is respectful of
one another and we're recognizing we're all at different
points in our understanding of accessibility.
Today we are so fortunate to have in our midst Robin Jones
here as our facilitator for today's program. Robin is part
of the CCAC steering committee, and in her day job she is
director of Great Lakes ADA Center and an instructor at the
University of Illinois at Chicago, a role which she has
served in since the center was founded in 1991.
Robin has extensive experiences as a trainer regarding ADA
for business, government, and disability organizations.
She has extensive experience addressing employment barriers
as well as how the environment creates both barriers and
opportunities for people with disabilities.
But before we welcome Robin up to our stage, we would like
to know how many of you are from museums? If you wouldn't
mind raising your hands so we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
from museums.
How many of you are theaters? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. You guys
don't count -- 6, 7, 8. Okay.
How many from other cultural spaces, zoos, gardens, et
cetera. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
All right, how many of are you grad students? We have a
few, too, great. We have about 2 or 3 grad students here.
We have a great mix of people coming for a variety of
institutions which is exactly what we wanted to see today.
So now let's welcome Robin and dive into the ADA.
[Applause.]
>> ROBIN JONES: I have to figure out my -- great. We didn't
talk about that. That was a missing link in our thing.
>> You are on.
>> ROBIN JONES: Well, it is great to see everybody out here
and we are -- I'm glad we didn't do it last week because we
all would be struggling with our cold and snow and other
things. It was a great lesson in accessibility. As you
know for most of your institutions have been dealing with
what happens when you have snow like that or you have cold
like that or you have ice and things of that nature. When
you have a variety of different things that you are
concerned about, not just your traditional user of
wheelchair but everybody is at risk of falling and having
difficulties and problems.
When we have weather issues like this, I think it heightens
the issues for access for everybody because it kind of
levels the playing field that we all have difficulty with
access and we all need to pay attention better to how
everyone around us is getting access.
So we're going to talk about the ADA tonight. There is no
way I can do a brain dump in this period of time. DUI this
all the time as people up here that are with us, so what we
want do as our goal is to really give you some basic
information, some flavor of these issues, and we hope that
you all as you saw on one of the fliers, come back for some
of the other sessions where we will delve into more specific
issues around certain kinds of disability-related issues for
specific populations, because it is difficult we're going to
be talking general with some examples this evening, but give
you a chance to delve down into the issues deeper if you are
interested in getting a better understand -- understanding
as we go along.
Our agenda is discuss the ADA as civil rights. Introduce our
panelists upfront.
Then go into the issues kind of the main areas, one being
effective communication, we're going to then talk about the
issues of reasonable accommodations and modifying policies
and procedures which is different because I am asking you to
do it different than you have done it before and nobody
wants to change a policy. It is always how we've done it
kind of thing.
I can usually get somebody put a ramp in easier than change
a policy. The ramp is concrete. They can look at it and
they know how to use it. Boy, ask you to change a policy it
is that slippery slope, well, if we do it for one, are we
going to have to do it for another one. Does that open
Pandora's box. We will talk a little about those things as
well.
We will talk about architectural access, the whole bricks
and mortar side of this particular issue.
Then we'll talk little bit briefly about enforcement so you
are aware of what that process is. And then we're going to
open it up to questions.
In between our panelists are going to be helping me, help
you understand some of these concepts better by giving you
real life examples of things they are doing or they
experienced in their cultural institutions or the challenges
that they continue to still have in their cultural
institutions. None of them admitting that it is -- it is a
safe space -- that they are 100% perfect. That's the way it
is. That's the way of the land.
Even the highest level of things like the Kennedy Center and
some of those you think about, Smithsonian, they have bumps
and bruises all the time. They are learning all the time.
Because what we are doing is changing.
Technology is changing how we respond to things and what we
have to do, what we're learning about accessibility is
changing what we're having to do. Nothing is written in
stone kind of thing. Again, I'll talk a little about that
as we go along as well.
Let's get started.
As we start this whole issue, ADA is a law. If nothing else
I hope that you go away today understanding that it is way
beyond the law. The ADA is just a piece of paper that was
passed and signed back in 1990 on the lawn of the White
House. But so much more went into making the ADA a law and
so much more has gone into actually living the ADA in
regards to what is promise was.
For the purposes of enforcement, it is a piece of
legislation. Something that is hooked to you can have a
lawsuit or something of that nature if you don't do it. But
it really is is about bringing people of all different
abilities, all different types of issues and limitations, et
cetera, to the table so they can have the same opportunity
to experience what everybody else does. So that we don't
have those artificial barriers which we have continued to
put in society that says if you don't act like me and talk
like me and do what I do, then you are not going to get
access, and too bad, too sad. Go somewhere else.
Well that's no longer acceptable in our society and we have
really made a shift as society along this issue. We started
out very much in the context of moral responsibility for
people with disabilities. That the religious, the church
behind that, take care of people who are less fortunate than
you are, et cetera. So it really kind of started out in
that arena.
We then kind of shifted to a charity model a little bit
which we still have some of, and photo is a depiction of the
MD telethon held every year. Some people may be aware of
the fact that many in the disability community have actually
shunned that movement and such. Not necessarily been
supportive of the asking for money as a way to help those
poor people type of a thing without those individuals being
involved in those decision making. It was more sometimes
been labled -- an exploitation of people with disabilities.
Especially some of the people who why Jerry's kids, there
has been a lot of debate and there is a whole breadth of
literature that has been written by individuals who were
part of that movement early on around those experiences and
those issues as well.
We then kind of had also had the medical model which is
treat disability as something to be fixed, something to be
addressed by medicine. Not necessarily that the doctors --
if you are a person with a disability you were sick, that
you needed to be cured, that you needed to be helped and
such, in large part most people with disabilities are not
sick, they have medical issues the same as you do, in
anybody in this room does with this weather are getting
colds.
Except they may have had illness, may be secondary to what
their disability is, but in large part people with
disabilities are no sicker than you and I are on a daily
basis. But the medical model had a lot of influence in
society in the way we see and treated people with
disabilities.
Civil rights model and the civil rights arena is where we
are today and where we move to in the last 25, 30 years and
beyond. Starting in the '60s for us here in the United
States, other countries had different trajectory as it
relates to this particular issue. But where we're at with
this model is that people with disabilities have a right to
be in a society to have the same opportunities as everybody
else does, and to be able to participate at their choice.
Not what you say they should do and not what the limited
choices that you are going to give them to do. They should
have the same opportunities and the same opportunities to
fail.
Sometimes we're reluctant to let people fail and sometimes
we are also very quick to make heroes out of people with
disabilities. Oh, look at what that person strived to
achieve. Look at what they overcame, whatever. Everybody
has issues in their life and such and sometimes we put too
much emphasis on that particular issue. And it is really
again high righting the -- highlighting the wrong things.
What we're trying to get at, this is all about how you may
need to shift your thinking a little bit to make sure that
this is about people is a little bit broader than what it
may have been in the past and how you are thinking about
these particular issues.
So look how far we've come. Look at we used to not welcome
people with disabilities to now we have signs up in places
that actually want to advertise and promote the fact that we
are a disability-friendly environment. Okay? Big change and
big shift in our culture and our society.
From no access of stairs getting into every where to where
we now have access. In fact we even have creative access if
you can see that picture on the left, whatever that is to
you, right, where you can see where the ramp is incorporated
into the steps itself. So it is not steps are over here,
ramp is over here. It has a little bit of a still
architectural element to it which is often what we hear from
architects and designers is they don't like to lose that
opportunity to be creative and such.
We went from no wheelchair seating at all to integrated
seating for people with disabilities. Now the seating is
found -- seating is found in the same choices in the same
areas of the venue as anyone else has had.
We've gone from the beggar, person with disability has
someone to give charity, to now they are super stars and
celebrity status. And achieve that irregardless or aside
from actually having their disability.
Technology, come from the one on the left is the old
teletype machine that used to be used for Braille. I could
have done the progression of how Braille -- sorry, how TTYs
looked over the years. Now they are done to very small. In
fact people are now using facetime and things on their
technology, on their hand-held technologies to replace those
old technologies that allowed us to do a lot more than we
used to.
Now we used to have volumes of Braille. One eight and a
half by 11 double spaced sheet of paper is two pages of
Braille. So if you can imagine a book that was 50 pages, it
is going to be 100 pages in Braille or vice versa. So when
we think about the volumes that people would have to carry
around or lug around and then make sure that they did not
stack anything on top of them because the little Braille
bumps would compress and you wouldn't be able to read them.
They always had to stay in an upright position.
Now where with electronics you can store ions of information
electronically and this is a hand-held Braille device that
can allow me to still read Braille and refresh and change
and I can store infinite amount of information and carry it
with me every where I go, in the board room, in the
classroom, in the theater, or wherever it might be.
From limited options like my only option was audio recording
a written transcripts to now we have high technology
providing things like verbal captioning, it is no longer the
same -- sure, I'll give you a written transcript of what is
going on so you know what? How are we going to accommodate
you? We'll give you a flashlight during the session so you
can shine on it. Then SUV to read it so don't look at the
stage because you can't understand what they are saying
anyway, so you have to follow what is happening here.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Who has those?
>> ROBIN JONES: Oh, different venues, I don't know in the
Chicago area who all has them here. But a lot of the larger
-- the rear wind other or captioned glasses. -- rear window
or captioned glasses? Not yet?
We see them in a lot of -- Kennedy Center, we see them in
New York, the Broadway venues have them available and such.
Things that are starting to use those technologies.
Change add lot from what you can do and what you can see.
So I'm going to launch into the ADA itself.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: What was that device called?
>> ROBIN JONES: One is rear window captioning, so you can
see where the bottom is projecting the captioning from
behind on to the front. Plexiglas. The person is actually
reading.
The one the woman is reading, has the glasses on, the
captioning is appearing on the glasses.
Those are captioned glasses as far as I know.
>> EVAN HATFIELD: Sony is the company. Primarily movie
theaters.
>> ROBIN JONES: Are using them at this time. Because they
are preprogrammed with the -- it is Bluetooth technology.
All right. Launch into the ADA itself this time.
So the purpose was to eliminate discrimination on the basis
of disability. Just as the civil rights in 1964 says you
can't discriminate against me on my race. Then we had age
discrimination and other areas of discrimination that have
been added from federal legislation and such. We still are
fighting for many of those rights. The different groups at
state level. Not all groups still have protection from the
civil rights perspective.
For the disability community it was a fight long fought.
Modeling themselves after the civil rights of 1960s.
Looking at the different methods from civil disobedience and
organizing.
Because if you think about it, some of you may be old enough
to remember some of these things and such. But disability
prior to really the organization that occurred around the
ADA was very siloed. If you were deaf you went to school
and you were over here. In this organization and this
group.
If you were somebody who used a wheelchair you were over
here and you were in this organization and such.
If you were someone with intellectual disability you were
over here and this organization and such maybe formulated by
your parents and you didn't have a lot of voice. You didn't
really talk across each other. You did your thing. I did
my thing. We're all getting to tax season, right?
What is the one thing on the tax form, the one disability
group on the tax form that has something on it? Somebody
said it. Blind. Right.
That dates back from the early, early, earliest tax laws in
the teens and 20s. And that was because that community was
organized around that particular issue as a group and they
were able to get Congress to pass a tax law and not anyone
since, not any disability group since has been successful in
adding to that. So they are the only group that has the
additional deduction available on the tax form.
That was through organization. Again, that is siloing, only
looking at -- obviously other people with disabilities have
issues as relates to these things but they are not ever been
able to successful because it is a very large, usually
impairment is -- visual impairment is a large segment of the
population. One of the largest subsets of people with
disabilities are individuals who are blind or have low
vision. One of the areas that many of us may move into as
we age. It is a very large aging over 65 population as you
due to macular degeneration and age-related issues with our
-- sight. It is a very -- our eye sight so it is a very
large group and population of individuals.
Integration versus segregation. Don't make me sit at the
back of the bus. People with disabilities and civil rights
movement was about getting on the bus. There were no lifts
to get on the buses, et cetera, prior to the civil rights
movement of people with disabilities. So it was a very
different context.
Not to be also segregated. Don't put me in a different
classroom. Or set me in a different area of the theater.
Or of the venue. Don't put me in a separate class to
participate in. I want to be where everybody else. I don't
want to just necessarily -- if I choose to be with only
people with disabilities, choose to go to a school where
only individuals with disabilities, that's my choice. Don't
make it my only option. So it is integration versus
segregation is a really main concept.
Then equality of opportunity. Having the same opportunities
as everybody else does. I may not have the same benefit,
but I have the same opportunity to benefit. None of us has
exactly the same benefit from anything we do. We all
exercise differently. We all have different structures.
We're tall. We're short. We're whatever. There is all
different things all of us face when we engage in any
activity where we're going to get something out of it
differently than everybody else is. But the difference is
we've had at least an opportunity to benefit. And that's a
key issue for the ADA and the premise of what the ADA is all
about.
Some facts you should keep in consideration or think about
is the ADA comes from section 504. Didn't come out of the
sky. Didn't just suddenly people with disabilities decided
let's have this law. Section 504 came beforehand and that
was on the civil rights movement, started in the late '60s
for people with disabilities.
That was a piece of legislation. How much you recipients of
federal funds? Any way, shape, or form get federal dollars.
All of you with your hand up, any time you get your federal
dollars, Section 504 applies to you. It is a piece of
legislation at the federal level passed in 1973 that said,
any recipient of federal dollars cannot discriminate on the
basis of disability in their programs, services and
activities.
The ADA was a mirror of section 504 that was placed into
legislation in late '80s, pass the in 1990, and applied to
the public sector with no dollars attached to it in regards
to where my money comes from.
Section 504 is like a carrot on a stick. You want the
federal money, you agree with a whole host of different
things including Section 504. The ADA doesn't care where
your money comes from. You are going to have obligations if
you are one of the covered entities under the Americans with
Disabilities Act.
But those who may have dual responsibilities between 504 and
the ADA.
It re-- irregardless of whether or not where your funding
comes from, and it covers you regardless of how many
employees you have.
There is often confusion under the ADA because -- we're not
getting 23450 employment. -- into employment. That's a
whole separate scenario.
Under the ADA I'm only covered under employment if I have 15
or more employees. And there has been a lot of confusion
bye entities under the ADA of the fact that says, well if I
don't have 15 employees, I'm not covered by the ADA. That's
true for employment you are not covered by the ADA, but here
in Illinois you can cover under the Illinois human rights
act because it covered one or more employees.
But your programs and services are not triggered by the
numbers of employees that you have. They are triggered by
the type of entity that you have. So irregardless of how
many employees you have, that's a whole separate
responsibility and obligation under employment provisions of
the ADA. We're talking about your access to goods and
services that you provide to the public which does not have
any triggers as far as numbers of people who work for you in
any way, shape, or form.
There are some exemptions under the ADA. Religiously
controlled and operated. Anything religiously controlled.
Catholic Charities would be an example of a religious
entity. Parochial school, Catholic school, Lutheran school
would be another example of that.
Facilities that are owned by those entities would not be
subject to the ADA for their facilities. However, if one of
you were going to rent from let's say the archdiocese, let's
say they had a building someplace you were going to use, the
archdiocese has no obligations under the law because they
are exempted because they are a religious entity.
But you are operating a place that's open to the public in
their building which puts the responsibility on you, because
you are not exempted under the ADA just because you are
renting from a religious entity.
Does that make sense? So they would be, you would not be.
It makes a real kind of tangled web sometimes.
Tribal entities, we don't have that a lot of that in
Illinois. You go up to other states you have a lot of
tribal entities, they have bingo halls and venues where they
might be doing shows and things of that nature and have
troops come in to do different types of things. They are
exempted under the ADA because of the fact that they are
their own sovereign state under our constitution and such so
they have their own treaty with the United States. So they
are exempted from the ADA.
Private clubs are exempted from the ADA. Private clubs are
not just because you paid a lot of money to become a member.
The definition of private club exemption understand the ADA
is that club which the membership controls the membership.
So when you vote on me being a member, we have very few of
them anymore in the United States that operate this way, but
some of our private golf clubs and things still do. I think
of the PGA plays in some private golf clubs where when they
are open as a PGA tournament, and the public is coming in
for that day they are open to the public, but the rest of
the time they are closed only to members or members' guests.
They are exempted from the ADA in that context because the
way that the IRS and the statute is set up, they are
exempted from all sorts of laws.
In fact you may remember there was controversy with Tiger
Wood being able to play in the PGA in some of the
tournaments because even though he could play -- like
Agusta, he could play there when there was a tournament
playing there, he could never be a member of the golf club,
and he could not go there as a invitee because he would not
meet that criteria. Again, we don't have a lot of those but
we still do have some and those are exempted.
And the federal government is exempted. Before you get
excited, they are not exempt from obligations. They are
just exempt from the ADA because the Rehab Act of 1973
covers the federal government for all of its programs,
services and activities so there was no need under the ADA
to cover them a second time because they already are
covered. So they have the same obligations.
They've had the same trouble, complying as well. Okay?
Still a lot of federal entities that have not met their
obligations for accessibility. In fact if you want to go to
the White House and you want to go up to the family
quarters, you are going to take the dumb waiter if have you
a disability because you can't get into the upper floors of
the White House. There is no elevator other than the dumb
waiter ones they use for moving food carts and things of
that nature to the family quarters on the second floor.
If you remember Bill Clinton broke his knee when he was in
office, and the only way he could get up to his quarters,
family quarters was in the dumb waiter. During that period
of time that he was on crutches and stuff. Little known
fact. People don't know. He did break his knee while he
was in office.
There is a loft problems with a lot of our federal venues.
The ADA has 5 titles. So as I said, we're not going to
cover. Just know employment covers anyone with 15 or more
employees against nondiscrimination in all aspects of
employment. So from recruitment to hiring to actually
working for me to the pay you give me, benefits that I'm
provided, A to Z of employment is covered under Title I of
the ADA.
Title II of the ADA, local and state government. Any unit of
government is covered under the ADA. If I have any
relationship as a governmental entity from the smallest to
the biggest, so park districts and other groups that are
part of government are going to be covered under Title II of
the ADA.
Anyone who is owned and operated by a local or a state
government.
Then Title III of the ADA which is a majority where most of
you fit into is Title III is the private side of things
which is place of public accommodation. Which includes
those areas which are accessed by the public either for
enjoyment or medical services, for retail, any of those
things. There is 12 categories of coverage, all of your
organizations fit in these categories and covered under
Title III of the ADA.
Just as an FYI, there is a Title IV of the ADA,
telecommunications. This covers the responsibility to
ensure the telephone companies that there are hired to
ensure that people with disabilities who have difficulty
using traditional telephone methods of communication have
access. So the TTY that you might be aware of, the video
relay that some people are starting to use, more
technologies.
So whether it is AT & T, Verizon, whoever it might be, they
all have obligations to ensure that their services are
usable and accessible to people with disabilities.
And then Title V of the ADA is the miscellaneous provisions
of the ADA, weird things like my ability if I have been
retaliated against because I exercised my rights under the
law, that's where it is covered. Issues of attorneys' fees
if I'm successful in an ADA claim. Areas of insurance and
how insurance is treated under the ADA. All fall in that
miscellaneous areas of the law. We will be focusing on
primarily Title II, Title III obligations in my discussion
today.
Before we launch into the specifics, I want to at this time
have our panelists introduce themselves because they are
going to be interacting with us today and I want you to know
who they are so when they do chime in, that you'll know
where they are coming from and what they have to add. Go
ahead.
>> EVAN HATFIELD: I'm the director of audience experience
at Stephen wolf theater company. I have horrible posture
which I'm totally justifying. So my head doesn't get in the
way of the caption display up here.
[Laughter.]
I have been at Steppenwolf for about 8 years focusing on the
offtheater relationship with the audience, customer service
and the mission is to make it easier for everyone to come
see our shows. So our programming and services for people
with disabilities is just a very simple extension of that.
How do you make it easy for everyone to see your plays.
>> CHRISTENA GUNTHER: I am the community programs
coordinator at the Elmhurst historical museum. I moved to
Chicago pretty recently and before that I worked at the
metropolitan museum of art in the accessible office for 4
years and learned a lot working there and have a lot to
share in that regard. And I was brought to this field
through my brother who has downs syndrome and he's also a
visual artist.
Growing up with my brother and those obstacles he faced by
going to museums really inspired me to this career.
>> LYNN WALSH: Hello. I'm from Chicago Children's Museum.
I have been at the museum for just over 11 years now and
since 2004 we've had a formal access and inclusion
initiative, so I'm very proud to be the manager of that.
And we work a little bit differently. We have a
crossdepartmental team that manages what we call play for
all. At some point I would be happy to share more
information about that with you.
>> There is two other mics.
>> PHILIP DAWKINS: Hi. I'm a playwright and educator, I'm
an ensemble playwright at Victory Gardens theater where I
also teach the accessed artist development workshop which is
playwrighting for artists with disabilities. And it is open
to all and pay what you can. And I am also a teacher at
Northwestern and Loyola and working on some fun audience
inclusion stuff with zoom of my other work -- some of my
other work.
>> ROBIN JONES: I think you can see we kind of have a
diversity here which is what we were aiming for. If we get
through today and go through the various areas, they will
share with you their experiences what they learned. And
also be able to respond to some of your questions of some of
the things that something they would have already
experienced, maybe that you are thinking about right now
that's on your mind that they can give you some direction or
some validation of what you might be actually going through
with some of those issues.
Great, thank you very much.
We're going to start with this whole kind of concept of what
is required. Now, let me start with a caveat, this is what
the law says is required. The law is the minimum
requirement. Okay? You can always do more. And in fact,
you should be encouraged to do more, and not look at it as
strictly an issue of what's the least I need to do to stay
legal and not have a lawsuit or a complaint where I into
toad defend eye where I need to defend myself.
If that's what you are looking at, you are really not going
to be inclusive in what you do. It does require you to
integrate the issues and not treat them as a separate issue.
If you talk to anybody up here, they are not in isolation of
what they do. They are interacting and working with ever
division around the issues.
They are probably the voice, but they tell you they have
people bringing the issues up on their own because of the
education they have done and the reality of people
identified that, hey, this isn't so hard and that we should
be including it.
Because for so long this was always after the fact stuff.
This was, we would plan the event, and then afterward
somebody would say, oh, what do we do about wheelchair
seating? Oh, what do we do about sign language because
somebody called us and asked us. And we don't know what to
do. How do they know we would provide it? We never put it
out there that we provided it. And then they are scrambling
at the last minute to figure out what they are having to do.
So once you start to actually integrate and look at these
issues as something it is a part of doing business and it
should be integrated in each and every aspect of what do you
and from the ground up of your planning and through the
completion and execution, you are going to be far better off
in, one, interesting new audiences that you have not
traditionally had because they haven't had access or known
about your access because that's another issue.
Sometimes you might have access but nobody has ever told
anybody or really promoted it. The reality is for a lot of
people with disabilities, if they have previously been
denied access somewhere and you have made a change that
suddenly created access, they don't know it because they
already been denied so they are not going to come back again
to a entity they previously had no access to. So you have
created great access and I can tell you how many businesses
I have tell me, oh, we remodeled our bathroom. We only had
one person come in that uses a wheelchair to use it.
How long were you in inaccessible? 20 years. How long have
you been accessible? 3 months. What did you do to tell the
public that you now have accessible bathrooms? Nothing.
Well, you know, that 20 years of inaccessibility, you are
living with that. Because nobody knows. And people are
going to move on. They are going to go to someplace
elsewhere they can get access. So you are missing
opportunities.
Also get a the lot of entities to say to me, well, it is one
ticket I lost. Well, I don't know, -- I will say have I
gone to theater by myself, the zoo by myself shall the
museum by myself. But people usually are going at least one
other person or a family and friends and et cetera.
Or a whole school group can't come because they have a
couple members of their class who have disabilities and they
can't exclude those individuals from being able to
participate. So now you've lost a whole school group or a
whole larger group that can't participate anymore. So you
really have to think of it bigger than that one person who
might be the chair user or whatever because it is their
family members and friends and others who are also not going
to have access because they can't have access with their
family member or friend and they can't enjoy the activity
with their family member or friend so they will go to a
different place.
Something that's a constant issue and constantly something
we need to keep on our minds. But we will talk a little bit
about this issue of effective communication.
Now effective communication is defined as communication that
happens between me and whoever I am trying to communicate
with. And if you and I can understand each other, we just
had effective communication. But I may have limitations in
how I communicate that will impact my ability to have
effective communication with you.
So if I am somebody who is deaf, and I can't hear what you
are saying, I may have been trained in doing some
lipreading, but we know and studies show that reading --
lipreading only catches about 20 to 25% of what is actually
being said. Some are more proficient than others but we
can't generalize and say that lip reads all have a
conversation and you should hear. How do I know if that
person could hear me or not?
Well, you validate. If that person says that they can
understand me using lipreading and such, we have a
conversation, and then I ask them questions back about what
we had a conversation about to see whether or not they
understood what I said correctly. That's a pretty good
validation that we had some effective communication
occurring. In that regard.
That goes across the board with anybody. So when we start
to look at the venues and the different ways we communicate,
we communicate in written format, we communicate orally, we
communicate through media, all different ways, so think of
the communication in your own venues that you do now and how
do you communicate with the public. Then think about if
somebody who came who was blind, would they have access to
your written information?
I'm not saying access in the fact that you'll sit there and
read them the entire brochure, because in the immediate that
might work. But why did you create a brochure in the first
place? Sow I could -- so I could take it home and refer to
it later. You assume I have a friend sitting at home
waiting to read to me? What if I live on my own? What if I
don't want to bother my family member to read that brochure
to me again and I want to do it myself. And I want to act
on it myself. Shouldn't I have the right and ability to do
that? Yes.
So how are we making that information accessible?
What about somebody who is deaf and we have information that
we have posted in a YouTube video. All about our production
or our newest exhibit or about our whatever. How are they
going to have access to that information? They can't hear.
Know some of you are going to say, well, I know that on
YouTube there is this little option available if I use the
right upload that does auto captioning. It will generate
auto captioning. That's true. Did you ever check the
accuracy of the auto generated captions?
[Laughter.]
Be careful. Mayor Daley got caught. His YouTube channel
was introducing a new fire chief who was African-American,
and he said "we've hired the best man" instead the
captioning said "we've hired a black man". Don't think
that's what he intended to have it say.
And the reliance on those technologies is not really
accurate. Your message is not going to be what you want it
to be, et cetera. So you have to be careful when you are
trying to use technology to help you. It can be a help but
also a hindrance and you have to figure out the best way to
do it. Because you can use those captions and then edit
them and reload them and it is a shortcut to doing
captioning if you have the time and ability to do that. But
it is something you have to think about.
So, yeah, we put cool things on the websites, all this cool
media out there to promote and get information about our
stuff, but what are people going to get of that information
about us if we don't make sure, ensure that it is
successful. That's why I want to make sure we use
multimodal ways of doing things. We don't just have one
way. There might be an accessible option on the website,
and paper options and other ways people can get the
information.
Our experiences are, we communicate with people before their
visit when we're telling them about the events and
activities, then at the point when they might be buying a
ticket or getting more information where they are having
contact with our venues to get information. It can be by
telephone, e-mail, snail mail, et cetera.
Then we have the communication that occurs inhouse or on the
spot when the person actually comes in to our venues.
So what are we going to do about the tour? That an
individual is deaf and needs to have access to that tour
information? We going to hand them the transcript of the
tour?
Are we going to have a sign language interpreter available
so we have promoted that there is, let's say we do this tour
on a weekly basis, that we have one or two of the tours
available on a regular basis that are signed? And we
advertise that to the public so we build that into our
programming.
If we're going to have videos, if we're going to show
introductory videos, if we're going to show you videos at
different points of our venues, have they been captioned?
Also have they been audio described?
If I'm blind, I don't know what's happening in that video.
I can hear the talking head, so I hear what's being said,
but if that video has a lot of movement, a lot of action and
activity going on, you are showing something, you are
demonstrating something, how am I going to have benefit of
that particular information? Unless it has been orally
described for me so that I have benefit of doing that.
So how are we going to incorporate the different needs that
people have into what methods we're choosing to use to
convey our information.
For each one of your venues it is going to be different
because each one of you do something different. Some of you
may have on one end of the communication area than the other
or the types of communication that you use. Some of you may
be more evenly spread across those depending on the type of
work that you do. But you have obligations to look at these
particular issues.
So providing materials in alternative format. Anyone here
know where in Chicago you can get something Brailled if you
needed to have Braille produced?
[inaudible].
>> ROBIN JONES: You contact they do Braille services at the
lighthouse for the blind. Sorry, she said lighthouse for
the blind. That's one of the places you can go.
You have a resource that's handed out to you as well. So
you can get some information. We will talk about that for a
little while. Just so you know, don't -- get distracted.
But we'll talk about some of those resources.
But the key thing is knowing where it is. Because you know
your jobs. You know what you do and how busy you are. And
now you have this issue come before you and you are going to
have to investigate it and try to figure out how to solve
it. And it is going to take a lot of time and effort if you
have not up to this point put any thought into these issues
proactively.
If you are strictly reactive, I can almost guarantee you
will pay more. Because last minute services and things of
that nature are always going to be more expensive than if
you had an agreement upfront or had some relationships
upfront so that you knew what you needed to do and you could
have that done or at least be prepared and know what that
was going to take. How many days in advance do I have to get
them my written materials in order to get it produced in
Braille. Is there a last minute fee if I have an emergency
overnight? You bet there is and it will be a lot more
money.
Knowing those things from a planning perspective, one, helps
you budget, and, two, just gives you from a planning
perspective is we're starting out, here is our event, this
is what we're going to do, how our communication is going to
go. Okay, our written communication, this is what we have
to consider. Our oral communication, this is what we have
to consider.
Large print, there is a good section of the population who
can't see small print. I'm becoming more and more one of
those. Prescription I'm not sure how much more they can
get. I find myself gravitating a lot more towards large
print than I ever have before. But that's a sector of the
population that we need to pay attention to. And as you
look at it, it is not all about who identifies as a
disability all the time either.
The aging population themselves will often not identify as
having disabilities, they will just say I'm getting old. My
eyes are going. It is not from their mind set a disability
issue, but it is an access issue for them. And they'll
start not doing things because of that. And they'll give
up. You lost a good customer. You lost somebody who was a
regular patron of yours because they no longer have access.
You know what? They don't see anything in your materials
that tell them that you might have that available because
you haven't put any statements in any of your materials to
say, if you need this information in an alternative format,
if you need this information in Braille, you need this
information in large print or whatever, this is who you call
to get that. Or to talk to, to have that conversation with.
Because if you don't let me know, then I'm not going to know
who to go to and I'm just going to give up on your
organization because I have been frustrated. I tried
before. Because we have all done it, called the main office,
and that person answers the phone doesn't know the
information and they say no. Even though the answer is
probably yes if they talk to the right person. We all know
in our organizations we're only as good as the lowest
denominator in our organization. The so if we have not
trained the receptionist or the person who is answering the
phone or whoever about these kinds of things, we may have
the best plan in the world as an organization, we may do all
of these things but if we haven't told the people who
communicate with the public, they are not going to do it.
They are not going to know about it.
So that's a huge area that we see in that whole kind of
connecting the dots related to the accessibility.
Providing things in digital formats. A lot of people say
e-mail that to me. Can you send that to me in e-mail?
Great, I'll send it to you in e-mail. Or send you to the
website. Smart phones. People with disabilities are more
and more using technology as a way to get access. Now there
is still a digital divide. Still an issue of cost. But
those are becoming more available as smart phones become
cheaper and some of the wi-fi enabled and free wi-fi spots
and you can get information. Libraries. City of Chicago
has kiosks all over the place that they put into play. So
people have more access than they used to have so they may
be asking you for it in electronic format of the.
How many of you use PDF documents?
[Show of hands.]
A lot of you do. How do you create your PDFs? Anyone? Take
it to the printer and scan it? Adobe Acrobat. That's a
good answer. I like that one.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Free PDF it online.
>> ROBIN JONES: The key is to know if the one you are using
is accessible. Because a strictly PDF document unless it is
tagged and is kept in the right sequential order, someone
using a screen reader software is going to have no access to
that document.
PDF is an image. It is a portable digital image. If that
image is not structured such that I can read it with my
technology, it is a useless document to me. So when I take
something and take it to the printer or to the copy machine
and scan it and tell it to give me PDF, 100% inaccessible.
It is just an image like a picture. Depending what PDF
writers you are using of whether or not they are going to
tag and order the document when it translates it into PDF so
it has what we call renderable text off of it, that's one
thing to look at. One thing to go and check out and make
sure your folks are using if they are doing it PDF.
Just making it electronically may still not be accessible.
Different information for orally. We talked about it.
Today you are seeing we are realtime captioning being used
today. How many of you are familiar with realtime
captioning aside from accidentally turning it on your TV
when you -- or maybe purposely turning it on your TV when
your room is so noisy that your family or kids or parties
going on and you are trying to listen to whatever it
happening on TV so you actually purposely turned it on?
That's captioning. Okay? Or using realtime captioning
means that it is happening in realtime as I'm speaking,
she's translating it into her technology so it is readable
in realtime.
So that's using court transcription technology to do that
particular thing.
So I may need that for somebody because there are many
people who do not just because they are deaf have not
learned sign language. Sign language is a separate
language. There are many individuals who may have acquired
their deafness after they already acquired English as their
first language and are not willing -- how many of you have
learned Spanish and other languages? It is another
language. And they may choose that they don't want to use
American Sign Language.
So they are not fluent in American Sign Language for an
event like this and they may know enough to communicate
informally, et cetera, but not to get the whole gist of what
is happening in an event like this. So they may need the
realtime captioning for your events, your educational
events, your performances, your meetings, anything of that
nature so they may be having that request.
Assistive listening systems. Today we are all using mic
phones. Technically small enough room, if we didn't want to
be sensitive to issues of people having hearing problems or
issues of that nature, we could choose not to use
microphone. And then there would be a sector of the
population who would not hear what was being said in the
room today.
Assistive listening is used by individuals who have issues
related to hearing so they have low volume hearing,
different decibels of hearing they may have problems
hearing, et cetera. So amplification is given different
ways.
We're using amplification today two ways. We're using it
tied through the microphone so the microphone is amplifying,
but there are receivers available so if somebody needed that
they could wear that receiver and it would increase the
amplification individually for that person.
If we were not going to be using the microphone today and we
still had somebody who needed assistive listening, I would
have probably little lapel mic on and that person would have
their receiver on their end. I would have the transmitter,
they have the receiver. And as I spoke they would be able
to hear me amplified individually.al so that's what an
assistive listening system is.
Assistive listening systems can be portable, hard wired,
depends on the venue, depends on the needs of your entity,
et cetera. So there is a whole science around listening
systems as well.
Audio description we talked about as I gave the example of
the video, but also performances. If there is something
happening on the stage, it is great I can hear all the
actors talking but I don't know what they are doing. People
are laughing. What are they laughing at? What did that
actor do? What did that approximate earn do? -- person do?
I don't know. I have no idea. I missed that entire element.
I lost the opportunity.
We are seeing more and more of our movie houses, production
companies starting to audio describe and such. There has
been laws passed mandating that some of them do things
especially if they are making them available through Netflix
and other kinds of methods. There have been some lawsuits on
that of the.
We still struggle with that live performance. We still
struggle making sure people have access to live
performances.
At this point I will ask our audience to chime in a little
bit about their experiences around oral communication,
written communication, interacting with your commerce or
these -- customers on these experiences.
Also share from the actors or from the other side of it as
well, perspective how they respond to use of these
technologies because it obviously takes more than one person
to make these things work. It is not just plugging it in.
Go ahead and jump in.
>> EVAN HATFIELD: This is Evan from Steppenwolf, --
Steppenwolf if you are sitting there right now thinking
about the rabbit hole you are gazing into --
[Laughter.]
-- how many people here, show of hands, control the budget
at their organization?
[Laughter.]
One? I want to party with you.
[Laughter.]
There is no executive or managing directors in here. We're
all probably here in a customer service capacity or
education capacity. You are probably already the
disenfranchised nuisance in your organization who is asking
for really basic things but because of budget or because of
lack of focus or whatever reason, it is really hard to push
those things through.
3 years ago we were doing sign language interpreted
performances for 2 patrons if we were lucky. Now we're
averaging 30 to 40 for a performance which in the scheme of
things is an a-- isn't amazing, but compared to where we
were 3 years ago, holy cow.
That's not a brag. That's a glimmer of hope at the base of
that rabbit hole it is not that deep.
One of the first things we did when we started focusing on
accessibility program is taking an inventory of what we were
already doing and letting people know we were doing that.
We were doing all these ASL interpreted performances almost
symbolically but there is no information anywhere on our
website or in our written materials that indicated that.
Then we were shocked when no one showed up. Then leadership
goes and uses that as an excuse to continue to not put
funding and resources towards that program.
Once we started throwing that ASL logo on to our written
materials, and we started doing some very basic outreach,
people started showing up. Then it becomes this nice fly
wheel where more people show up, the more willingness there
is to put resources towards it.
So if you want to look at what you are already doing and I
promise you you will probably surprise yourself to discover
what you are already doing. And then let people know about
it.
If you can get -- if you are wheelchair accessible, put that
wheelchair logo on your marketing materials.
Look at your website and talk about the path to the door
through your venue. Really, really basic stuff. Then be
willing to have follow-up conversations about that as well.
The willingness to listen and the willingness to take the
time with an individual and just talk about, hey, here is
what we can do for you goes a really, really long ways.
As far as alternative formats, we do Braille play bills,
large print play bills, more and more these days we're
sending -- I'm e-mailing play bills in Word format to
individuals who use computers and they like to use them --
blind individuals use them with their screen readers.
We like to mail our play bills in advance which you might
think is costly except the post office is our friend on
this. I don't know the exact number on it, but free matter
for the blind. If you send material that does not have
advertising in it, tell me once I'm wrong here.
>> ROBIN JONES: No, you are right. It is not for
promotional.
>> EVAN HATFIELD: It is not for promotional use. I will
take our Braille play bill or large print play bill which I
did myself on Microsoft Word, blew it up to 24 point, you go
and put free matter for the blind on your envelope. I have
taken the ads out. It allows that person to read the play
bill in advance of their visit.
You can do that with any of your marketing materials. Just
see what tools you already have in your possession and start
utilizing them. I'm pretty sure that's my 3 minutes. I can
go on for hours. I'll be respectful here.
>> LYNN WALSH: This is Lynn from the children's museum. I
will jump in and I agree with everything Evan says.
Coming from a children's museum, having conversation was
Evan about what he has to do at the theater and what we do
at the children's museum is pretty crazy because we're at
opposite ends and we will talk about that in a minute.
But I wanted to say one of the most important things we've
done and continue to do at the children's museum when it
comes to effective communication is provide staff training.
Back in 2004 when we were just getting this idea of doing an
access and inclusion initiative, we surveyed our guest
facing staff with one simple question, we asked them what is
your comfort level when interacting with a person with a
disability. Our staff were very honest and the majority
came back and said, they are afraid of saying or doing
something wrong so they were doing nothing at all. So we
really appreciated that honesty, and from that moment
forward we offer regular ongoing disability awareness
training that includes people with disabilities coming to
the museum and providing those trainings.
Just meeting someone with a disability, it sounds very
simple, but you then know a person with a disability and you
realize, oh, it is just a person. And that really made a
huge impact to our staff.
So staff training, huge. And when it comes to communication
there is all this technology and all this good stuff. One
of the most simple things we do that we have available for
our guest facing staff particularly the admissions staff is
we have a white board and dry erase markers up there in case
they are interacting with someone and there is a problem
with communication. Maybe someone is not verbal or there is
problems with understanding. They just write notes to each
other. So technology can be kind of scary sometimes. Can
be kind of expensive. But this was a white board that
actually I found in a storage room so it didn't cost us
anything.
So just keep that in mind as well. Accessibility doesn't
have to be expensive.
One of the other things I was going to mention that speaks
to the difference between the museum and the theater, at
Chicago Children's Museum, first of all, we're all hands on
so that makes it really easy for us, and we understand that
we don't have to deal with a lot of the issues that other
people do because people can touch anything and everything.
But in Evan's case, he offers assisted listening devices and
sound and hearing is a big part of it. It is kind of the
opposite at the children's museum. We can be really loud
and overwhelming so one of the big tools we offer is sound
reducing headphones. So just consider where you are and
what the needs are of all of your visitors.
>> EVAN HATFIELD: Then it says here Lynn versus Evan for
effective communication.
[Laughter.]
>> LYNN WALSH: That was it.
>> EVAN HATFIELD: Museum Thursday theater?
>> LYNN WALSH: Yeah.
>> EVAN HATFIELD: Yeah, I can't reenforce that enough.
There is so much cost associated with some of these things
that we're talking about, but there is also really simple,
creative analog solutions as well.
Most of us are probably coming from an organization that
specializes in creativity of some sort. Right? So just
rechanneling that, and figuring out how do we solve this
problem.
So provide open captioning for theoretical performance,
there is a million different technologies out there. The
one that we utilize has an LED captioned display where a
trained captioner has uploaded the script in advance and
sits there and watches the performance and cues it up as
they go along.
But there also a nice solution is you can create a
PowerPoint presentation. If you have access to a projector
and a laptop, identify a screen or a wall in the space and
cue it up that way. There are these beautiful things called
internships --
[Laughter.]
Take advantage of those. Have an accessibility internship
and have somebody in charge of your captioning. I don't
know, it is a really simple solution.
Lynn, would you care to retort?
[Laughter.]
>> LYNN WALSH: I agree with you 100%.
Christena?
>> CHRISTENA GUNTHER: Okay. I wanted to talk just a little
bit on a kind of different spectrum which was my time
working at the metropolitan museum. So I realize this is a
big institution, one of I think they say they are the
largest art museum in the western hemisphere. So very
different.
But access is really an institutional priority there and it
was -- it is not perfect. Certainly was not perfect. But
there is a lot of great things in place especially when it
comes to effective communication for an art museum.
Because art museums have special challenges when we are
talking about effective communication because we're talking
about works of art that for the most part can't be touched,
there is special lights on, that there is special displays
in front of. So thinking creatively about what could be
done for people who are blind or have location was something
that has opinion considered even -- has been considered even
before the ADA was passed for the met.
I wanted to talk a little bit about some of those things.
I have a nice list here. So for people who are blind or
partially sighted there are audio guides that most -- I
think most medium and larger institutions have available.
They are usually for a cost but at the met they were free
for people who were blind or partially sighted. That was a
simple solution there.
Of course there is no card that says, hi, I'm blind, so you
really would take people at their word and we train the
staff to take people at their word with that.
We did have -- and I say "we" like I still work there, but I
don't.
The met has a self-guided Egyptian touch tour booklet
available to people without advanced reservations. People
that come to the museum, goes to the information desk, they
say I'm blind and I would like to take the Egyptian touch
tour and hopefully the staff is really well trained and they
know where to get this booklet which also was available in
Braille and had some raised line drawings. This would take
them to 8 objects in the Egyptian collection which the
conservators and curators gave the okay to be touched.
So I'll be sure to pass this around, but it has the image
and it has a description putting it in historical context as
well as describing what the -- putting the visual image into
some context as well. Because if you were just starting to
touch, this is a sphynx, if you were touching the paws, you
wouldn't know what was touching. This can help explain
that. I will pass this around.
Another really low tech thing that we did was the met has
large print labels that are available for special
exhibitions. It is 20 million square feet of gallery space,
so they don't do it for every display, but for special
exhibitions at the met they have the labels that are
available in this booklet that people can take, and it just
has the label copy blown up in a large size.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: This is large print enough?
>> CHRISTENA GUNTHER: It is, yes.
Then there is a Braille version as well.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: It is not very big.
>> ROBIN JONES: Let me jump in there. If somebody came and
said they needed it larger than that, there is no standard
for large print. Anything above 18 point is considered
large print. But you can have somebody who needed 32 point
print in order to actually see, because that was their
individual need for that. So you've got that issue of what
are you producing that might be available for many people,
but you may still have to do some customization for those
individual situations where somebody would have difficulty.
That was done on a Word processing program, it would be easy
to go into a Word processing program, select all, blow it up
to 32 point.
>> EVAN HATFIELD: If you ever want to look savvy for
someone who is asking about services. Say, hey, we
generally do 24 point font. That work for you? Okay? 28?
I mean it is the easiest adjustment in the world and it
makes you look really, really good.
[Laughter.]
>> ROBIN JONES: Evan wants to look good.
>> EVAN HATFIELD: Which is what we are going for here.
>> CHRISTENA GUNTHER: That's the main goal.
And then the met has scheduled programs for individuals who
are blind or partially sighted and their companions on a
regular basis that happen monthly as well as a drawing class
for people who are blind or partially sighted.
And individuals who might not be able or interested to go to
these scheduled programs are able with advanced reservation
to have a customized individual verbal imaging tour. So
Robin was talking a lot about audio description. Verbal
imaging or verbal description is kind of the museum or art
side of that and that would be describing how the work of
art appears. Visually. Talking about -- the most important
stuff like it is an oil painting on the wall. But also
talking about some of the important details. It is an art
itself. It takes a long, long time to get good at.
But we did have trained educators who would give verbal
imaging tours in whatever gallery the visitor was interested
in going to so the visitor could decide. If they weren't
sure what to do, because the met can be overwhelming, there
was a highlights version where the educator would choose the
objects he or she were most important tore them to see.
Then there is a touch collection of works of art that
started in the '70s, so their succession works of art that
people with make points to touch with an educator.
All these things are available free of charge. Most of them
require them to make advanced plans but the Egyptian touch
tour is one people can just show up and do. That was a note
I have written here to make sure I tell you two important
take aways from this, our redundancy and choice. I feel
those are kind of the two take aways.
Usually you think of redundancy in a very negative way. You
don't want to be redundant. When it comes to accessibility
redundancy is crucial. What works for somebody does work
for -- doesn't work for somebody else. If you have it in
multiple formats that is good.
What Robin was sayings, back in the day people with
disabilities were really segregated, relegated to the
special ed room or wherever else and people were making
choices for them. So it is very important as an institution
and also thinking about you on a personal level to make sure
you are offering people choices what they want to do. So
hopefully you see through the different things that are
available for people who are blind or partially sighted,
there is a lot of different choice.
Maybe you want to learn drawing, maybe you don't. Then you
don't have to take the class, take something else. So
having choice is really important.
There is a lot more I can go into, but the other thing I
wanted to make sure to pass around was this is a very, very
high tech version, but this is a book that was published at
the met called the art and the alphabet. It includes images
from the collection that have raised lines. So this is one
way that you can make works of art that can't be touched,
the real work can't be touched, accessible to people who are
blind or partially sighted.
This was the high tech version but there are much lower tech
ways of making it. And if you want to know more about it, I
would be happy to talk about it with you.
>> ROBIN JONES: Great. Thank you. We'll keep going. You
will get a chance to ask questions. So hold the questions
and hopefully you'll have them when we are ready to take
them.
Again, just we talk about everything, everything is required
all the way through. Advertisements, promotions,
communicating within the venue, et cetera as we said, just a
slide that tells you that.
And I think that Evan really pointed out the whole issue of
letting people know. If you don't have it in your
information, if you don't have it on your website, if you
don't have staff trained to ask the question, you missed an
opportunity. You missed the boat and you are not going to.
And you will be surprised when this person shows up and has
expectations of something being available and then you
aren't prepared to respond to that.
Just be aware of your technology. Your website accessible.
How many of you know that your websites are accessible?
Have ever been evaluated for accessibility against any kind
of standards or any guidelines?
>> EVAN HATFIELD: I know that it is not.
[Show of hands.]
[Laughter.]
>> ROBIN JONES: There you go. So you are admitting.
That's very good.
So huge number of websites in the public are not accessible.
It is something that was -- we really look at the Internet
and electronic information as the ramp of 1990. In 1990
there were a lot of buildings you couldn't get into because
they didn't have ramps on them. Now that we're in the
virtual world there is a lot of websites they can't get into
because they are not constructed so they are accessible.
When we talk about accessibility, we talk about people who
are using different types of assistive technologies to be
able to read and navigate your website. If I'm blind I'm
using screen reader software that reads the text on the
screen, but if your website is not structured, it has a
whole bunch of images on it and the images aren't tagged so
I don't know what they are, you have buttons on there to
tell me to click but they are not tagged to tell me to go
here. You have a bunch of links on there where I don't know
where I'm going to. In today's world of viruses, people are
hesitant to just click on a link that they don't know where
it is taking them to so they are likely to avoid that.
If you have so many layers in your website -- visually I get
frustrated with websites when you make me go layer upon
layer to go somewhere. If I'm using a screen reader, I'm
lost. I already have to go to so many layers to get to the
be second point and then to ever get back to where I wanted
to, forget it. If you are not accessible you don't have
cookies or anything to help me get back. The little labels
and things to help me get back to page one, or home, or
wherever I needed to go.
So website accessibility especially since we're relying on
it more and more as a way to do business with the public, to
get information, tickets, to interact, to purchase, to ask
questions, to make the reservation, to find out what is
accessible. If we're not accessible, you just lost a huge
opportunity. So technology is a really big issue.
Use of your social media, using -- if you are Tweeting and
you are Facebooking and you are -- whatever else you are
doing, instagraming, be aware that some of those things are
not accessible. Twitter is not very accessible. There is
an accessible twitter. Are you paying attention to that?
Are you using that? Are you using those same mediums?
If you are using that as a big way in some of our yen view
-- venue toss get out what is happening, people who with
disabilities are interested in twitter, I don't know why,
but they are.
As an FYI warning, right now under the ADA there are not
specific standards for website design. There is guidance
put out by the federal government relating to standards
exist already out in the community as to what you should be
doing as far as your compliance responsibilities, but under
the ADA itself we do not have standards for web
accessibility.
The Department of Justice has publicly said that in 2014
they are issuing standards for web accessibility. That will
mean you will have a legal obligation with the ADA with a
standard tied to it. Which is similar to when you had a
architectural access which said you have to remove your
barriers to your website at some point. And what you are
going to have to do, no different, building a website is
like building a boom. You can't just go in and change one
little thing in your website and make it fully accessible.
It is the infrastructure. It is the way it was structured
that creates the biggest problems. So it is kind of like
rebuilding a building when you are talking about that.
So what's your next redo of our website? What is your
website slated to be done. We should be thinking about,
when we add on to the building, put an accessible bathroom
in when we add to the building, same thing here. There is
going to be a time when there is going to be a line drawn in
the sand with your web accessibility that says everything
that goes thereafter is going to have to be accessible, and
as you make changes to what was previously there, you are
going to have to bring it up to accessibility, too. Similar
to what we did with architectural accessibility. Just be
aware of that now that this is a huge issue.
And if you are interested, there is a ton of checkers
throughout, free online checkers that you can run your URL
through that will give you feedback about the accessibility
of your website. So there are things out there to help you.
Entities out there to help you with those things. We
strongly recommend that if you haven't looked at that,
that's something you need to look at. Because it is coming.
So I will switch over now to the issue of accommodations and
looking at modifying your policies and procedures. Remember
I mentioned earlier this is some of the hardest stuff to do.
This is not necessarily about get being the sign language
interpret or doing those kinds of things, this is now
looking at how do we do business and how is how we do
business potentially a barrier for someone so that someone
may need me to make a change in a policy, let them do
something we wouldn't let the general public or everybody do
for whatever reason, and how do we make those decisions and
why do we make those decisions?
There are many different examples I can give you. One is
service animals. How many of you know upfront that you have
clear cut policies related to service animals?
[Show of hands.]
Majority of people caught on to that particular issue. Are
you aware of service horses? Okay.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: It has been -- cut out now.
>> ROBIN JONES: No. Horses are allowed.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I don't think so.
>> ROBIN JONES: I can guarantee you.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: The mayor's office of people with
disabilities told me recently that they made a decision
against horses.
>> ROBIN JONES: Who has?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Government. Federal government.
>> ROBIN JONES: No. Let me explain.
The ADA what they changed was, the only thing that's viewed
as a service animal now is a domestic dog. So it cuts out
bunny rabbits, pot belly pigs, ferrets, monkeys, things of
that nature.
But it has an exception --
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: This is the oldest and junkiest mic
ever.
[Laughter.]
>> ROBIN JONES: Okay, so I'm on.
So there is an exception to that everything else rule that
says, an individual may use a miniature horse. Okay? The
reason for that, many different reasons, but the Department
of Justice made the determination that that was the one
animal other than a domestic dog that entities would need to
consider when making modifications of their policies to
allow a miniature horse in their facility.
Now that's going to be kind of -- I'm not talking about a
horse that hasn't grown up. There is a breed of miniature
horse. Okay? There is my little picture. Right. He has
tennis shoes on. Very cute.
Anyone know a bull mastiff dog? We're talking up to 190
pounds it can stand this tall (indicating). It can be a
service animal. Because it is a domestic dog!
So using size as arguments and stuff of that nature which is
what often happens with the horse situation is not a real
valid argument.
But you is it ill have to look at your -- you still have to
look at your operations in your organizations. We've seen
scenarios where even a bull mastiff dog is not reasonable.
It comes down to whether or not this is a reasonable
modification of a policy and a procedure.
You have to look at your institution and your entity and
your situation as to whether or not it is reasonable in that
context. But just be aware of the fact that miniature
horses are an exception to the domestic dog only rule under
the ADA. Okay?
We don't have a lot -- we don't see them very often in
Chicago. Our climate doesn't really lend itself a lot to
it. Horses not the same as a dog. You don't have it
sleeping on your bed. It has different toileting habits.
It has different outdoor habits and things. So it is not
going to, you know, quickly acclimate to the condo. Or
six-flat kind of a situation. But doesn't mean you are not
going to have them.
You know where I see them nearby? Michigan. Quite a large
population of miniature horses used in Michigan. Why? Very
high Muslim population and there is issues with dogs and
such in that religion. So a horse is used oftentimes by
individuals who are blind as a seeing eye horse by the
population.
The other thing a horse is, a horse has a different gait.
It has a different stance. There are some individuals
especially with balance will use a service horse pause it
provides them greater stability where they are using the
animal as part of their mobility. Not just to do a seeing
eye or to pick up something from the ground for me. What
I'm using is part of my mobility device almost. Just be
aware that the key thing here is that to be open. Don't be
closed minded.
Don't be closed minded to the person that has the chihuahua
as their service animal. The same as the person who has the
bull mastiff or their miniature horse as a service animal.
It is both spectrum.
Some people say what is that little dog doing -- that's
something taking their little dog like Paris Hilton. You
don't know. That person could be trained to detect that
person's diabetes. And when they have a change in their
blood sugar their chemistry changes and that dog alerts them
they have a change in their blood sugar and to check their
insulin. You don't know that. Don't make a judgment about
that. Look at what your policies are, look at what your
procedures are, be open to those issues, educate your staff,
education, education, education and more. Decide I think
Christena was using the example of train the staff not to
make a judgment if someone was blind or not blind. There is
no card I'm required to carry that says my dog is a service
animal or not.
The caveat is the animal has to be harnessed or tethered in
some way. Not just free running around per se. The only
caveat would be of that is somebody couldn't because of
their disability harness the dog but the dog was under their
control. Under a verbal control or something.
Let me at the same time say, if that dog is not behaving
like a service dog, if that dog is barking incessantly in
your facility, that's not a trained service dog. That's
right away, that's a fundamental alteration of your
business. You don't have dogs barking in your venues.
So I could deny that dog access. I can't deny the person
access. But I could deny the dog access because the dog was
not meeting, it was not reasonable for my entity to have
that occur.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: What is the ADA say about therapy
animals versus service animals.
>> ROBIN JONES: There is a very clear distinction in the
ADA. Emotional support animals or companion animals are not
covered by the ADA. There are other laws, however. There
is housing laws, air carrier access act that do cover
companion animals and emotional support animals.
Someone may have one in their apartment or condo or house.
They may travel with it on the airplane. But that does not
mean that it is allowed to be in to public venues. A lot of
confusion in the disability community on that. They get
confused around it as much as you might get confused.
A dog that's a service animal is a animal that provides an
actual service.
People may use service animals for psychiatric support.
There is a difference between emotional support animal and a
service animal for someone with psychiatric issues. An
animal that actually does something is a service animal.
For example, if I have somebody who has PTSD and that
individual has have a service animal, that that service
animal is trained when that person begins to demonstrate any
of the symptoms, to pull back that -- pull that person away
to a different area. To sit on that person to provide some
kind of stability for them, et cetera so that they don't act
out or do something, that's trained to actually do a
service, versus sitting next to me and making me feel
better. That's an emotional support animal. That's
different than a service animal that's actually doing
something.
Does that make sense?
Now, again, you as an organization entity have to make a
decision of how you are going to manage those things, how
you are going to train your staff to make those
determinations of those, and how you are going to react or
what is the process if there is a service animal that's not
behaving as a service animal.
Again, you shouldn't be growling at people. Shouldn't be
bark barking at people. Shouldn't be peeing on your floor.
Okay? Then they are not a trained service animal.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Along the same lines and also along the
same lines of not being judgmental, what are your thoughts
of dogs in strollers?
>> ROBIN JONES: I am going to keep that for the questions
time because we could get off on a whole different tangent
on that.
Again, I may actually -- again, that dog may be in a
stroller as a service animal because it is service providing
it might be that alerting situation or whatever. You can't
make a blanket -- again, goes back to what is the service
that that dog provides.
We could get hours on service animals. Let me just tell
you.
It is different kinds of IDs. State ID versus a driver's
license to prove something for their identification.
Consideration for different seating issues for somebody with
a disability. Not just wheelchair seating. The ADA
structurally talks about wheelchair seating. The wheelchair
seating that empty area with companion seat next to it and a
wheelchair and companion can sit with. But you have many
other kinds of seating issues that come up that are not
specifically in the architectural context of the ADA.
So you may have individuals with low vision who may need
seating because of their visions, they may make requests and
accommodation requests.
You may have individuals who have specific types of
behaviors, maybe they have Tourette's syndrome that may play
out in ticks or verbal. -- they may need special seating to
accommodate that kind of issue.
A mother or individual who has autism may have behavioral
issues may request different seating for flexibility to come
in and out of the performance for seating.
You may have different requests than just the traditional
wheelchair seating. It looks at what you can do in your
venue, what can you do to modify those policies when you
have those requests, and make those decisions and work
within your staffing to know what those responses are going
to be on that individual case by case basis.
Allowing food and drink that you other wise not allow. Why
don't we allow that? There is many reasons. You may need
access to that for diabetic and other things. Could we put
constraints on it? Yes. These are issues that might come
up, could come up and look at it from the context of -- I
always say never say no, we can't do that. Always say,
let's consider whether we can do that. There is a big
difference between, no, we can't do it, and let's consider
it and look at whether we can do it. And look at all of the
option that is are available.
And you may not come up with the one's preferred option, but
you may come up with a different one. And we'll hear from
the panelists and experiences they've had around that.
I will turn it over at this point to our panelists to speak
a little bit about modifying policies and procedures and
making accommodations.
>> LYNN WALSH: This is Lynn from the children's museum. I
want to remind everybody accommodations come in all
different shapes and sizes. At the children's museum one of
the first request we had when we did survey the disability
community asking what more could we do, how could we be more
welcoming, and we found that a good percentage of our
audience were families who had children on the you a Tim
spectrum and -- autism spectrum and our museum was
overwhelming for that audience and they requested a quiet
room. We didn't know what a quiet room. We did research
and we now offer a quiet room. Unfortunately it is not
there all the time. Only available second Saturday of the
month during our play for all events. Or we know in advance
we can accommodate in the room. We have limited space.
Our quiet room is low lighting, rope lighting, bubble tube,
we have a therapy swing -- thank you, I'm looking at my
colleague for the words. A lot of the materials in the
quiet room are used in therapy settings so families whose
children go to therapy are very familiar with them. But
whenever we have the quiet room open it is staffed so -- and
the staff is familiar with what all the equipment is and
does and how it can help.
So we do get a lot of families that are just interested in
coming into this quieter space because everybody gets
overwhelmed by a loud museum, so there is always staff there
to assist the families.
It was also pointed out to us and it was mentioned earlier
to put up on your website what kind of accommodations are
offered. Currently the museum is not great at that. We
have a blanket statement if you need accommodations and a
contact and phone number. But it has been shared and you
guys can please speak to this and, Robin, you can get more
specific if you need sign language interpreter, if you need
this, or you need that, put that out there.
And the last thing I was going to say, don't forget to talk
to the disability community, because you are never going to
know what people might need. So if you ask, then you kind
of know in advance.
>> CHRISTENA GUNTHER: This is Christena. I think it is
really easy to think of accommodations in terms of
obligation and certainly we have a lot of obligations around
accommodations. I'm saying a lot of "ation" words.
When I was at the metropolitan I served as the point person
for accommodations, and that was one of my favorite parts of
my job because I, for one, was really interacting with the
public, and, two, it really allowed me to be really creative
and to kind of collaborate with different departments and
different people who I normally wouldn't interact with.
So I actually ended up liking, figuring out accommodations
and saw it as a challenge.
While at the met there were a lot of great accommodations in
place but it is not one size fits all so people may need to
call and ask for accommodations.
A good example, a woman called me and she recently had back
surgery and she was concerned about coming to the museum
because she knew it was really big and she was concerned
there weren't going to be enough benches for her to sit
down. Actually sitting down was painful for her anyway. So
she usually laid down.
So she suspected rightfully so that the floors might not be
the best place for her to lay down in the gallery because
they might be dirty and the security guards might have a
problem with that. So she had called in advance and we were
able to make arrangements with the nurse's office, it was a
Saturday but the nurse's office, we were able to have the
security open up the nurse's office and she was able to go
lay down when she needed to take a break. That was a really
simple in the end solution. Involved me calling a bunch of
different departments and trying to think of a way too make
this work. And we did it just for this one woman. She had
a great time and came back again.
We had a regular visitor who needed tube feeding, so she
would need to bring in large amounts of liquid for tube
feeding. So we made arrangements request security guards
and we knew when she was coming and she was able to come in
and it was no problem.
She also was concerned about for hygiene reasons about where
to do the tube feeding, so we were able to get a conference
room for her when she would be coming so we would set that
up.
There is a lot of very specific situations that have to do
with a specific person, but having that kind of blanket
statement of knowing who to call or who to e-mail is
important to have both, redundancy again, and know who to
turn to, and then I would never say no. I would say let me
check. Let pee see what I can -- let me see what I can do.
Ended up calling a bunch of different people and different
departments and made it work.
I was talking a lot about my old job, but my new job at the
Elmhurst historical museum is a small institution so we're
really trying to step up a lot of our accessibility. But
one of the really simple things that we added once I started
was to add just the wheelchair symbol and our e-mail address
and a phone number to call for people who wanted to make
accommodation requests.
That was a really simple fix that cost us nothing to add in.
We've had a few requests already. That was just one easy
way that I was able to add that in.
Evan?
>> EVAN HATFIELD: I have my own microphone. Thank you.
Evan from Steppenwolf again.
There are a million things we would never consider to be a
point of accommodation that actual will I are. The person
who is coughing, maybe it is specific to that night, maybe
it is chronic. Letting them bring a bottle of water into
the theater solves that problem both for themselves and for
the rest of the audience.
The gentleman who just had back surgery and pulled something
and likes to stand for part of the performance, letting him
-- identifying before the performance, here are your
options, which one works for you. This works? All right.
But not just letting him know what is going on, our job is
to then let the cast know back stage just so you know, there
is a gentleman who will be standing because of a back
problem. He's not a sniper. Don't freak out.
[Laughter.]
Seriously. That is massive. Because you are going to get
people's chemistry up when they don't know what is going on,
and why the hell is that guy standing back there? They can
get a little anxious. So by bringing them in and getting
them on the team at the very outset, it completely offsets
that panicked call from the stage manager halfway through
the performance.
There is a -- there is kind of creating an environment for
all of the audience that they are allowed to come to you and
you are going to help them out. A lot of what we do in
customer service is theater, where when we walk a patron
down to the second row and they are toting an oxygen tank, I
want to have a good time with him regardless, but I'm also
going to when I turn around and I'm facing the 400 patrons
watching that scene, I'm going to crack a joke. I'm going
to laugh. I'm going to walk away real slowly. That's giving
a signal to the rest of the audience that this is okay.
Because ultimately it is up to us as the managers of the
venue to set the tone for our party. Right? I think a lot
of people get anxious when the person next to them is
sipping on a beverage when they think that person is
breaking the rules. They are desecrating the temple.
But if you have this relaxed policy and you are giving
everyone permission to relax, then really, everything is
going to be okay.
I think that's all I have to say about that.
>> LYNN WALSH: This is Lynn again. I want to throw one
thing in, sometimes the request for the accommodation cannot
be done, and sometimes you do have to say, no.
I have a woman that calls couple times a year and she
explains to me that she's a mom with to young children,
children are under 2 years old. The mom is blind. She
would like to bring the children to the museum and she wants
to know who is going to take care of her children while they
are at the museum because she can't see.
We will not put that on our staff. Our staff won't be
responsible for someone's children, whether that someone can
see or not. So I've had to tell her no, but I told her what
we can do. That we have staff throughout that are willing
to assist. We've offered, you are more than welcome to
bring a companion along to assist. But sometimes you just
have to say, no, and that's okay.
>> ROBIN JONES: That's the caveat on my bottom it says
unless it would fundamental alteration oar undue hardship.
What she's describing that's a fundamental change, that's a
disability issue. They do not babysit for anybody's skids.
You are not required because of a person having a disability
doing more than what would be done in that situation.
So that person's responsible for their own children. Yes,
is it a disadvantage for that mother that she can't see?
Yes. That's definitely. There is nothing in the law that
says that I have to provide specialized services. I need to
provide equal access.
So the equal access is allowing the mother to come in and
finding whatever the mother -- providing whatever the mother
might need so she can have access to find out what her
children request participate in. And have mobility so she
knows how to get around. But the mother is responsible for
her own children and is responsible for herself.
Sometimes that is that delicate scenario, you want to -- can
you toilet. Assistance with toileting, something like that.
Or we'll say, can you provide me the wheelchair. Your venue
is large and can it did that? The ADA would not require you
to do that.
Now this is where you might go above and beyond. If I have a
large venue -- if you go to Home Depot has them. Jewel has
them. They are not required by law to have it. It is a
customer service issue. You can have someone with a
temporary disability, broken leg, people are going to have
mobility issues getting around. So you may choose to have
mobility devices available that someone can use or rent or
whatever. That's your choice to do that as a customer
service.
But the law would not require that you provide me a
wheelchair to be able to get around the facility. No more
than they would require that you provide me the seeing eye
dog or you provide me the hearing aids or any of those kinds
of things. Or toilet me or feed me at the restaurant.
So that fundamental alteration does come into play. But
again you want to know why you are saying that, and you want
to understand what that "no" is and document, document, and
document more.
What did you do to explore the options? If somebody came
and asked you for something and you just say no, and you get
a complaint filed against you. You have no defense because
you did nothing to look at what the options were. They may
have requested one thing and you can't give them their
requested accommodation, but you may be able to give them
the alternative.
I think like Christena and others were talking about, having
that conversation with them about what might be the options
that might work, versus only honing in. The request is just
the initial of the -- initiation of the dialogue. Then you
go on to how it might work in your venue. It might change
from performance to performance, from exhibit to exhibit,
from whatever just because things change. Nothing is really
always the same all the time.
Just want to give you alert for those of you that do
ticketing. I'm not going to spend much time on it. There
has been huge changes to the ticketing requirement under the
law. Anybody that issues tickets needs to be aware of
changes related to things like making sure that they are
available the same hours as anybody else. I don't have to
call a separate number. If I can go online and purchase
tickets, you can't make me go through another 3 hoops to
purchase accessibility tickets. I need to do it the same
way as anybody else.
Also I need to be in a situation where I will sell somebody
additional tickets, to be together. The ADA previously read
that you would sell somebody a wheelchair ticket and one
companion seat. I need to now be able to give a person
option to buy up to 4, so 3, a -- a wheelchair seat and 3
additional tickets. Huge discrimination for families and
people that want to go with their friends anywhere. I don't
care where you want to go, you could get the wheelchair seat
and a companion seat. I'm a mom and a dad and 2 kids. What
do I do? Split the kids down the middle? And do you take
one kid and I take the ear kid and you sit somewhere else?
We don't get to sit as a family and go as a family where
other people can buy tickets next to each other.
We had a artificial barrier of the wheelchair seat and one
other seat. I believe we will be doing some training down
the road on ticketing in more depth. I just want to make
sure people are aware of it.
Holding the seats until all the seats are sold in seating
area. Holding wheelchair seats. If they haven't been sold
that you hold them until the end so everybody is equally
denied access. So at some point everybody can't get a
ticket, not just people who are in wheelchairs.
And you do have a right to ask people to attest in writing
or verbally that they are purchasing a ticket for a person
with a disability and need the seat. There is a protection
from the entities for potential fraud. That is always a
concern that people want to buy the wheelchairs seats
because they are desirable seat. But you do have to look at
those issues.
I want to alert you and wet your whistle if these are issues
for you, stay tuned to our other programming we will focus
on ticketing.
So architectural access. Bricks and mar tar, the -- mortar
the building we're in. These ramps were add. When this
facility was built it didn't have ramps. It was added.
I guess I'm going from years when it was built and how old
it is and these are not kind of things you had. It was
probably something that was an add-on to this building.
There is still areas that have steps and stuff of that
nature. But the building in large part is accessible.
That's why we're using this venue because it is accessible
venue of the but many of us are in historic places, old
warehouses, we're in something that was built in the 1910.
We're in all kinds of different venues.
Especially arts. Arts can be the home that was designated,
that was given by some patron now it is a museum. So there
is so much differentiations.
When we look at facilities we divide them up into existing
facilities and these are facilities that existed before the
ADA requirements went into effect, then we look at
facilities that are altered since the ADA. So my basic
structure but I did something, I remodeled or I did
something. I made an addition on to it or renovated what I
already have. Then we have new construction. So we
basically have 3 different things we look at when we look at
building and facilities.
So we start with the issue of existing facilities. Caveat
under that is readily achievable barrier removal. And
readily achievable is that barrier which can be removed with
little expense and little time. So putting an elevator in a
3 story building that never had an elevator is probably in
most situations not going to be deemed readily available,
because the building wasn't built to even house a elevator.
You have infrastructure issues. You don't just carve out a
wall and put an elevator in. It has to have infrastructure
around it. Ever watch a building being built that has an
elevator? What do they build first? Elevator shafts. All
the infrastructure goes around that. That's not necessarily
going to be readily achievable.
Putting a ramp on the front of a building, changing out
hardware, putting in grab bars in a bathroom, things of that
nature, those are things along the line readily achievable.
But readily achievable is going to depend on different
things. Depends on the venue itself, what it takes to do
that, and the resources that the entity has.
Now, we're in the -- we are talking about different
resources. One entity may have a lot of endowment have far
more resources than another entity. Look at some of the
store front theaters, they are going to have a much
different revenue and much different baseline to be able to
do those kinds of renovations than a more established entity
who has been around and more endowments. It is a scalable
issue. There is not a formula. Not a percentage applied or
anything. It really becomes to the entity and the issue as
to what are your barriers and what is it going to cost to
remove those barriers and now is it reasonable to do -- is
it readily achievable to do so.
The barrier that priorities put forth by the ADA is, getting
to the door first and foremost. I don't care if your
bathroom is accessible inside if I can't get in the door.
So if I'm going to put money into anything, I'm talking
about getting to the door. That means from the parking, if
will is parking, or from the street to the front door. Then
once I've got me in the door, the next thing, my priority is
I want to get you in, I want to get you around. I want to
get you around the interior, to the different rooms, or the
different levels, or wherever things are happening in the
entity.
Again, bathroom is the third priority. I've not yet seen,
unless maybe it is a toilet museum, where the bathroom has
been the reason why our venues have been constructed. Okay?
It is 23409 our prime -- it is not our primary business. It
is a comfort issue. It is a incidental scenario.
So we need to get you into the building first. We need to
get you into the services and goods inside second. Then we
put and look at the rest rooms as our third priority. The
fourth priority are those other things like water fountains
or visual alarms, or telephones or things of that nature.
We look at those from prioritization issue if you are making
decisions about your resources or limited resources you
have.
The key is to understand what your barriers are. That's
where you have to start. If you start doing inventory on
what are the barriers we have starting outside this entity
into it, and to access all of our facilities from an
architectural perspective.
What is architectural? If I took this building, turned it
upside down today, and shook it, and put it back upright,
everything that's still intact is architectural.
[Laughter.]
Okay? It is part of the built environment. Everything else,
these chairs, tables, et cetera, they are gone. They are
not my architectural element.
Now in a theater, chairs can be architectural elements
because they are part of the structure. They are drilled
into the floor. But in some of our theaters that I've done
to in Chicago a loft store fronts, they are just chairs that
are put up and around or whatever. They are not part of the
architectural element.
So it is going to depend on elements to element. Just like
displays in museum. They are not part of the architectural
element.
They are telling me I am on the hook. Okay. Sorry about
that. Okay we'll go.
Anyway, understanding this is an ongoing obligation. It
doesn't stop. You don't just get to say we don't have any
money. You have to keep going. Because resources need to be
gathered over time to make these things happen.
Maybe it is a 5-year plan. Maybe it is not a tomorrow plan.
It is 5 years we have to raise money or do endowments or do
some philanthropy or whatever do that.
Historic structures are not exempt. There is no such thing
as a grandfather closet under the ADA. They may not be
required to meet new construction standards if they were
destroyed the architectural entity or structure to do that.
But there is no grand -- -- I get so sick. We don't have to
do it, we are grandfathered under the ADA. No. There is no
such thing. It is about the structure, when it was built,
what it would take to remove the barriers.
New construction, new standards came out in 2010. Came into
effect in 2012. If you are planning a new project now,
hopefully, if not you, somebody, is talking about how are we
going to show we meet all the standards and requirements
from 2012.
How do I know if I'm accessible? Do an evaluation of
yourselves. Look at your plans. Review and see whether or
not you can or have somebody else identify what your
barriers are and look at what it would take. Have an
understanding of the issues before you say it will cost too
much to do it. Can you tell me it cost too much to put a
ramp up but you have no what it will cost because you
haven't gone out and find out. You have no defense. You
have to understand your barriers and what it will take to
remove those barriers.
I will turn it back over to our panel.
>> CHRISTENA GUNTHER: I will speak two sentences from the
museum side. I like I said work at the Elmhurst historic
museum. It is a his torque home. Before my time there.
They had a lift that was I guess incredibly unreliable where
the staffer would pray to God it would work every time a
visitor was using it. So it was not reliable.
They didn't have the funds to get a new lift so they were
able to get a grant through the Illinois public museums and
they were able to get a brand new lift.
So this is also be looking for funding. We don't want cost
to be the main factor. There is a lot of different places
that are funding something like this.
Another good place to look into is the lower east side
tenement museum in New York City. They've done creative
ways to deal with accessibility because they were not able
to get people physically into the building who can't use
stairs. So I would look into that.
But now let's turn it over to Philip who has been patiently
waiting, has a great anecdote to tell us about physical
accessibility.
>> PHILIP DAWKINS: Hi. This is Philip from Victory
Gardens. The lower east side tenement museum employs a lot
of play writes. That's a great place to look.
I am with Victory Gardens which is pretty accessible space
and one of our core values, but also as an independent
playwright I hope any theater will pick up one of my plays.
Recently straw dog theater which is a store front theater in
lake view scheduled one of my shows that's opening on
valentine's day. That is an old sort of immediately post
fire building.. And has a few theaters in that building.
Mariache and Oracle building are all in the same structure.
It is not by any means accessible.
So when they said they wanted to do my show, I said, great,
how can we talk about how we can make this an accessible
performance with a zero budget.
So with zero budget, they said, cool, let's figure it out.
I went to Victory Gardens where I have a relationship and
said, how would you feel about us doing one performance at
minimum in your theater? We just lifted the props and
costumes and came over here and outlined the set in your
rehearsal room and set it up and had audio description and a
touch tour. And they said, yeah, okay, cool.
Evan helped us out with that. He's volunteering to help us
out. I was so shocked by how many people when we asked were
up for volunteering to help us along the way. We got full
permission from the cast to have an extra performance, and
also an extra rehearsal time because we'll have to reblock
some of it. And also from the theater staff to promote this
to the community which is going to be on March 13th. So you
should come to victory gardens.
It is also going to be free so it is accessible that way.
It is pay what you can part of removing all barriers to this
show. There is also going to be a makeshift cry room if you
want to bring your kids to this production.
So that's one way that is -- is it the best option? No. But
this is a theater that has no accessibility and everybody
along the way is also telling us what this would cost if
they were going to charge us. So that we can write it all
up and say, if we were going to pay our actors for their
extra rehearsal time, if we were going to pay Victory
Gardens for the rental space, so now we can apply for a
grant and straw dog can do this for every one of their shows
and be a continuing thing and start to advertise and say,
hey we will have at least -- it was really great when we
asked the cast and we with worried if they would say, oh,
extra time, I don't know. They said why just one
performance? If we're going to could this, -- do this,
let's do it. So that was a really awesome experience.
So that was one way I was able to merge. I think if you
just ask other people, hey, we're interested in using your
space for this great thing to have a partnership, it is
surprising what people can do. It just takes somebody to
bring it up. And they did. And it is all happening. So it
is very exciting.
>> ROBIN JONES: Sometimes when you have like a museum that
might be inaccessible second floor or something of that
nature, you could do a video tour of that space and do an
audio described tour of that space so that people could
still experience it, not the same, not the same as going up
there and being hands on and stuff, but still giving an
alternative. So the issue is sometimes you have to look at
what the alternatives. That's an extremely creative one you
are using with theater. That I think not many people think
outside the box.
They need more people thinking like you are thinking
involved in those scenarios to raise the question. Because
like you said once you bring it up people are okay. But you
need somebody who sparked that conversation and that
discussion.
We want to open it up to you. To the community here. To
ask your questions. And the rest of the stuff you can read
it on my slides. We want to open it up and have you have at
this point, you heard a lot from us, to just shoot it,
again. We said before it is a safe environment. Feel free
to say whatever you want to say at this point.
We have a microphone so just raise your hand and they'll get
your microphone.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I never really used a microphone
before.
My question is, as a location for -- what I want to know is
when you are coming to all these universal access, do you
always talk new technology for instance hearing aids now
using Bluetooth, are you using that as something to test
for. Especially for, you have captioning, sign language
performance. Have you thought about doing Bluetooth
performances. I know there is also other technology that
since there is no interpreter, there is -- I think it is VRI
or something where it is virtual interpreting, remote
interpreting.
I'm wondering how often do you test new technology? Often or
stick what you have?
>> EVAN HATFIELD: The question is basically how much are
you innovating, seeking out new technologies and how much
are you resting with what you have.
It is a very incremental approach, very much think in terms
of baby steps. Like we know the technology like rear window
exists and Google glass will have exciting implications.
But that costs a lot of money. So while we try to keep aware
of what's going on and how we can improve, we really try to
be really good at covering our bases for what we can do
right now. We document the hell out of it just like Philip
was speaking to. You track numbers, you track warm
responses from patrons who had a good experience, you take
photographs with permission, and then you let people know
about that.
I finally got to talk to my board a couple weeks ago about
everything that we're doing, and inevitably a handful of
board members say, oh, I have a nephew, I have a cousin, I
have someone who they strongly connect with, so suddenly
there is potential for more funding for the program there.
So I think you want to cover your bases first. You want to
keep yourself informed. Don't beat yourself up if you can't
do the Google glass right now. Look at what you can do and
then just do your best to keep moving and improving
incrementally.
Does that answer the question for you?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah,
>> ROBIN JONES: I would chime in. You are talking about
the video remote interpreting. I work with some folks in
northern Minnesota area, they don't have interpreters. So
they have used video remote interpreting for performances
and such and events, concerts and things of that nature. It
takes a lot of coordination because it is the video and the
sound coming together and high speed and quality. But
they've actually -- because they don't have -- they've
almost been forced to use the technology balls they don't
have -- because they don't have the real thing, the body
kind of thing.
I think that that will drive some of it, too. Probably the
larger venues will be more likely to introduce some of that,
or use more of that invasion sooner -- innovation sooner,
just because they have different budgets for pushing them
all the way forward for some of those things.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello. My question is, following up on
something that Evan said a little while ago about allowing
the accommodations, allowing food or drink into spaces.
I was wondering in terms of that discomfort people feel when
they see someone that they think is breaking the rules or
maybe they wanted to bring in food or drink themselves. I
was wondering if any of you had any experience from push
back from other audiences,or and if so how did you deal with
it?
>> EVAN HATFIELD: I think that there is always going to be
push back from somebody in the room. I think that as the
venue you need to be prepared to articulate your actions and
to explain without divulging personal details about the
individual, really conveying the message we're here to help
in what we're doing. You have to trust us that what we're
doing is in the best interest of that individual. While
also trying to convey the same sense that we'll do the same
thing for you. That's where the relationship with audience
comes in.
If you just arbitrarily say, we just decided to do it it
will leave a bad taste in the mouth. But if you are able to
talk about it. And also educate people. I'll use an example
of response to sign language interpreters. Here is this
huge visual distraction, right? What could be construed as
a visual distraction for 95% of the audience that's actually
present for that performance. We would get people being
very agitated about the presence of the interpreters when
they didn't know in advance that they were going to be
present.
So it gets into the prior communication not just with the
people receiving the service but the rest of the audience as
well. So now we've adjusted it so box office operator can't
close a transaction out without first letting the person
know who bought a ticket for the performance, just so you
know this is interpreted. You okay with that? 9 times out
of 10, yes, no problem,, thanks for the head up. We put
stuffers in the programmer the day of the performance with
that message. Explaining this is why we're doing, this is
why we're proud of the fact and this is the community it
serves. Also imply the fact that we don't get -- they don't
get to see the show if we don't do that.
Since we started doing that, the only blow back we get is
once a season a person will come up and say, qualifying it
as, while we applaud the fact that you do this, I personally
found it a little distracting. God bless.
[Laughter.]
>> PHILIP DAWKINS: I would say, this is Philip from Victory
Gardens. Just relying on your mission statement or credo
and just going back and saying, so for instance, there is a
baby in our playwrighting class because the parents couldn't
afford a babysitter and they don't wanted to bring the
class. Bring the baby and we'll have the world's best play
write in 25 years.
[Laughter.]
But when people started to question it before it got
questioned. I just said I'm really excited about this
opportunity because our mission statement with access is to
remove every possible barrier between you and participating
in our theater. So just cut it off at the pass so people
who thought that wasn't accessibility, I just reminded
everyone of our mission statement in that regard and I could
see the people sort of, oh, okay, great.
So I think just reminding what we're excited about and why
we're excited about it and what our mission statement is and
asking us to trust us that that's what's behind this
decision.
>> EVAN HATFIELD: Which is not to say you should all change
your policy to allow babies in your venue unconditionally.
>> PHILIP DAWKINS: This is a class not a performance.
>> ROBIN JONES: Goes back to the statement, if you
reiterate what your policies are, your philosophy is about
inclusion of all people and that may include people doing
things differently or experiencing the venue differently, et
cetera, that this is part of everyone's experience.
Just having that statement somewhere in your materials, it
is somewhere that is seen so at least they can't -- you
can't make them read it. You can take them to water but you
can't make them drink. But at least then maybe somebody
that is perusing through it will read it and understand
where you are coming from and what is going on there.
Also the statement is, if you believe you need an
accommodation to participate -- you always want to have that
caveat, put it on them, if there is anything you believe you
need that would make your experience or you need an
accommodation, this is who you go to. They thought the
rules were such they could never take anything in. There
never realized there was an option to an alternative to that
rule.
Sometimes just giving permission to people that, hey, if you
think you need something, here is who you talk to.
>> CHRISTENA GUNTHER: Also, something that comes up a lot
in theaters, I worked for a little while in Lincoln center
and sometimes an issue would come up would be a person
without a disability complaining about a person with a
disability at a performance. So if somebody with dementia
who is speaking during the show. Somebody with a ventilator
and it is making noise. Our policy bass we would re-- was
we would reseat the person with the complaint. Not reseat
the person with a disability. If somebody had a issue with
it we would deal with it that way and we had a few magic
seats we could give to them.
I think that's also a good customer service policy, if this
bothers you, we can do our best to try to reseat you.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: The other part is -- I think you
touched on it. I'm always worried about violating someone's
privacy. That's what is going on with that person. That's
the other part --
>> ROBIN JONES: You never would say that. You never say --
give the specifics. You say that as an organization we
welcome all people who may actually need different needs to
be able to be here, so that is what we're doing. We're not
saying it was because a person has epilepsy or whatever.
Again, if you feel you have a need, please come and talk to
us. Throw it back at them.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm curious if you have any advice
about maybe people with disabilities that maybe are not able
to be seen. For example, we sometimes put up signage for
there is strobe lights or gun shots in this performance,
people with light or sound sensitivity. But even with
dealing request those, with mental disability, dementia,
things like that, are there other things that theaters or
institutions should be aware of and possibly including in
programs or in signage or things that we can be putting into
practice for some of those people that have a disability
that maybe we can't see and maybe is not as easily to be
addressed.
>> LYNN WALSH: I was just going to throw in that one thing
we do at the children's museum because autism is typically
one of those invisibility disabilities, staff training made
all the difference. Making our staff aware that there is
more than just people in wheelchairs or blind, or those
things that you can see. I always go back to staff training.
>> EVAN HATFIELD: We just made a really nice adjustment to
our website so you go to any one of our ply titles, it has
-- play titles, it has its own production page, run time,
specific articles about the play. We just added a little
window, we stole it blatantly from brookly rep that
basically talks about our consent advisories. It will list
anything that traditionally would get like a physical
response, strobe lights, gun shots, smoke, anything like
that, we'll put up there. If it is a physical issue, but
then we also include wording that says if you want to know
about content beyond this, here is how you can track us
down. Then we'll tell you exactly at which point we swear,
Steppenwolf so it is redundant.
[Laughter.]
If you should bring the grandkids.
We try to give them the option to contact us if they need
something more than what we're showing. Does that make
sense?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Absolutely. Thank you.
>> CHRISTENA GUNTHER: All right. Well, we are not too bad.
We started at about 10 minutes late so we are about 10
minutes over. But I wanted to thank so much, Robin, our
master ADA guru --
[Applause.]
-- Extraordinaire. And Philip, Lynn, and Evan.
I would like to thank the Lincoln Park Zoo and Jaclyn
Peterson for making arrangements for us.
[Applause.]
I also want to thank Martha from Steppenwolf on her day off
to help with the sound system.
[Applause.]
Give her round of applause.
So like we've kind of said here, the ADA can be really
daunting and we know firsthand that it is really hard to get
started.
And one affordable and important way to begin is through
training your front line staff about accessibility.
I hope you all have the flier for our next program. It is on
February 27 from 3 to 5 at the Art Institute. Please
register and join us. We're going to be doing these
programs hopefully monthly so we're going to be building off
what we learned today.
Also those resource sheets that Robin made are going to be
really helpful for you. Also CCAC in general is a resource
to you. If you have questions that you don't think were
answered today or you want us to steer you in the right
direction, we're very happy to do so.
Because we are just starting out, we are really eager to get
your feedback about today's program and about what we can
best -- how we can best serve you in the future. We do have
some paper surveys to pass out, but we also will be
e-mailing all of you a survey monkey link. Please take the
5 minutes. It is really short, we swear --
[Laughter.]
-- to fill it out because it will help us going forward.
Thank you all so much. We look forward to seeing you on
February 27th.
[Applause.]
>> JACLYN PETERSON: Hi, I'm sorry. Make a quick
announcement. If you came in the west gate today, we're
going to have somebody at that gate until 7:30. So you are
free to stay and network and meet the panelists and anybody
else.
Make sure you get over to that west gate by 7:3because then
they will look that and -- lock that and you might have to
get over here to lock our back door.
If you locked the -- if you parked in the zoo lot, you can
come out the east side.
If I have any questions about anything going on at the zoo,
please come find me. Thank you.