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>> Jason: Okay. Thanks and thanks for coming. Like Victor said, I'm
Jason Mischel, I am his Deputy Commissioner and General Counsel of the
Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities. Our panel today is called
Reaching Art Patrons with Disabilities which to me is pretty much the
whole point of our sessions today. What we're trying to get across
to cultural institutions is how they can open their doors to people
with disabilities and not feel that it is going to be a heavy lift. That it
is going to cost exorbitant amounts of money that might run your
organization into the ground. We are talking about in effect
providing reasonable accommodations. Before I get to reasonable
accommodations I just wanted to give you a quick stat. As far as
how many people with disabilities live in New York City. The best
way to find that out is through something called the American
Community Survey which is sort of related to the US Census and in
2011 they put out estimates of a number of different breakdowns
across different social characteristics and according to their survey,
presently there are 834,685 people with disabilities that live in New York City.
When I started back in 2004, the numbers were actually
higher than that. I tend to think that they are over 1 million, and that
doesn't include visitors to the city. So you're talking about a huge
market of people who live or visit here that want to take advantage
of everything that the city has to offer. And having said that, not
only is that an obvious incentive for cultural institutions to want to
reach out to this community because of the sheer size of number
but another incentive is New York City itself -- a couple of weeks
ago I actually was in Rome and then I went to Amsterdam and I was
actually shocked at how inaccessible those cities were. I was
always under the impression, you know, you hear things about for
instance London having a fully accessible taxi fleet and things like that
and there are other global accessibility initiatives that you hear about. I
think some of the realities on the ground are the fact that you have
cities that are older cities that are just not accessible. When I was
in Rome the only thing that I found that stood out to me that was
fully accessible was the Coliseum, they have a lift for wheelchair users.
In Amsterdam while it happens to be a beautiful city, it was
disturbing. I went to the Anne Frank House for instance and there is
just absolutely no way that people who use wheelchairs
would be able to get in there. It seemed like they did reach out to
other disabilities such as deaf and hard of hearing and blind and low vision, but still
you want to cover everything and my point being is that New York City is
more accessible than you think. We do have older buildings and
certainly a job that is not done yet. But if you go to the Project
Access New York website what it does is they have cultural
institutions that have signed up to promote the fact that they are
accessible for people with disabilities in the wide array of
disabilities. And that list is getting bigger and that kind of
represents competition to those cultural institutions that are in the city
that might be lagging behind. I think that cultural institutions have to
realize that in addition to the large population of people with
disabilities that live here and visit here, there are also, there is the trend of
accessibility from their fellow cultural institutions that are going to
be taking those customers away from them if they don't start doing
the right thing. So I'm trying to impart upon you that there is a lot
of great benefits for reaching out to this population. Now to talk
about a reasonable accommodation. I just want to read real quick I
know in the morning session we had a panel the first panel was
talking about a lot of the legalities behind providing access and
referencing Americans with Disabilities Act. I'm not going to go
over that ground. I just want to read to you quickly what the New
York City Human Rights Law has to say about what a reasonable
accommodation is. It is basically defined as an accommodation
that can be made that shall not cause undue hardship in the
conduct of the covered entity's business. It leaves a really wide
field of ways to -- in order to provide accommodations. It is not just
about -- and I said this, this morning but it bares repeating. It is not just
about spending millions of dollars to make capital
improvements to your buildings and being worried about that. There is
all sorts of ways and means of accomplishing inclusiveness and
accessibility that are very low cost, that are very efficient, and
that will exponentially increase the amount of people that come to
your institutions. I can give you one example that is not really
culturally related. Voting is an example where the law is that all
polling places have to be accessible. But they don't -- But The Department of
Justice has put out a checklist to municipalities to show them how
they can make these polling places accessible. And a lot of it has to do
with, well, you can provide a portable ramp or you can provide
some sort of alternate location that might be nearby or provide let's say transportation
to a different space that might be more accessible. Or let's say
having a drinking fountain that you take and you lower it so people
can get to it. There is a laundry list of things that you can do and
my office, we are, I would like to describe it as a clearinghouse for
reasonable accommodation solutions, so I would invite you, if
you have further questions of solutions that you want to employ in
your institution, do not hesitate to contact us. Victor mentioned the
website before at www.nyc.gov/mopd. You can also talk to me
offline. But we're here for you to put aside your concerns about
construction and major projects in order to create accessibility.
There is things that can be done. The only other thing I want to say
is that one of the things that we -- I'm not going to say is that we have a
problem with but landmarks are kind of an issue. I know there is
some crossover between landmarks and cultural institutions.
As it stands, landmarks are more or less exempt from providing accessibility.
What we try to do when we work with the Landmarks Preservation
Commission is just to talk to them about some of the things that I've
already said which is you might be exempt but if you just bring in
some programmatic solutions, you're going to find, in my opinion,
that people are not going to -- not come to your landmark because
all of a sudden they see a portable ramp outside and they think that
some sort of aesthetic was compromised. Life doesn't really work
that way and in fact most of us who I guess you would consider able-bodied
know people that are wheelchair users or deaf or hard of
hearing or blind or low vision. And we're in the 21st Century and we
understand that inclusiveness is only -- it can only benefit everybody.
The last final thing I'll say and then I'll turn it over to my fellow panel members is
there is one gray area which is a little bit difficult which is
the idea of a defense to providing accessibility that the ADA provides
which is something called fundamentally altering the nature of the service provided
which gets involved in cultural institutions because if you're
thinking about art projects such as let's say video art where you want to
provide captioning on that art and then possibly the artist might have a
problem with that because it is somehow fundamentally altering the
nature of the art. Well, I'm always going to come down on the side
of advocacy and the fact it is the right thing to do to make sure you
get as many people in your institutions as possible, a there
are ways around that. Like I said if you come to us, we're more
than happy to discuss ways with you that you can get this done and
we can meet with the artists and we can meet with your superiors
and yourselves and we can come to solutions that are going to benefit everybody.
So thanks for listening. I'm going to turn it over
to Joan on my left from Art Beyond Sight. >> Joan: Thank you. As Commissioner
Calise said, we worked with the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities to run a series of focus groups with adults with diverse disabilities
in the summer, fall and winter of 2012. And wonderful things came out of that,
including lots of compliments for New York City cultural organizations that have really exceptional programs and a lot of just little practical ideas.
We asked people to tell us about their attendance at zoos and aquariums, botanical
gardens, theaters, dance, concerts, museums, sports arenas and our group
of several groups of people also told us they wanted to talk about
films because they were avid movie goers and these were particularly people with
low vision. They said the first thing that would really help is if programs for
people with disabilities are scheduled for times that are less crowded
in your institutions and also that let them avoid trying to travel through
New York City during rush hour. They -- there was a lot of talk about
training staff, telephone staff that answer at your institutions and don't always
know what is available or when things are and front of house staff.
They should know what is available. They should know if
there are listening devices in theaters, if there are audio guides, if there
is ASL. They should also know when a performance or a program ends
because many people with disabilities rely on Access-A-Ride
or car service to pick them up and if they don't know when that ends they
can't make those arrangements. Teach -- be sure your staff can give
concise directions. We've been told time and again that over there
is totally meaningless to someone who cannot see the
gesture and people want to know where the elevators are, where accessible bathrooms are,
where the coat check, where the cafeteria is and where the gift shop is, so they can
also explore those areas. And make sure your information desk is
wheelchair accessible. Have a pad and pencil there for people who
are deaf or hard of hearing. You might also if possible ask an
ASL interpreter to let you videotape on an iPad® something that
says we're very sorry there is no one who knows ASL here right now
but there will be somebody at and give the time or we have a special
ASL tour on such and such day. We did -- one of the focus groups we did
had four people who were deaf who could not read
and they totally rely on ASL to communicate and so they expressed incredible
frustration when they go in and there is no one that they can talk to via ASL.
You also should have large print and Braille, large print
is so easy to do now with your computer. You can also, if you
have Braille materials that would be very helpful. If you can't
Braille them in house the Lighthouse does Brailling for a very reasonable fee.
Train staff on sighted guide technique. I wrote down what one
man said who was describing being taken to a seat. He said
they grab you any old way and run with you and you were dragging and
bumping into everything and they don't even see you.
They are on a different path and you were hitting all the obstacles.
I think they need to be a little more educated and allow the disabled
person to instruct them on how best to help. And this whole sighted
guide technique was a big issue, a lot of people said well
they grabbed my left arm and that is the hand that I have my guide
dog on. And then others said well whenever I go to a museum, if they don't know it I try
to teach them so that they will know for the next person, when they try to pull me with my
arm. As sighted guide technique is very simple, the person who is
blind or has low vision just takes your arm instead of you taking
theirs and they walk half a step behind you. If there is a narrow path coming up
just put your arm behind your back and then they know and they move behind you
and of course you can alert them to steps or doors or special barriers.
It is not hard to learn. We have it on our website on www.artbeyondsight.org
and I'm sure it is on a number of other websites also.
Websites, we talked about a little bit this morning and signage are
problems. We -- I'll tell you a bad story about Art Beyond Sight when I first started
there, we were just building our new website and our designer had our
name in red on a blue background and it was up and we have our website
tested by students at Perkins School for the Blind,
and so we knew all the tags were there and screen readers worked and everything
worked. Then we got an intern who was visually impaired and
he said why isn't your name on your website? What do you mean of
course our name is on our website. He goes no, no, it is not.
He said look. I said Matt it is there. It is in red. Don't you see it?
And he goes, no. I can't -- it is just all gray to me. The colors were
the same values and he could not see our name. Too often signage
and labels and particularly in museums where the curators
want them to be very tasteful are so subtle that it is very hard
for anyone who has any kind of vision problems to read them. Steps
can be very difficult to see and people at one of the discussion groups
or one of the focus groups said, you know, it is especially bad
when there is a whole staircase and we can tell we're coming to
a staircase, but when there are just a few steps going from one space to another. Particularly
if they're light we can't see them. And if someone could just
put some tactile tape on them so that our cane can see them
maybe yellow tape so that people with low vision can also see them.
It would it really help. It is horrible to go into a museum and have the first thing that happens
is you fall down. We had people having difficulty finding accessible
entrances and exists. They usually knew, they were usually told
when they called to make an appointment where the accessible entrance
was. Once they get into the museum itself they sometimes get
turned around and they can't find their way back. One man talked
about the embarrassment he had when he went out. He
finally found a ground floor door and he went out and alarms
went off and guards came and it was a really bad moment for him. Aggressive elevator doors were mentioned.
They suggested and this probably costs a little bit but they said if
you could just have your elevators say door opening and door closing
and if you could have the timing for the doors adjusted just a
little bit so they're longer. People with walkers, people who are blind,
people with wheelchairs take a little longer to get on
and off the elevator. There is nothing worse than having your walker or
cane stuck in closing doors. Movies. I told you people love to go
to movies. The people who were in our discussion group that identified
themselves as blind said if they could have audio description
of movies it would really be meaningful to them and they
would go more. People with low vision said you know what we would like,
we'd like to have -- to be able to go to see the movie twice for one ticket.
We really can't afford to buy two tickets for the theater, but the first time
we watch a movie we work so hard trying to understand and telling who
is saying what, that we don't get any emotion from the film and if we
could just stay. Maybe you could limit those tickets just to day
time on weekdays when the theaters are half empty anyway. If we could stay and watch it
a second time maybe we could get the emotion of the piece. I was
so touched by that because I thought how terrible to have to
work so hard and you finally come out of the film and it was not uplifting
or didn't mean much to you. Zoo's and botanical gardens. The big problem
that people raised with them was getting lost. They were very worried about getting lost.
One man worried about falling into ponds in botanical gardens
but the rest of the people said no, no, no. One man told me it
took him an hour to find an exit when he had finished exploring the
garden he was so turned around, and he was with a group of other people who were blind.
And they wandered around for an hour. And so I
said how can you solve that? He said two ways. First he said
the Brooklyn Botanical Garden has something that these people refer to as
blind gardens and that this morning the person from the Botanical Garden in the Bronx called
a sensory garden and they are smaller gardens and they have herbs and
other aromatic plants that have good scents and people can also
handle and feel the plants. They said you know we get great joy
from those multi-sensory experiences, so that would be great.
The other thing is why can't they just put some seating areas
in these botanical gardens and when they do if they could just put a
tactile map and a large print map that has that "you are here" and "here
is the closest exit." He said then we would know as we wandered around
trying to find out how to get out that if we found a seating area
we could find a map and the map would tell us how to leave the gardens.
Makes sense and like so many things you can do for people
with disabilities. I think all of us would appreciate seating areas in
botanical gardens. Performance, we had a lot of praise in several
focus groups for Carnegie Hall which I'm told their ushers
and their staff all understand sighted guide techniques. That if a group goes
and they have to leave early they tell the usher and usher comes and tells
them when it is time. Ushers have also helped people out of the Carnegie
Hall and to the Access-A-Van out front that has just made a huge
difference in people's experience. We also had a lot of praise for
broadway theaters which we were told were very accommodating
with accessible seating; however, some of the people with
vision loss asked if some of the seats up front could be discounted
for certain performances for people who are low vision
or blind that -- that if they can't afford the really expensive tickets
but if they sit further back they can't -- they don't get anything
out of the show because they can't see anybody on stage. We also
had complaints from one group about headsets for audio descriptions
and I don't know what theater they were at but it was a small
group and they had paid $8 for headsets so that they could have an audio
described performance and they never could hear anything over the headsets.
>> Joan: My last comment is people say those who have good
programs need to learn how to publicize them better. We had a
lot of people talking about things they had done and other people in
the group said oh, wow, I wish I had known about that. That is
what Tahra is going to talk about. >> Tahra: I have a Powerpoint so...yes.
I'm here to provide some insight on how to effectively reach this largely
untapped market once these accommodations that Joan was speaking
to -- more of these tactical initiatives are in place. Keeping in mind
that your approach should remain as committed and on-going and adaptable
as, you know, you would, with any market. Addressing this
broad community's needs and concerns and interests again as you would any.
So first and you have a sense of this from an earlier
presentations but it is important to understand and recognize the
scale and the breadth of this community. There are over 57 million
adults with some form of disability and it is a largely untapped market
of people who command over one trillion dollars in consolidated buying power and disposable income collectively.
So we're talking about a massive and growing community. The largest minority
group, in fact, in the world even surpassing the Hispanic market.
And more so than other markets this includes not only individuals
with disabilities themselves but their significant others and
their friends and their families whose activities are to an extent guided by
their companions lifestyles. Once you account for all these added
markets you're looking at almost half the planet. So with
this in mind I think this community should immediately become a crucial
component in every marketing and public relations plan.
I mean you'd essentially be leaving money on the table. You would be
doing your institution a disservice not to recognize the value in
connecting and not to recognize this community as a viable market niche.
I think it is also worth noting that individuals with disabilities
have proven to be incredibly brand loyal especially to fully
accessible businesses which are unfortunately still in the minority. So here is an opportunity to uniquely position
yourself and make a powerful cultural statement about inclusion and awareness.
And in generating materials I think it is important
to keep in mind -- Joan touched on this a little -- is that the internet is increasingly valuable
especially for people with disabilities many of whom are not as mobile.
So as the place of accommodation, the internet and your website
provides you with added opportunity to expand your reach. Unfortunately
many businesses still struggle with accessible
sites and again when text is obscure and sites are heavier on non-captioned
images and flash your site immediately becomes exclusionary and screen
readers cannot be as effective in relaying information. And also
as you know especially when working with markets within a minority
group paying special attention to preferred language becomes increasingly
important. People with disabilities should never be identified
or defined by their disability. In that same vein words like special
needs should be avoided as it suggests there is a burdensome need there when instead
it is really our delivery and our accommodations that need
to change to be fully inclusive and fully accessible. And as with
all of PR and marketing campaigns you must leverage the diversity
of your consumer base and your potential consumer base so images
and materials should be a reflection of your markets and in this case,
the images should serve to empower and redefine disability
to represent qualities like inclusion and strength.
Going beyond what is legally required I think makes a really powerful
statement about your institution's core values. I think it just
sends a signal that you really get it. I find value in entering awards campaigns.
Once you're in a position to do so of course for added recognition and added exposure especially
within the communities of people with disabilities. For
example, the Access Awards, Helen Keller Achievement Awards, the Ruth Green Advocacy Award
etc and I think it can also be helpful to connect
with a national or local disability organization to see what opportunities there
are for partnerships to generate added exposure and to capitalize on
their platform and their existing consumer base and their networks.
Art Beyond Sight for example and the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities.
And then pitching items and listings to the media on these special opportunities and special tours and special days for people
with disabilities is invaluable I think and should take just as much
priority as, you know, the other events that you're doing year-round.
Because these opportunities are really -- they're extremely
valuable to individuals -- for individuals with disabilities who can find solace in not having to worry about accessibility
that day. And I'm also going to use this opportunity to note the
importance of ensuring that your team reflects the diversity of your markets.
Not only because of the value of having these first hand contributions
but while unemployment amongst individuals with disabilities is high,
statistically their turn over rate is actually low and they have higher rates of
retention. And while it is key to incorporate this community into campaigns
it is just as important to keep your finger on the pulse
of the evolving needs and concerns of this global market as you would
any. I wanted to just quickly share an anecdote from a book "No Pity"
where author Joseph Shapiro dedicates a chapter to the
demise of Everest and Jennings the once leading wheelchair brand that was essentially overthrown
by a new brand that entered the market. So Quikie Wheelchairs kind of came into play
and they were more nimble and they used colors and they were essentially just
generally more in touch with the needs and changing interests of this
community allowing for their ultimate hold on the market. And then
lastly I just wanted to end with a commercial that you may remember
from the Super Bowl a few years ago which generated
an outpouring of support and meaningful dialogue and even added
revenue for Pepsi. I think my AV guys have to press play on that.
So I think it is important that this team recognized, this marketing team
recognize the value of targeting and including people who are
hard of hearing in their marketing plan and put substantial resources
into exercising that core value. I mean Super Bowl adds are
not cheap and I think they understood that you have to speak
to everyone if you want to be heard. And in closing I just think
that what kind of began as a sporadic pilot campaign to target this
demographic has now become or should become a vital part of every
marketing and PR plan and most of you already have a grasp
on the tremendous opportunity with this underutilized market
and I just hope this serves to re-emphasize the value in dedicating real-time
and real resources into this outreach. That is all
I have. [Applause]
>> Frank: Are we up? Excellent, I don't know if many of you
were in the morning session but I spoke about the Historic House Trust.
We are an umbrella organization and we help advise and
manage 23 historic house museums in New York City. So when I
speak, I speak from the perspective of very small cultural
organizations with very small budgets. I would say that one of the
major things that we're doing right now and I spoke about that
briefly is the anarchist guide to historic house museums and that is a real kind of
in-depth reassessment of what it means to be a historic house
museum as a cultural institution in New York City and realizing that one end of the spectrum we have
physical disability and the other end we have cognitive disability. And how historic house
museums have traditionally been difficult to access on almost all of those levels
and I would say that probably the number one thing and I will just piggyback on
what you had to say is we're not reinventing the wheel. We're going
to organizations that already know what is best. How to target this
market. What we should do. How we should make ourselves a
better more welcoming place. So at one level a small cultural may
seem that we only have two people on our staff and we don't have
large budgets. Well, guess what, there are other nonprofit
organizations out there who would love to work with us. They can
bring just tons of information just as you are presenting and that
you were talking about that we really don't have to spend years
trying to consolidate that. One thing that we're doing is not only are
we asking nonprofits that specialize in this information. We're also
going to peer discussions and peer conversations and in this case
historic house museums on LinkedIn we have a rather large discussion
group where we're talking about issues of disability and access and
special notions of tactility and things that we can do to kind of
systematically change what it means to visit a historic house
museum. So not only are we asking nonprofits that specialize in
those issues but we're asking professionals who by and large are
somewhat frustrated in wanting information. One of the first steps
was working with Art Beyond Sight. As I said we have 23 historic
house museum sites. The first thing that we have done is we
partnered with Art Beyond Sight, New York Beyond Sight in having
verbal descriptions of all our sites and they are all online. And this really
established our partnership. We have a partnership with the New York
Department of Education with respect for all and not only is this an
anti-bullying campaign, this is also a campaign that heightens respect for all
types of in this case students and it includes disabilities so all of
our houses have special programming for that week that deal with
not only anti-bullying but anti-bullying with people against people
with disabilities. So again these are two examples of partnering
with other organizations where we don't have to do the heavy lifting.
We can bring to it what we have. And then a simple issue is our
website we've had quite a bit of discussion about websites. I
happen to be dyslexic. If you've noticed this morning and this afternoon
I don't really have notes to speak and that is primarily because I'm
visual and this is my notetaking so my note cards are the slides.
And we're also looking into typology and font that may make our
website not only in terms of contrast with colors but also the font
itself would be readable. One thing that we are realizing and I know
personally a great deal of information just kind of gets jumbled
together. Those are just a few of the more simple things. As I said this morning
our house museums, their budgets could range anywhere from 40 to
$100,000 and so the staffs may be two people. So what we want to do
is provide these issues of accessibility and marketability and
access for all in ways that don't just totally absorb the budget
because I know for a fact that all of our house museums want to be
as inclusive as possible, they're just afraid of what that may
mean in terms of budget and in terms of man power. Thank you.
[Applause] www.projectaccessforall.org
© Project Access for All 2013