Recap: “Accessibility in NYC Parks”

THOMAS: Okay. Right. So this is Accessibility New York. This is our main meetup.

We have within looking forward to having Chris Noel today to talk about accessibility in New York City parks. We haven't ever had any topic on this about accessibility of parks. So I'm, again, looking forward to our discussion, and the presentation. Just before we got started, I would like to thank our sponsors, thoughtbot, the space here where we host the event, SBB Bart Group, Funds our captioning and some of our other services for the meetup.

As well as Jolly McFeed, who's providing the streaming video, and Stanley Sakai who's providing the realtime captioning for the event today. So thank you to those people. And I look forward to handing it over to Chris and learning about New York City parks. Thanks.

CHRISTOPHER: Thank you, Thomas. Thank you, Thomas. Thank you guys for all coming out. My name is Chris Noel.

I'm the accessibility coordinator with New York City parks. Part of my role is to work with capital projects. I work with our landscape architects and our designers, and our engineers, and our general architects and consultants to design and develop accessible parks that are in new construction, or I should say, in design. I also work on the recreation side to develop and help our centers improve our programming for persons with disabilities, and seniors.

And I also answer all the complaints and requests, and comments, that come through 311. So if you ever have, like, a complaint, or a request, you can always go there. I see many of you have used that already? So you can always go through 311, as we're a city agency, we'll definitely respond back.

All right. So let's get started. Universal design in New York City parks. It's very interesting, and, hopefully, this presentation will give you some insight on what our designers and architects do when we're developing a new park or playground.

So when it comes to accessible design, the basic meaning is a design process in which the needs of people with disabilities are specifically considered. Why we think this is somewhat different from universal design is that the practice of designing products that can be used by the widest range of people possible. Universal design goes beyond accessible design by upholding the idea that all new environments and products should be usable to everyone regardless of their age, ability, or circumstance, meaning disability.

So when you're talking about accessible design, that's almost saying: How do we make this accessible? Whereas with universal design, the kind of thinking is: Okay, let's make everything accessible. It's not even a second thought. And that's generally what we do at New York City Parks, we go with the mindset of let's make everything universally accessible so that all people win no matter what.

Quick example and we were talking about this earlier, most bathrooms that you go into — you see an ADA stall. That's not saying that the ADA stall is only for the person with a disability, or a wheelchair user, but it's accommodating to all. So meaning there have been plenty of times where I've gone into a bathroom, and someone has used the ADA stall. I'm not going to hold that against them.

I'm not going to bang on the door, "Hey! Get out of there? That's not for you!" Because it's universal design but people know that it's for wheelchair users.

So as I mentioned earlier, I would just kind of roll by so they could see the wheels by the door and that's generally when you hear the flush and the person says, okay, let me... but the concept is, if you make it so that all can use it, everyone should be able use it — no questions asked. So as you see with the slide on the left, the ADA provides much-needed but accessibility solutions might be last-minute solutions that are unattractive and stigmatizing to users.

Meaning that if I'm with a bunch of friends and I'm trying to go into this building, the red-brick building, would my friends necessarily walk with me upramp, or would they take the step and I take the ramp? So that kind of creates separation whereas when you have universal design, if it's all ramped, everyone goes the same direction, and even if you see in this design, I'm sure that — this is the one to the right — you see the wheelchair-accessible symbol saying, okay, this is the accessible way, meaning that probably on the left of it are steps.

But even so, all of our friends, and myself, we can all walk together to get to the same place and that's what universal design accomplishes. So when we come to New York City parks' universal features, you might see a number of these in our parks as we're trying to establish more with our construction. You see our amphitheatre style seating and that's basically where we have basketball courts, or it could be a baseball field, or what-have-you.

We've kind of carved out, or actually manufactured, actually, the middle so that wheelchair users could be right in the middle of it, so if I am with friends, they can sit on either side of me, but before, with I as a wheelchair user would be on the outside of it, and not outside, and that creates, definitely, a separation whereas we're more focusing on inclusion. So you're going to start seeing more of our parks and playgrounds where we have amphitheatre-style seating so that everyone can be included.

Even our picnic tables, as you see, it's elongated on one end, and that means that a wheelchair user could easily roll up to it and have the table comfortably on top of the person so you can eat and not necessarily have to sit with the table this way, and I'm kind of eating like this because my knees will bump into the table if I'm turned around, facing everyone else, another form of inclusion.

Benches with arms and backrests. That's important for seniors, for someone who's getting up. So you might have a backless bench, or you might have a lot of benches that you've seen where it's just a seat in the back. But, you know, to make it comfortable, more easier for a person with a disability, or a senior to get up from the bench, we try to make sure that 50% of our benches have armrests and backs in case someone needs that accommodation.

The tables as well, where you can play cards and there's a carved-out section for a wheelchair to be able to sit with friends and play. And our companion seating as you'll see, we'll have one at the end of a bench and you'll see this one, right here, a young lady with her son. They're included in between. So for many of the parks, I would say of yesteryear, we might have a line of benches all next to each other and there's no space for a wheelchair user to sit by anyone else.

So, basically, if this is a bench and you're all facing me, I would have to face this way if I'm talking to my friends, versus sitting alongside them, and letting the pathway open up for everyone to travel. So we try to include this in all of our new construction, just so that people with disabilities feel included, but let's not forget about mothers with baby strollers. When you have the companion seating, it's easy to put a baby stroller right next to you, or if you're traveling you might have a shopping cart.

It saves it from being in the pathway, but more so next to you. So when we talk about universal accessibility, it's not just the person with the wheelchair who benefits; it's everyone. With our signage that you'll start seeing on a lot of our parks, we're lorring it so that persons with disabilities, or people that don't like to strain their neck looking up at the sign in order to see the park hours and the rules of the park, a lot of our older signage was really high so you couldn't really read the words.

So we're lorring it now and we've tried to put it to the ADA standard so that anyone can read it, such as myself, or someone with a walker, or a senior that uses a cane, that cannot look up, they'll now be able to see the park hours and rules and regulations, and a lot of times, we'll have pathway indicators on the floor. So it's kind of like a design but it's almost saying, "Hey, this is the accessible pathway."

So this is having a big, glaring sign with the universal design symbol on it for accessibility, we have something like this that might be on one of our pavers on the pathway. So it's kind of inconspicuously saying, "Hey, this is the accessible way." Where it doesn't really just shout out at you. And, obviously, we have a number of truncated domes at our curb cuts.

We've tried to make them high visibility so that a person with high vision loss would be able to see it even when the sun starts to go down and it starts to get darker. The main thing is the contrast between the truncated domes and the sidewalk so that the person can see where the curb cut is so that they don't walk into the curb. This is another new design that a lot of manufacturers are coming out with, and you'll start seeing this in a number of of our parks if you haven't seen it already.

This is our new water fountains where as you have one that is accessible for a wheelchair user, and you also have one where if a person doesn't necessarily like to bend down, or can't bend down as much, we have one on the other side. So before, we used to maybe see the box — little water fountains that you would have to bend all the way down for, and they weren't accessible at all.

This actually accomplishes both. So for people that don't like bending down too much, we raise it a little bit and we also have the other one as you see on the left here for wheelchairs users to be able to now use water fountains in their wheelchair without having to turn to the side, or, you know, just to get a drink of water. So you'll start seeing a lot of these in our new playgrounds that are coming out within the next few years.

And to make it even better, we're putting a lot more water bottle fillers. So for a lot of persons that might be jogging through our parks, or that might be, you know, riding a bike and want to stop and get some water and fill up their water bottle, you're going to start seeing a lot more of these, where they're all accessible. As you see, we have one that's just a bottle filler.

One with both of the water fountains on the side, and a water bottle filler, and even one here on a lot of our dog runs with the doggie bowl so that dogs can get filled up in a lot of our parks. And it's pretty cool. So it's our type-E low fountain, and type-F. One is more modern, and we kind of like all types of water fountains that are accessible because now everyone has access to it whereas before they really didn't.

When it comes to bathrooms, and this is great, because it will show you these are accessible bathrooms but what we're also doing is a lot of our bathrooms had water fountains on the side of it which generally weren't accessible. Now with our comfort stations we're able to have the water running year-round whereas the outer ones, which are not connected to the comfort stations are generally shut down because we don't want the pipes to freeze during the winter but turned on later on.

With the comfort stations, we can keep these on year round. But as you saw with the type E, and type F water stations, if you don't like to bend down as much, or if you need a wheelchair accessible user fountain, you'll start seeing more of those now. And it's great for us, as I mentioned, it's helping the general public, whether you're disabled or not, doesn't access the amenities. And as you see here, as we've talked about topography earlier on before the presentation started, this is close to Inwood Hills Park as we've spoken about earlier where we have a huge grade change, but what we've done is we've done a switchback ramp to basically make it navigable for a person with a disability, or anyone who definitely wants to walk and not have to go down a tremendous slope.

So as you'll see with this design, we've done it at 8.33% slope, which is the max slope to make it accessible, obviously, with the handrails, but it's a lot more accessible than it was previously. So before, I would have never been able to get to La Marina, which is over here in Inwood Hill Park. But I would have had to travel all the way up Dyckman Street. But with the plantings around it, we make it not only more enjoyable, but let you enjoy more green space while traveling.

These are Parks and Recreation, and that means less asphalt and cement. So we try to include as much green space as possible with plantings. Morningside Playground Park, Playground 123 is a great example of topography of having ramping throughout without having to worry about steps. It's in three phases and we've done two so far.

We're going on to the third one which is in construction, and, hopefully, when it opens, a lot more children with disabilities will visit this park. As we try to make sure that all our parks and playgrounds are universally accessible, one-by-one, it's great when we see a number of children with disabilities, various disabilities playing in them because that makes our designers happy because it's like "mission accomplished." And we didn't even get to the play equipment yet.

Our play-equipment manufacturers work with us in order to have accessible equipment on our playgrounds, whereas before, when you go to our old playgrounds, it was hard to find any equipment for a child with a disability. So what does that mean, the child with a disability goes to the playground and there's nothing for them to play with, nothing for them to do to enjoy it especially if they have friends that are non-disabled.

Remember we talked about universal accessibility, that inclusion factor is basically null and void at that playground and the child with a disability is basically left out. Another form of accessibility that we're doing are handrails. So with a number of parks where we do have huge elevations, we try to make sure that we have handrails that are for persons that might be ambulatory but might not have much balance such as a senior who might want to go up the steps to get a greater view, but if there's no handrails, that person might not feel as comfortable traveling up that flight of steps, so we've done a number of modifications where we've added handrails to make sure that it's an easier and safer trip.

So when it comes to surfacing, these are the three levels that we have: The accessible surfacing, with asphalt, concrete, our safety surface that's in our playgrounds, and audio granite block which we'll see in Central Park and large parks and we have semiaccessible. They can be accessible if they're maintained but normally if they're not maintained they wouldn't be accessible such as our stone screenings, wood chips, natural turf, synthetic turf. When it comes to the wood screenings and the wood chips, more often than not, it's very accessible for someone with a wheelchair, or a walker, per se, but if it's not, let's say, if it rains, and it's not compacted, and it's leveled out, it can be very inaccessible and you'll basically get stuck in the middle of the wood chips and would have to ask for help to get out.

So we try to make sure when we are putting in stone screenings or wood chips in our design, the thought is that it will be maintained. So we'll show you how we've made it accessible on our beaches, especially with the pool season and the beach season coming up. So when we talk about beaches and boardwalks, we have beach mats that we use. So as we have designated sections on each beach so that we can grade it so that it's flat and then compact it, and lay the mats on top of it.

As you see here with the gentleman who had the position before me, the new Commissioner for Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities, Victor Calise leading the group, and our former person, for Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities, Matthew Sapolin, who passed away about five or six years ago on our beach. And as you see, we have a wheelchair user, and a person with a vision loss, this guy's dog, and they're all able to travel.

And the person is obviously ambulatory. But as we mentioned before, everyone is able to travel to get to a point on the beach and that's what we consider success, for people with disabilities and without, to be able to travel and enjoy the beaches. And you'll see a lot of our comfort stations that we have on Rockaway Beach, and Coney Island Beach. And these were recently installed, I should say, and they came from the Hurricane Sandy monies, where Hurricane sandy pretty much destroyed a number of our beaches, but with the money from FEMA and governmental sources, we're able to obviously design something new but when we're designing something new, we want to make it as accessible as possible.

So with the ramp, in case there's another storm, the water will run underneath it now. But we still with the grade change, wanted to make it as accessible as possible for everyone's use. So when it comes to buildings and historic sites, landmark buildings, I should say, we go to the picture before. So this is one of the slides that we had in the beginning where you're almost making a ramp next to steps to make it accessible, but as you see, and this is the Moshima Mansion (phonetic) in Upper Harlem, but we took out so much land here from so much prior.

And we took out a huge swath of land right here to basically make it a universally designed entrance. So now, instead of having a ramp, it's easy to construct a ramp here, and make it at 8.3%, and put handrails on it, but you would still separate a person with a disability versus an ambulatory person whereas now everyone can walk and enjoy the entrance together without separation. So you'll see with the before and after pictures, how much a difference makes when you do it universally.

When we come to ball fields, here's an example of our JJ Walker Ballfield in downtown Manhattan where we want to make sure that if you're a coach of a baseball, or a softball team and you're a wheelchair user, that would really suck if you couldn't make it to the dugout. If you're on the outside fence telling your teammates, round third! Round third, come home! Versus being on the dugout.

But not a lot of our playgrounds in terms of the ball fields were accessible as they are now. So our designers — I give a lot of respect to our designers because when they are designing, unless they've had a person, say, with a disability in their family that they know, you can almost say, well, how are they going to know about accessibility? We have a great group of landscape architects and designers in New York City Parks, and I give them a lot of credit.

Sure, I'm there to cheer them on to say, hey, could we do this, could we do that, but they really lead the charge in designing really eloquent and universally accessible playgrounds, parks, ball fields, I can't give enough credit to them because it starts with the design. So as you'll see here, even with the pathways, we make sure that there's a pathway I guess from the main thoroughfare to the dugouts. So what we're doing with the new construction with the ball field is to make sure that the both dugouts, if the topography allows for it, we make sure that both dugouts are accessible.

So it doesn't matter, if you're a coach, you'll be able to coach your team. Dog runs are great because now we're making them more accessible than ever. So you'll see with the padding and the accessible surfacing next to the benches. Now if you're a wheelchair user and you're using a cane or a walker or if you're a mother who's traveling with her stroller to get to the dogs, you're now able to very comfortably as you'll see here.

And this is with a if you have been of our dog runs. We're seeing this more and more with dog runs across our neighborhood, we're trying to make sure that when we're designing them, not because it's the law to make them accessible, because we feel it has to be successful, regardless of the law, we try to go over and beyond accessibility if we can. We don't just stick to the basics. Outdoor gyms.

So I guess as a plug for our recreation centers, for persons with disabilities, our recreation center membership is $25 a year. The only thing you would need to do is show certain forms of identification and as a person with a disability, you can go to any center. But still without a disability it's $150 a year, and you can go to any center in the city, and it's still a great deal. I've seen some prices of some gyms, I'm just saying, our recreation centers have the same equipment and it's here for all New Yorkers as we're a city agency, so I would suggest that you go to your local recreation center and take a look around because remember with that price of membership, you can go to any of them in the five boroughs.

So you might be in another borough visiting family and say, hey, let me go to the recreation center around the corner, let me go swim, let me get on a bike, let me get access to weights. So it's a great deal. But for a lot of persons, you might want to go to the park and work out outside. So we're developing a number of accessible workout equipment — pieces of workout equipment.

And as you'll see here on the left, something we've worked with a lot of our manufacturers to design are the triple parallel bars. So in a number of parks, you'll see parallel bars, just two of them. But the idea of having a third bar, we brought it to designers and said, hey, what if a person is just getting out of therapy, they're done with their inpatient stay. They're down with their outpatient stay, how do they still continue to learn how to walk.

Why don't we give them that opportunity in our parks and playgrounds? So that's what we've developed with a number of our manufacturers that have developed that equipment. And it's great because as I mentioned universal accessibility, if someone with a wheelchair, a walker wants to use the l lowered bars, they can. But I've seen number of people, because it's lowered, using it for pushups, or using it for pullups.

And including with this picture of an officer here, that's a dipping station for a person with a disability to be — and as you see right there, there's a shoulder press next to him that's accessible, as well as a chest press. So with these three pieces in a row, all three pieces are accessible and we're putting them in a playground. And we're talking to a manufacturer where it's this piece here where it's a chest press where you can go on either side.

If you're a wheelchair user and don't want to leave your wheelchair, you can go to the side without a seat and use it as a chest press but as I mentioned before, with universal accessibility, there's been a number of times where I've gone to our parks and I've seen people using our chest press in a crouch position because they're getting a little more of a workout, you're working out your quads, and your back muscles.

So instead of sitting and using the chest press, you're getting more of a workout with the this. You know, New York, we can make anything work for us. So I've seen that in a number of playgrounds and it actually — it made me say, wow, that's pretty cool, you know? You're getting more for your workout.

And these are obviously free units in all of our parks, and so I definitely encourage you, and they're being requested more by the public to go and try them out. Just give us your opinions on them. And you can either email me, or call me at 311 and give me your opinion on what you think of it. Why not?

Community gardens are important. As I mentioned, New York City, you see a lot of buildings, asphalt, concrete, these an important especially where you can teach children how to garden. This is a Clinkscales Playground in Harlem, and as you can see, we have different levels. We have a place where someone without disabilities can really get down and plant, or we have ones that are elevated where a person who's sitting in a wheelchair or a walker can almost reach over and plant.

And so this allows everyone to kind of get in the mood of planting, and, granted, this was at the opening but now if you go past here, it's full of green. And they wanted this. They actually requested this for this playground. The gentleman, Robert Clinkscales, this playground was just an allyway, and used to have a ton of bad things going on here, and he said he wanted to clean it up, and he wanted to make it green.

And we interested help him as best we can to accomplish his goals. And it's still being worked out. And the community is actually making sure that it's there for the upkeep to make sure that doesn't go away, or make sure that it's not becoming something that it wasn't designed and built for. So now as we talk about our playground, as you see we have multilevel playgrounds here but with the play equipment, you can access all of them.

So as you see with the slides, there's a person with limited mobility to get to each level and play with other children. And as I mentioned, I can't give enough credit to our designers because when they work with our equipment manufacturers and obviously it's part of the design where to place the equipment and where it will work, it's all about inclusion. So, I mean, if a group of children come, and some are disabled and some are not, it allows all the children to play all in the same play space and that's great because no one feels left out but if a child with a disability is there, people can run around, and there's a play space but if there's a child with a disability, they're included.

So like I talked about the bathroom with the ADA stall, it's the same concept, it's there if you need it, it's guaranteed. If not, sure, no one will be left out. And that's the key. That's what we do in New York City Parks to make sure that everyone is included.

So you'll see here where there's no space allowed for full ramping, we have partial ramping on the left and we have full ramping on the right. So you can see the Indian Road Playground, this is in Upper Manhattan, in Washington Heights, and Laurelton West Playground, and she wanted to make sure that wheelchair users were able to go across this ramp here and it was right next to the Cross-Island Parkway, so she wanted to keep the mindset of being on a highway.

So that's where the mindset came from of having that ramp where if you're up there, you can see everything. So for a child in a wheelchair with limited mobility, it gives them access to view that, whereas in playgrounds of the past, we didn't have that option to give to children with or without a disability. It's a pretty cool playground. And as you see here, everyone loves swings.

Universal accessibility, we call it a roller coaster harness but it allows a child without great trunk control to stay in position in their swing seat. Now before we had bucket swings and strap swings and basically none of them were accessible but with this one, a child with or without a disability can use it and have fun. But safety is key, so we try to make sure that we have at least one of them in our playgrounds with swings so that if a child with a disability needs to use it, they can.

Sometimes we have to put the universal ADA symbol inside of it because we've had situations where parents have come with a child with a disability, and the kids loved it so much that weren't disabled that it was hard to tell a child, okay, you need to come off the swing. So in order to make it easier for parents, we kind of started putting that symbol in there kind of almost saying, it's almost like the bus, when you ride the bus, if a senior, or someone comes on, will you please give your seat.

So that's kind of a way of saying, to a parent who comes with a child with a disability, but it's tough. I've heard some situations where it's tough to get the child off the swing. They love it. And as you see here, it's for full use for everyone.

This was an older model ADA swing that was made for children that had various levels of disability but, obviously, no trunk control. So they needed to be in a seated position so that they can enjoy the swing area. We still have some of those but now we do them upon request. The reason being is that because it's almost flat, we had instances of children — we'd have three or four children just pile up on a row, and what happens when you have that much weight on it?

It pops. And then we're without an ADA swing and we'll get a call saying, hey, the ADA swing is broken! And we realized that this swing was breaking a lot. And so our manufacturers came up, and manufactured them so that it's harder to break but it still keeps the child safe but if there's a parent and there's a community member who has a playground or park and they'd like to request this swing for their neighborhood or their child, we can put them in their playground upon request.

But for the most part, we go with the durable ones and parents with children with disabilities like them, as well. And we try to accommodate with a specific request because as I mentioned, the playground is a extension of the community. That's where the community can go and sit, and just enjoy the scenery, and just enjoy being in a place where their children can play so we try to make it as comfortable for them upon request.

A number of parks also have sensory play. So for children, say, with autism, or developmentally delayed, there are a number of items that we have in our parks where they can actually still experience it. We have sound gardens, we have sensory gardens, and we have gardens with plantings that have plants with specific smalls. We have talk tubes so that children can talk to other children in other parts of the playground.

So as you see, we try to make sure that all children are accommodated. Here's some more ground-level play features that we use for children. Obviously, you look through those and there are different designs that you'll see. If a child has a little — has little cars, or, you know, what-have-you, they can play on this, and they're accessible for a child in a wheelchair to use or without.

And here's some more examples of our ground-level play features. Even here we have our elevated sand table so if a child can't get into the sandbox, we bring the sandbox to them. So as you see here on the bottom right, that elevated sand table is filled with sand so if they want to build a sandcastle, or they want to play with the sand without getting into the sandbox, they obviously can. And we also have bars there, so if the child needs to use them to get into — safely — into the sandbox with assistance, they can.

So this handrail is definitely coming in important in terms of safety — overall safety. Here's some more examples. Play houses are great. They allow for accessibility.

We try to make sure that we get ones with the doorways wide enough so that children of all abilities can play in each of them. And as you'll see, it's all about the experience of children going to the playground and being included with others; not being shut out. So when we do a basic run-through of our parks — and I've been doing a lot of it — we usually have this checklist.

So it's universal design features for playgrounds. So you'll see with this checklist, these are all the levels of universal accessibility that could possibly fit in a playground. And this, for example, is playground 123. So that's, as we mentioned before, that's in Morningside Park in Upper Manhattan, and other than the elevated sand baseball, it's checked off completely.

Tristan Porto designed this park and they designed it to make it fully accessible for all children to use. I think they did a great job. When it comes to a number of playgrounds that you're going to see, I would say within the next few years, or the next few months, the mayor has given us a tremendous amount of money to develop our parks and playgrounds. With our Community Parks Initiative, and with that, obviously with the minutes with the local elected officials such as your local councilmembers, and a lot of state elected combined with the money that they've given us, we've been able to do great things.

I've seen them. But you guys haven't seen them. So I guarantee when you see them within the next few years, you'll be amazed. You're going to be like, I remember Chris Noel saying...

they're going to be great in terms of how much space they're using, how accessible they are, and how much green space they're using. We have a unit called the Green Infrastructure Group and we try to make sure that we develop different forms of greenery, whether it's to prevent flooding, or for persons with or without disabilities to go through with trees and plantings. It's a great thing to go through parks, I would like to thank our Commissioner, Mitchell Silver, as well as our Deputy Commissioner Rais Bradich to say hey, this is how we design parks, and we need to design them like this ASAP.

And I appreciate everything that they do but also on the recreation side we try to make sure that our recreation centers are not left behind so there's a number of recreation dollars that are to ensure that our recreation centers are accessible. And there are a number of Commissioners, Adina Long, and Emily Chase have been making sure that they're running with accessible programming and that they're as accessible as they can be. But as I mentioned, we have a number of parks through the Community Parks Initiative, but what we're doing is saying, okay, the mayor has said, let's devote money to these parks that haven't been touched in 20-25 years.

Let's go for the parks that are the oldest and haven't been redone for a long time. And I appreciate his efforts, as well as those of Commissioner Silver. And so what we're doing with that is our community parks summer program. So these playgrounds that weren't touched in a number of years, we actually have programming going on to bring kids into these parks and playgrounds.

Many of them were desolate because the play equipment, I'm going to go here. So we're trying to bring these kids back into the playgrounds that are eventually going to be completely redone so that way when they are redone, they'll see, kind of, what New York City Parks has done to make their neighborhood more friendlier, especially with our Parks without Borders where we're lowering the fences in our playgrounds to make them more welcoming with more accessible entrances.

We want our playgrounds to be stable for our community so that it's how it used to be, so that people come to the playground to have fun and that it be a safe environment for everyone. And because of the level of decor that's going into them, we want to make sure that the people in the neighborhood are not throwing bottles on the asphalt, or breaking the equipment at night when the night goes out, but rather having the respect in saying, look at this playground that's in our community now, let's have respect for it and I think that teaches our kids a lot.

So with all our units that are working together with our parks, playground, and recreation centers, I encourage you all to check them out when you get a chance. That's a great thing. That's the end of my presentation. So I'm sure you have tons of questions.

I saw a lot of notetaking. So I'm sure you have tons of questions that you would like to ask, and I think, sure, let's go ahead for it. Don't be shy now, guys. Yup, we have a question in the back.

AUDIENCE: Do you do any prototyping or testing before you actually build out these plans?

CHRISTOPHER: The... for the most part, I would say it would come down to our landscape architects and designers. That's what they've gone to school for, as well as our consultants. So for the prototypes, I would say in terms of the play equipment we leave that to the play equipment manufacturers.

They do a number of testing and a number of — where they — where they bring these pieces of play equipment into a community to see how the kids interact and play on it, et cetera. So with the play equipment, I would definitely say that it goes through a number of testing and different versions, and models. But in terms of prototyping, every playground and park has its own unique characteristics and features.

That comes down to the scope meetings, before we go to the design of a playground or a park, we go to the community and say, hey, what do you guys want in your park, what do you want in your playground? And sometimes we make it easier for them by saying, hey, these are the categories, what would you add to it, these are the things that we were thinking about adding to your playground, what would you keep, what would you not?

Because remember, the playground is an extension of the community so if the community is able to have some input to their playground, I think it's great. And I think it makes them more appreciative of it once it's constructed because they could say, hey, I had a piece in the construction of the playground and it's a new playground in our community versus the one that's been sitting there for many years and needs some attention.

So as I say again, I think Mayor de Blasio has done a great job to make sure that these playgrounds could be — what's the word I'm looking for — dynamic. You know? Looking with our Commissioner Silver who's leading the charge and, obviously, our Commissioner Radich who also makes sure that the troops are in line to make sure that these parks are completed in a timely fashion.

SHAWN: That leads into a question that I had which is how much does the City of New York collaborate with other cities in designing parks?

CHRISTOPHER: I would say for a number of landscape architects and designers, they come from different cities where they were working in park systems. Sometimes we do reach out to other, I would say, states and cities to kind of say, hey, well, look what they've done here. But I can almost guarantee you — and I guess it's going to be documented — so I would honestly say this. You could pretty much go to any city or state in the United States and you're not going to find a more comprehensive group of accessible playgrounds that we have here in New York City and that's because I've traveled to other states and cities for conferences, and different events, and, you know, a lot of times I'll say, you know, I'll go to that city or state

and go rent a car, and say, let me see how their parks are looking, let me see how accessible they are. And without calling out those states or cities, you know, because this could be, because it's not New York City, it could be worldwide basically whoever's watching this on YouTube, on the livestream, they're not as accessible as I thought they would be. You might have one designated playground or a few, or a number of them.

But when you think of New York City and how big we are and how many playgrounds we have, how many acres of land we have for our parks and playgrounds, and how accessible we are, I would like to see a city or state that would compare with us. And once again, I would have to thank Mayor Bloomberg who initially started it, with coming up with putting dollars and developing conserve any such groups, and Commissioner Silver, I think we're doing a great job in terms of making sure our parks and playgrounds are accessible than we did in the past.

So like I said before, I would challenge any city or state to say they have a more comprehensive group of accessible playgrounds than we do. And that's not just bragging or boasting. Like I said, I'm not a designer. I leave that to the guys at our capital projects at the homestead where they're designing parks and playgrounds every day and waiting for the construction to be finished.

And I see that in their eyes, as well. And I see the designs, and I don't show them how happy I am because I want them to still make them as accessible as possible but we have some very dynamic playgrounds that are being rip and cut, and opened in the next few months, and years, and I think you guys are all going to appreciate it.

AUDIENCE: So are you — this is following up on the same question because that was my question, too. Are you saying that we are setting the standard? Are you saying we're on the cutting edge? There's a difference.

CHRISTOPHER: Sure. I would say both because we are setting the standard because I'm sure a lot of other cities and park departments and agencies in other states are looking at us and saying, you know, look at what New York City Parks is doing because we're so huge because we're so large and we're New York City. Everyone likes what we do and does what we do. So that's why I also we are cutting edge because when we're working with our playground equipment manufacturers, we're working on them with pieces of equipment that they haven't developed yet.

So meaning that if they're developing pieces of play equipment with our input, they're also able to sell it to other park groups.

AUDIENCE: That's what I was going to ask.

CHRISTOPHER: I didn't mean to brag or boast.

AUDIENCE: So we're actually a testing ground with these ideas.

CHRISTOPHER: As he mentioned but we're actually the prototype. We're actually saying, let's develop this piece of play equipment, as I mentioned with a lot of the adult fitness, we work with a lot of our playground manufacturers to develop it. And obviously they can use it and sell it across the world but it starts here in New York City. And as I say, I think our Commissioner Silver for our Capital Projects Commissioner Bradich to work with the playground manufacturers and to say, hey, let's develop something that we can actually pay for, and we thank our Mayor de Blasio for that, and our elected officials, the local councilpeople who throw money into playgrounds and park.

They're not cheap. But you need that to lead the cutting edge. So I would say both.

AUDIENCE: Can I ask a follow-up to that? It's really more what concerns me. Capital projects are great, right? And you've mentioned a lot of names in the newspapers, it's great.

So about this maintenance question. So you've mentioned maybe we can have the community to have a sense of ownership and they don't tear the place apart.

CHRISTOPHER: That's very important. Yes.

AUDIENCE: And I'm on board but I'm wondering about the budget that your department has for maintaining all this stuff.

CHRISTOPHER: Sure.

AUDIENCE: Do you know what I mean? Because that's not as glamorous.

CHRISTOPHER: Cleaning up parks is not a glamorous job. We've had volunteers, and at one point it was recipients — there were a number of those workers that were happy to work and clean the parks every day. We actually had them stationed at our comfort stations to make sure that the comfort stations stay clean and to make sure that someone is able to sweep. But they felt ownership with the park because they're saying, hey, I'm here making sure that the park stays clean.

And now with the operations department, every borough has an operations department, but we have a number of workers that clean up the parks more effectively to help keep our green spaces green and that comes down to our forestary department big time. But in part, with our parks, we have many well-running units that kind of say, hey, you take care of this, I take care this. You guys design parks, we can find a way to clean parks.

As I mentioned, you can't go to a park in New York City and say, ugh, this park is so disgusting! You can't.

AUDIENCE: Not anymore.

CHRISTOPHER: Not anymore — exactly. So that's why I mentioned a number of names who you might see in the press sometimes and it's not always getting a favorable response because, a lot of times, reporters don't see what's going on behind the scenes and how hard it is to make it happen. A lot of times you think it's easy to maintain these parks and playgrounds but as I mentioned before, we have so many acres of it.

Imagine all these little playgrounds and every borough because we have our operations and I give our chief of operations tons of credit because obviously they're putting their crews in situations so that this can all get done. And I thank you for asking that question because I think that needs to get reported, how clean New York City parks are. You would figure in a city as big as New York, that you would think that some might miss the cut.

But not many. Not many. I go to a number of playgrounds when I do ADA inspections, or check out if people are using play equipment for a recently opened park or playground. Sometimes I'm amazed how clean they are.

And a lot of times if you go to your park, and you go out there, 7:00, 8:00 in the morning, you'll see a park worker out there cleaning up, making sure the comfort station is clean. You know, that's not an easy job to go in and clean the bathrooms, you know? But you — it's like I said, everyone has a job to do, and as long as you're part of the system and you see how your small piece helps the bigger picture, I think that's the main thing why people say, hey, I want to keep this bathroom spotless, even if it's for public use.

You don't even necessarily be a child in the playground to use that bathroom. You can't be in the playground as an adult without a child, but sure, we clean them as best we can. And it's not easy. New York City is a big place.

So a taxi driver might drive and say, I gotta use the bathroom, and they go to the park bathroom. And it's their right, to use it. But we have workers to make sure that the urinals and the stalls are clean. It's not easy but like I said we have many agencies within New York City that help make New York City a great place but I like the agency that I'm with, and I'll definitely stand behind everything we do because we make New York City greener, we make it fun, we allow for kids to go play, and grow up together in a nice safe environment.

So I think that's pretty cool. Yeah.

THOMAS: Yeah, I had a question just related to, like, the triple parallel bars and/or the what was the —

CHRISTOPHER: Something that was created in New York City by New York City Parks.

THOMAS: That and the roller coaster harness. I'm not familiar with the technical standards but would those be things that you could say they don't follow, like, an ADA guideline, or they don't follow specific guidelines, so you can mandate it, or is it more of a design or prototype?

CHRISTOPHER: Well, it's both. But a lot of them haven't gotten up to the ADA standards, meaning parallel bars specifically. So what we did specifically was we went to a number of rehab institutions in New York City, Mt. Sinai, and NYU Rusk, and myself, as a person with a disability, everyone uses the parallel bars for some sort of exercise, or rehabilitation.

And we asked them the appropriate height for persons with disabilities to use and we came up with that number as a consensus and it works well because we've actually heard from some rehab groups who take their patients out to the playground near where we had them constructed and use them. The reason they went outside our model because they want to integrate this person who's newly disabled back into the community and that's kind of what we're thinking, too, is once your rehab is done, once your insurance isn't paying it anymore, how do you continue that therapy without paying out of pocket.

So as we said before, this is something that's brand-new and they have brought their patients out and tried to use it, just to get them out on a playground, and not feeling odd just because you're newly disabled and not used to being disabled and in public. So that actually helps them out. So that helps us by helping themselves and the patient obviously. And so we obviously do try to comply by all the standards but when you're coming up with — and obviously the USX board looks at everything with the new design saying, hey, we need to put a standard to this to make sure that it's safe and accessible so that everyone can use it.

So we're trying to raise the bar with a number of things that we do. Even when you look at the adult fitness equipment — if I go back to that screen — it's pretty cool that we can actually have this out there. I mean, what other city or state that you can go to and see accessible fitness equipment? It starts here in New York City.

You know? And I'm proud to say that as a born-and-bred New Yorker.

AUDIENCE: So you're saying cutting edge. You're saying we're not going to move to some other town and still have this equipment for us to enjoy, right now, as far as you know.

CHRISTOPHER: That we're going to move to another...

AUDIENCE: That I'm going to move to another city — wonderful city in our nation — and I'm going to find an exercise station like I want to use in my neighborhood.

CHRISTOPHER: Which neighborhood?

AUDIENCE: Brooklyn Bridge Park.

CHRISTOPHER: Yeah, we have tons of them. I would say, yeah, because other cities might look at this and say, hey, how can we get this in our parks and our playgrounds. But as you said, have you used a piece of it yet? Tried it out?

AUDIENCE: My wife does, you know...

CHRISTOPHER: The elliptical machines, you know, if you go out early in the morning, it's great. And like I said, a lot of these pieces were developed so that we're pretty much the prototype as I mentioned. So we're not following another prototype, we're basically creating one here in New York City and it comes with the use of it. And, granted, and what's also great about it, too, is you have the codes on the side.

So if you go there with your smartphone or whatever and it gives you directions on how to use the equipment whether you're disabled or not. So if any of you go to your local playgrounds and your parks and you see adult fitness equipment, you'll see — what is it — the QR code? And you go to your smartphone and it will show you a video of how to use it whether you're disabled or not.

The reason being with that being is with universal accessibility, this one obviously says, okay, a wheelchair user can use it. The piece of this manufacturer, you almost would go up to it if it wasn't accessible and say, how would I use it? So, for example... so you could see the officer doing dips but for a wheelchair user, they would go forward and be able to do dips.

This, right here, is almost a — we call it — it would be a shoulder press. But, really, it's for squatting. So a person without a disability, those pieces would go right here on their shoulders. So it's actually a squat press to get your legs stronger.

But if you're a wheelchair user, you can go in towards it, and use it as a shoulder press. Same thing with the chest press, obviously, you would need to transfer into it as I've done with that equipment manufacturer to make sure that it was accessible enough, we would almost call it semiaccessible because you would have to ambulate, and leave your wheelchair or your mobility device but what's specific with that chest press machine right there that the equipment manufacturer did is you can actually adjust the tension with a knob.

So if you want to have a light workout, if you want to have a more strenuous workout, you can actually change the pressure settings on that, which is pretty cool. And with the shoulder press, as well. So what I'm saying is, these pieces of equipment, sure, we're using a lot of them in our playgrounds and parks, I would challenge you to see another playground or park system that uses them as well as New York City Parks has as far.

And even with this equipment manufacturer here, I think it's great to have a combination of different pieces. So we don't necessarily want to use one playground equipment manufacturer's pieces in all of our parks because then there's no variety. So we definitely have our other manufacturers and we work with them to develop these pieces of equipment, obviously, to make them universally accessible so that you might be in Brooklyn Bridge Park and see one set of adult fitness equipment.

You might go to Prospect Park playground and see another piece of fitness equipment. So you can kind of get different workouts by going to different parks and playgrounds. And, obviously, that comes to our designers saying, hey, these are the pieces that we can put here to make sure it fits. Make sure that there's a five-foot area turning radius for wheelchair users to use.

There's a level of universal accessible thinking automatically, so as I mentioned before when you have accessible design and universal design, accessible design is saying, well, how can we make it accessible, whereas universal design is, let's make it fully accessible off the bat. It's not even a "how," it's a "we're going to." And that's the mindset that we have at New York City Parks. Not how, but we're going to do it, and we've done it, successfully, in a number of places, and you're going to see it more as parks are continuously going to be opened with the Mayor's Community Parks Initiative monies.

And you're going to see, wow, Chris was right. He was really on point with that! Any other questions?

AUDIENCE: So, Chris, currently, what percentage of park spaces and playgrounds are universally accessible?

CHRISTOPHER: To give you an honest number, a lot of them aren't constructed yet but I would say the number is probably very low and that comes down to a number of reasons. It comes down to money a lot of the times. The parks — and obviously a lot of features that go in a neighborhood are funded by local assemblymen, or councilmen, or woman — councilperson, I should say, but if they're putting a million dollars to a playground, 2 million dollars, $3 million, obviously when you figure out the construction costs and what you're going to play labor, et cetera, the rest would come down to the equipment.

So if you don't have a huge budget to work with, you're not going to get the most dynamic park. So I would say in years past, that's why so many playgrounds and parks stayed the same as they were because there weren't enough dollars allocated to do major renovations. We might do partial renovation if we can, or add features such as new plantings, or things of that nature, and green space, and trees are very important for our parks, and for our ecology.

But I would say with the monies that have come through the Community Parks Initiative and mayoral funds, we were able to go beyond what we've been able in the past. So the percentage — I wouldn't be able to give you an exact number — but I would say the percentages are going to be higher going forward because with playgrounds, you wouldn't say, oh, there's nothing for a child with a disability to do here.

Or there's steps, you have to go all the way over there to find the accessible entrance. Sometimes that's a turn-away for a parent with a child with a disability, why do I have to come through a different entrance, than the main entrance. Maybe there's a topography change difference. Whereas before, back in the day, it was a challenge to make it universally accessible.

Or maybe the ADA wasn't enforced as much. But right now, we're putting playgrounds on a different pedestal, and that comes down to our chief of design, Nancy Press, and that comes down to our unit leaders, and all the designers and architects. And like I mentioned, we have the monies now, let's make the best possible playground we can. Obviously, universally accessible.

So I would say the percentage is a lot higher within the last few years than they were, say, maybe ten years ago, big time. Big time. But I would say the percentage is definitely going to be increased as more parks are opened.

AUDIENCE: How about subway access to parks? Do you have any way that you can influence the development on maintenance?

CHRISTOPHER: For subway access to parks? Meaning can we construct a subway entrance in a park?

AUDIENCE: Can you make sure that the subway has an elevator, like, if someone is going to Rockaway, they have to go to Flatbush, and then the Q35.

CHRISTOPHER: I've had trouble before, especially if it's broken, so that's MTA, so that doesn't necessarily fall into our purview. But we would hope that more stations are made accessible, but as I mentioned, it comes down to budgeting. I'm sure putting an elevator in a station is very expensive. I'm sure it can be done, it just comes down to dollars.

But yeah, that would be a — I think that would be two separate —

AUDIENCE: I'm just wondering if you can crack a whip!

CHRISTOPHER: Well, I can't necessarily, but we do have the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities who oversees a number of the disabled consumers' concerns and try to make sure that on the government side, we understand it, as well, so that we can try to make sure that the public is accommodated. Our Commissioner Victor Calise does a very good with that. I'm sure he's in a current lawsuit that I can't speak of because I'm a city employee, even if he's state funded, still, that's an ongoing lawsuit, I believe.

But yeah, I can't pull any strings with that. I wish I could because as a person with a disability, I have come into the station where an elevator would be handy at a certain station versus taking a bus to an elevator. It happens. But the thing I'm thankful for is that New York City does have elevators that are in use when working.

And, obviously, I've used them to travel around the city. So I would say — but I don't have any pull — I'm sorry.

SHAWN: Thomas had a question on this side.

THOMAS: I had a question, too, for the older parks, one of the prioritizations for 20-25 years, hasn't been updated. If the community had an interest in advocating for a specific park, what's the most effective way to communicate with the city?

CHRISTOPHER: I would say send a letter to the mayor. 311, send a letter to the mayor through mayoral correspondence. As city employees, we get those letter all the time whether it's a complaint, or a comment, or a request. But I believe at the end of the mayor's term, I believe he reached out to the communities, and I believe our Commissioner, who was a planner himself, I believe we reached out to the communities to see — and basically looking at our books and saying, okay, when was the last time these parks were reconstructed.

So I'm sure we've provided a level of access on our side for the mayor to choose but with the Community Parks Initiative, I think it's just a great idea because you gotta think when the parks were first created, it was to put in urban neighborhoods so that the kids didn't have to play in the streets as it were, but go to playgrounds, and have a nice safe environment to play in. So with our recreation side, the Community Parks Initiative, we're trying to get them a level of programming that they can have in the summer.

So that they can have that park that's being reconstructed, and usually a reconstruction in a park takes anywhere from two years, sometimes more. I don't think people realize the level of approvals that a park or playground has to go through. And I would say if we rush it — if you rush anything, what do you get? Something like that not really favorable, something that looks rushed.

So I'm not saying that our playgrounds can be done like this, or can't be done like this, but we make sure that we get them designed and constructed as soon as possible. But yeah, I would say they did look back at a template and say, and which parks have been redesigned for a number of years. And as I mentioned before, even for the CPI parks, we went to the communities and had scope meetings and said, what would you like to see in this playground, what would you like to see in this park and it's great because it gives the designers framework to say, okay, this percentage of people said think, okay, we want this, okay we want this.

How do we incorporate that into the design. And so that helps with the community design input. And obviously that gets the community something that they were in favor of. So I believe we did some research for the mayor and I'm sure there was community input but I commend him for putting monies up to improve our neighborhoods' playgrounds and parks, et cetera.

Playgrounds and parks are very important to our livelihoods.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, I was wondering if this would be tied in to the discretionary funding if that's a way to appeal to get more funding, New York City has discretionary funding. So I don't know if that's something that's possible...

CHRISTOPHER: Well, that goes for not for profit for a number of times. So they do use a number of dollars. A lot of times, I see, and you see the councilperson and you see a number of parks in a district or an area and they're putting millions of dollars here and there. You know, it's not easy but they're using their money towards parks.

So that's why they're really wanting to see the results of their monies because they're turned out, or before the next election comes because they are putting the money into the communities for the persons who obviously voted for them, or the ones that didn't vote for them. But I applaud all of them for the monies that they did put up and put into these parks. And, hopefully, like I said, they're pleased with what was done.

And for parks that maybe they might have put partial monies, and the mayor put other monies up. And it might have been a small playground. There was something recently in the playground — in the newspaper — sorry — about a park that was across the street from a nursing home. And this park — it was a small park — and it's in Queens — and it was sitting there, and there was green space but it wasn't really fully developed and the councilperson along with our Queens borough commissioner for parks worked to make it so it's almost like a respite area where, basically, you know, a person who might be going through a lot — a senior — or a person that's very ill can actually go there with their family and kind of just have an area to relax.

There's not a lot of noise. It's not a playground. It's just a lot of green space, water fountains, benches, obviously, with our companion seating. And, you know, for things like that, it doesn't necessarily have to be a big, glamorous playground or park.

Sometimes it could be something like a small community garden that maybe takes a come hundred thousand dollars to enact, but that comes from local councilpersons. So they do use it wisely.

AUDIENCE: I was just thinking in some of those parks, they could put in plans that could — that have, you know, for the individuals that are visually impaired, they can actually touch the plants. It's tactile, it's very fragrant.

CHRISTOPHER: I'll go back to the slide. We actually do have that. We do have that in a number of of our parks.

AUDIENCE: Sensory play.

CHRISTOPHER: That's for children with developmental delays, or children on the autism spectrum who are the brightest kids, you know? They have a level of disability and sometimes people think that because of what they present, they're not, you know, comprehending what's going on, but from the programs that we work in on our recreation centers, I'm dealing with a number of district-75 schools, et cetera, these children are so bright and you just have to give them a resource.

You just have to give them somewhere where they can actually be in tune with their abilities, not necessarily their disability because sometimes they're left out of the mix, especially children with developmental disabilities, or delays, especially children on the autism spectrum. You know, ten, 15 years ago, people weren't talking about autism as they are now because there's a lot more children that are being diagnosed and we need to provide resources for them so that they can play along with other children and go to our parks and I've had our designers take that account, as well, especially with the ground-level features.

Smelling the different fragrances on our playgrounds, and things of that nature. We have a level of responsibility to children with various disabilities. So we definitely include that, especially the scope meeting, if a family comes and says, hey, we have a number of children with this disability, or this level of disability in our neighborhood, our designers take that into account in trying to accommodate that in their design. So as I mentioned, you're going to see a lot of pretty cool parks coming out in a couple of years, I can guarantee that.

SHAWN: That touched on another question that I had — so you've been talking a lot about parks and the equipment and the designs of them, but what kind of programs do you have for people with disabilities within the park system?

CHRISTOPHER: Perfect. We have our adaptive sports and that's within our recreation center, and so that's what I'm part of, and I also have a gentleman that helps me, Rudalfo Rivera, who goes above and beyond to provide access for programming. So we have adult day programs for children who are out of the school system, because they have Medicaid, they need things to do in the daytime while their families are at work. So they generally get with programs that are able to bus them around and van them to different areas of recreation for them to, you know, keep their minds moving and not keep them idle.

So we have a number of computer programs that we — in our recreation centers — that we have programming where they can come in and work on our computers and do different types of programming there. We have number of recreation programs in our rec centers that are catered to persons with disabilities. We have a number of adaptive sports that we play as well as teams. So our adaptive sports, obviously, adaptive sports are sports made for persons with disabilities to play a sport but they might be a wheelchair user, or have limited mobility.

So we have a number of our teams, the New York Mets, Yankees, Jets, Giants, Rangers, they all have teams, and they travel around the country playing other professionally-sponsored teams. And so, for example, we have our New York Roller Mix that was number one in the country for basketball but I believe this year they lost to Dallas Mavericks sponsored team which sucks because we were pretty good. But we have a number of teams in our recreation centers, but definitely our computer labs, we have a number of individuals with disabilities who use our computers and we have programming on them for them to use.

So we try to do as much as we can, within our recreation centers, and, as well, outside of our recreation centers. A lot of times, we have these programs that come into our play spaces for children with disabilities, and sometimes adults. And we hope to have more community response for persons with disabilities to our summer sports experiences, meaning that we do recruit a number of children from our recreation interests that live in the local neighborhood and bring them to the parks to play.

We obviously bus them out to the parks and these are children without disabilities but what we would like to do is get more inclusion from persons with disabilities, especially developmental disabilities and autism to participate in these programs. We actually do training for our summer sports experience staff to show them what do you do if you have a person with various disabilities come to your summer camp, or come to your summer sports experience, you know just to kind of give them that experience of what to do if a child with autism is having spasms, or a tantrum because there's so much noise and they can't take the noise, how do you calm that child down?

You know, those are very important things to keep kids safe. So we try to teach our staff that, as well, if they come into that situation but we would like to have more inclusion for children, teens, and adults with disabilities to participate in our programs. So hopefully this gets out to them and they say, hey, send us a 311 response, hey, we have a group of kids with autism, how do we get them to participate in your summer programs, that would be great, that would be awesome because that's what our staff is doing in the summer, and every summer afterwards.

AUDIENCE: I had another question — so to disseminate that information, is that something that's posted on websites, or is it circulated via newsletter, you know, to actually inform?

CHRISTOPHER: Well, we do have a section for accessibility on our website. It lists a lot of programming that's going on catered to disability sports and we also have another one that lists all of the current events that are going on — not necessarily sports related — but just events. It could be movie nights in the parks. We have so many things going on in the summer.

You know, outdoor summer ballets. We have a lot of swim programs in our pools. All of our pools have an ADA lift so if a person does have limited mobility, everyone can access our pools. Every pool has a pool lift — a working pool lift — and we make sure of that, because we would never want someone who needs help getting into a pool not be able to get into a pool.

And say they take a paratransit there, Access-A-Ride, the Access-A-Ride in New York City is going to take them there, and let's say the pool lift isn't working, so that means that the person is there for three hours — no, no. That's not a good experience.

AUDIENCE: You don't want that call.

CHRISTOPHER: I don't want that call. So what I've done, as well as Commissioner Calise when he was in my role, was to make sure that we had the proper lift that can withstand the weight and heat, and we have ones that are just using the pressure of a water hose, and that works the best and we've had persons with disabilities up to 300 pounds on that hydraulic system and it works. So we'll go with what works, but it's trial and error.

AUDIENCE: I know you have tech centers in the parks, right? Where they teach computer stuff.

CHRISTOPHER: We do that in our parks. We have nature labs, as well. But tech outside, I'm sure there might be a park or...

AUDIENCE: I know when I go to the Computer Science NYC Meetup, they have people from Parks that are promoting these tech centers. I've never been to one.

CHRISTOPHER: Sure. We have them in our recreation centers. I'm not sure if we have them outdoors. But we have them on a lot of our rec centers, we have computer labs, and fully accessible labs with tons of programming on our computers, Macs as well as PCs.

So that's probably what they were doing. We do have some playgrounds with Wi-Fi. We do have rec centers that do have Wi-Fi. So if you kind of want to listen to music while working out using our Wi-Fi system, you can do that, as well.

So we are getting up to a level of technology where it's making it better —

AUDIENCE: That's a whole nother aspect of access.

CHRISTOPHER: Yeah, but it's an important level of access, you know, and we try to, like we mentioned before, we try to be cutting edge, we try to raise the bar. So you think, well, this is a New York City Parks and Recreation Center, what can they offer me? I'm not going to say names, I can go to this place, this place, and this place. And you would be surprised what you can do at these centers in New York City.

I encourage you to go to your local recreation center and check it out for the price that you're paying for membership — you can't beat it, and it hasn't access to indoor pools year round, any indoor pool in the city. Now, obviously, our outdoor pools are free. But our rec centers, that's a great bargain, I would definitely say. Any more questions?

SHAWN: I think we maybe have time for one more question.

CHRISTOPHER: Wow, time flies. But this has been a great group. This has been awesome. [ Applause ]

SHAWN: Thank you for coming out and thank you to thoughtbot for having us, and thank you to Jolly for the video, and SSB BART, and thank you, Stanley for captioning this.

CHRISTOPHER: All right, thanks, guys. It would be [email protected] if you need to reach me by phone, (646) 632-7344 And you see any other park or playground in any other state, please let me know and say, hey, Chris, can you guys top this? So thank you guys, please contact me if you have any questions. Thank you.

[ Applause ]