Accessibility NYC Meetup Recap: An Evening With Victor Calise, NYC Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities

So I'm Victor Calise. Like Game of Thrones. I'm the Father of Dragons. I have two teenage daughters at home.

So I'm really a Calise. I'm gonna try to audio describe everything. We've got our cool CART person here. She's awesome.

Can really keep up with me. Except for the technology tonight. It's not as fast, which I heard. So we have a slide up here, a bunch of words, it says accessible NYC, and a cover that says accessible NYC.

And what is accessible NYC? Accessible NYC is the state of persons with disabilities throughout New York City. There are 928,000 people with disabilities, and we have to have a way to be able to provide for that. And what we do is we've been around since 1972.

We've never held ourselves accountable, and we have now! And the seven pillars of Accessible NYC are transportation, employment, financial empowerment, housing, health, education, and access. And we've got some of our education people here today. Right, DOE?

There we go. All right, Jonathan. What have we got next? Transportation.

One of the biggest problems in New York City, right? How many people had problems getting on the train today? There we go. How many people got on the train today?

I just don't go on the train.

VICTOR: There's a lot of people like us, meaning people in wheelchairs, that can't get on that train. And it's a big problem. So we have to find a way to figure out how to make our transportation system accessible. So we have two slides that are up right now.

The top of it says subway accessibility. To the left is what Long Island City used to look like. Right? If anyone's seen Long Island City, everything is just really tall buildings.

On the right is what it's starting to look like. And if you look in the background, you'll see all the high buildings that are being built on the right. But not when it originally started on the left. And you'll see right next to that elevated subway station happens to be a new building that's going up.

The argument for accessibility in subways are this: It costs too much. Right? It costs too much to build that infrastructure. Well...

If you notice that slide -- well, actually, it's on your right. Right? Yeah. It's on your right.

The slide on your right, you'll notice that that's built right next to a subway station. And we have to find a way to figure how to incentivize those developers to be able to add those elevators. And when we're talking about accessibility in the subways, we're not just talking about elevators. Although that's one of the big things that you hear.

It's really about all disabilities, in thinking about vision and hearing and cognitive disabilities, and how people with disabilities actually use that. So that's something that we're moving forward with the Fast Forward plan, with Andy Byford and the MTA. So we're looking at different ways to do that. We've also worked to include the first ever Chief of Accessibility that reports to Andy Byford, the new president.

And he happens to be a person with a disability who's advocating for the rights. Because it's really important for us to be able to do that. Ah. All right.

Accessible dispatch. That's a slide there, with a phone that has the accessible dispatch app, and to the right is a person being pushed up into a wheelchair accessible vehicle. There are 13,000 cabs. By the year 2020, 50% of those cabs will be accessible for people with disabilities.

That's a lot of work that our office did. It's a way to really streamline our transportation system. And we realized that it's a five-Borough system. And that's why we set up accessible dispatch.

And accessible dispatch lets people with any disability throughout the five Boroughs to be able to get a taxi. We're really proud of this, because it's really about one New York City, and that's what the Mayor says all the time. It's not just one Borough. Because accessible taxis only existed in Manhattan, but it doesn't anymore.

We've... Do you have any... What's the next slide? Yeah.

That's good. So go back. So... What we've done is we took those for-hire vehicles.

I won't say the companies, because it's a four-letter word. But we've made sure that we've worked to make them accessible, so the city's taken a strong stance on that. We put a percentage of rides on there. But they've agreed to increase the number of vehicles, cut down wait times, have a central dispatch, and really provide data to the City of New York on accessible vehicles.

We're really excited about that. We went a step further, the City Council and the Mayor's Office, and we put a cap on the for-hire vehicles. So that means for one year, these for-hire vehicle companies cannot put any new vehicles on the street until we study the situation of what we need to do. What's interesting about that is that cap is only a cap on vehicles, but not on wheelchair accessible vehicles.

They could put 100,000 to a million wheelchair accessible vehicles on the street today. But the question is: Will they do it? That's the question. Now...

There are over 100,000 of those for-hire vehicles on the street. And only 179 at this point in time are accessible. So there's a disparity. Right?

When we're talking about equality, we need it to be for everyone. And we're talking about accessibility in those vehicles. It's about for vision, making sure that there's captioning on all of that, and being able -- for all the pay features. And accessible vehicles, hearing loops inside these vehicles, so we're really talking about the totality of accessibility.

For those populations. Accessible pedestrian signals. That's what it says on the screen. To the left, you'll see the accessible pedestrian signal, and on the right is a person with a disability walking across the street with a white cane.

Now, this accessible pedestrian signal is quite interesting. So you've heard them on the streets, beeping. Everyone? Right?

For those who can hear? They vibrate too. Now, the interesting thing is... I'm just gonna throw out a number.

It costs about $30,000 to put a full intersection, to get those done. Technology can serve that. Technology has a way to streamline this. And we've been working to kind of figure that out.

We put some things together. With the City of Barcelona, to have a competition, to see what would happen. And we're working through some of that information right now. Walei, you want to talk a little bit about that?

Sure. So it was last year...

VICTOR: To your left.

Hi, guys. So last year, the DOT, Mayor's Office for CTO, and MOPD, we were part of this call for innovations. And we put it out -- this sort of problem -- it was like a tech challenge. And our problem is, you know, how could we provide an affordable, an accessible solution for blind folks to cross the street safely and efficiently?

And with 23rd Street and 7th Avenue being a site for a pilot. So in November of 2017, at least when we put out the call, and took submissions, we kind of went through the submissions, and we had a final round. We have not yet announced the winners, I believe. Or I have not been told.

So... There is sort of a little bit... It's taken a little longer than expected. The project will be happening, hopefully, in the next year.

I don't know. But there will be testing of this pilot. I think the pilot will be in that corner for about a year. And so we looked at different things.

Whether it's wearables or something in the infrastructure, or an app, but we wanted to pick something -- we had a panel of judges. I was actually one of them. And the criteria that we looked at were not just affordability, but also tech skills. You wanted something that you didn't have to have a smartphone to use.

Right? So it could have an app that you could use. But it also needs to be sort of low cost, or something that you don't have to have high-tech skills to use. So it could be like a fob that we provide folks, and then they just bring it with them.

They have it in their pocket, and then it activates whatever the call signal -- when they get close to it. Something like that. So that's the kinds of things that we're looking at, for this call for innovations.

VICTOR: Thank you, Walei.

Image description. Connected vehicle pilot. There is an overhead image of an intersection full of cars, buses, and traffic signals. Each one of these components -- that's the cars, the buses, and the traffic signals -- have yellow circles emitting from each one of them, and they're actually overlapping each other, as if they're communicating.

VICTOR: So the Department of Transportation. I saw this today. I've been working with the Department of Transportation on this as well. They have a pilot program that they're gonna be launching, and they're gonna have these connected vehicles that are gonna start with taxis and buses.

So it's vehicle to vehicle. Then there's vehicle to infrastructure. And then person to infrastructure and person to vehicle. Now, Walei talked about wearables, right?

We've done some really interesting things in the streets of New York City. And in some ways, it's been great. And that's basically bike lanes. And then we have those protected bike lanes.

What we did is we really put people with visual disabilities at a disadvantage. Because what we did is we took the bike lane, and we pushed the cars out, and so when a person with a visual disability crosses the street, they actually listen to that car. Now what we did is put a buffer in between. And now that buffer is a quiet bike.

That is there. So that person with a visual disability now has to go out further to the street, and listen for the cars. Not necessarily sure when they have to actually cross that street. And if they do cross that street, they don't hear that quiet bike coming by.

Right? You fix one problem. You add another. So this is really for us to kind of think about differently.

How do we ensure that people with visual disabilities can cross that street in the most effective way? Well, 50% of car accidents happen with left turns and right turns. It's all in turns. So they're all problems with that.

Now, this person, this person to vehicle, with some type of app or wearables that we've been talking about -- we've got wearables on our arms, right? We're thinking about wearables that you can actually wear and embed into your clothes, that can connect with the vehicles. That can connect with the person. That can connect with the smart wheelchair.

That can connect with the bike. To make sure that people with disabilities can cross the streets effectively. I think this is really something that's really interesting. Things that we've been talking about.

The reality of vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure is happening. And then the next phase that we're pushing really hard is person to vehicle, person to infrastructure. That's really important.

Employment.

VICTOR: Okay. You want to talk about the slide?

NYC at Work logo. There's a red apple with the text NYC At Work, and it's overlaid a cityscape with the Empire State Building. Which is right there.

VICTOR: If you're not seen, you're not heard. The unemployment rate for people with disabilities in New York City is... Well, the national employment rate is about... 4%.

For people with disabilities from the working age of 18 to 65, the unemployment rate... Sorry... Is 79%. 79% of people with disabilities from the working age of 18 to 65 are jobless.

79%. It's pretty awful. Right? If we're not seen in the workplace, we're not heard.

And if we're not seen in the workplace, we can't provide for accessibility in data. In accessibility for apps, for the future of our technology. Or accessibility in our buildings. Or changing the perception of people with disabilities.

It's what they can do that matters, not what they can't do. So we really need to employ people with disabilities. We move forward with this initiative called NYC At Work. It's a public-private partnership to employ people with disabilities throughout New York City.

We've built the business development council for people who are interested in hiring people with disabilities. We've built the supply side, to really say... You know what? We can find the talent.

Right? Because that's the thing. We can't find talented people with disabilities? That's not true!

You haven't been looking! So we're vetting people. We have over 1200 jobs that are available right now. Actually, 800 jobs.

1200 people that are on our job board. So we really... We're matching people with jobs. And we're getting them ready for the job.

Not getting them ready for the interview. It's very different. Right? People have gotten people ready for interviews and they get the job and they don't know what to do.

And no one wants to hire a person that's not qualified to do the job. It's qualified individuals for real work with real pay and real advancement. And that's what NYC At Work is about. Oh yeah.

Okay. Bullet points. You can read it, Jonathan.

The first public-private partnership for employment for New Yorkers with disabilities. Building a sustainable pipeline of qualified talent to meet the needs of businesses in high-growth industry jobs across NYC. This is a business-led, business-driven initiative. So on our next slide, we have our Business Development Council.

On the screen in the very center is the NYC At Work logo. This represents the employment initiative the Commissioner just spoke of. And surrounding it are about 50 or so logos of businesses that partner with our office. I could read all of them...

(laughter) Or I won't. And just say they're great logos. Ones that jump out -- there are some City logos, NYC information, telecommunication technology, department of social services, MetLife, CitiBank, Brooklyn Roasting Company, because who doesn't love coffee? MTA, New York City Transit, CUNY, and the list goes on and on and on.

VICTOR: Thank you, John. Business-led, business-driven. Generally in the past it's been people with disabilities sitting in a room with their service providers, complaining that they didn't have jobs, and what was missing from that was businesses. So businesses are at the table, businesses are the ones telling people with disabilities what they actually need, what they actually want, so it's really important for us to push this initiative in every sector as well.

And our next slide, more logos. This is our collection of schools and service providers that we work with. You'll see every CUNY school is represented. And a few private schools as well.

Such as NYU, Columbia University, St. John's University, Pace University, and so on.

VICTOR: So this is really cool. So what do we hear from the business development council? What do you actually really need? And the big buzzword is cybersecurity.

Everyone needs cybersecurity. All right. That's great. So let's figure out what we can do to get people with disabilities in cybersecurity.

So what we've done is we've built... What did we call it? We call it a training academy. Thank you, Jonathan.

So this training academy is the first of its kind in the country. What we're doing is we're taking people with disabilities into this academy, and for six months, we are training them to be trained in cybersecurity, and the great part about it -- it's powered by Cisco. It's a Cisco-powered course. Six months of training.

They're gonna go through this training, and when they're done, they're gonna come out with a certificate, and the certificate is gonna say they're qualified for cybersecurity. We're gonna put them in a 3-month to 6-month internship and look to get them a job right after that. Some of the people in our business development council have funded this. It's the first of its kind.

We have 16 people now. We're looking at the second cohort now to start after. And we're really excited about what's happening, because this is really a train-to-place model. These train-to-place models have worked in other sectors.

And we want to see how we can do this for people with disabilities, and increase that to include other sectors as well.

On the projector here, we have: The Ability Cisco Academy, powered by NYC At Work. This is the logo that we use. And underneath is a website URL. ICDNYC.org/eligibility-it-academy.

So if you're interested in learning more or potentially being in the cohort that the Commissioner mentioned, you can go to that URL. Financial empowerment slide.

VICTOR: Want to take it away?

Sure. Empowered NYC. Free financial counseling for people with disabilities, empoweredcities.com. Fully take it away?

Or is that taking it away?

VICTOR: I'll jump into it. Thank you. So one other problem for people with disabilities -- not all, but some -- is that they rely on their Medicaid. Or Medicare.

And what the problem happens to be is: If they work, they lose their Medicaid and Medicare benefits. Big problem. And it's detrimental to a person with a disability. So they're faced with a choice at some point in their life.

Do I go back to work? And make real money? But if I lose my job, I'm gonna lose my benefits? Or do I take my $700/month from Social Security and live in poverty for the rest of my life?

And maintain my health insurance? It's a big issue! People don't realize that they can actually buy into their Medicaid. Get 1619b with Social Security, and actually keep their Medicaid, and work.

So that's just one part. People don't realize that they can actually put money into an Able Account, and be able to save money, and it doesn't reflect -- it doesn't go against their Medicaid/Medicare. But they don't know this. So that's why we really built something -- a financial empowerment program, Powered by Citi with an I, and they've really come in and funded this initiative, where we're gonna have counselors that are gonna be able to talk people through financial empowerment, what it's like for the bank, what it's like for the Able Act, how you can keep 1619b.

This is really powerful. And the problem is: People with disabilities go to different places, and everyone tells them something different. We really need to streamline that. And every counselor needs to be trained the same exact way.

And we're going to meet people where they're at. And be able to provide this service, so we can get people back on their feet, tied with NYC At Work. It's all tied together. Because...

Housing! Jonathan, want to describe the slide? And then I'll go into this.

I'll describe the slide. Project Open House. There are two images next to the text Project Open House. One is an accessible ramp, and the other is an accessible bathroom.

Specifically a shower, in which a bathtub has been removed and replaced with a shower. Underneath, the website URL reads: nyc.gov/poh. As in Project Open House.

VICTOR: So Project Open House is a program that we run. If you meet income requirements, we can come into your house and actually make remediations and ensure that we can get all accessibility, whatever that may be. Is it fire alarms, because you're a person who is deaf or hard of hearing, and can't hear them when they go off, but you can see when they are on? Or it could be changing doorknobs, it can be expanding bathrooms, and ramps.

Whatever that may be. Now, one thing that is important is that we really have to think about housing. And the Mayor is committed to increasing and maintaining 300,000 units of affordable housing. And with that, 7% of that housing is set aside for people with disabilities.

7% of the apartments are set aside for people with disabilities. 5% for mobility. 2% for hearing and vision. Now, the problem is that you need to make $24,000 or more.

And what did I say before? People with disabilities live in poverty. So the only way to fix this is jobs. Be able to have jobs and be financially empowered to understand how you can tap into that affordable housing.

You can go and find out about that affordable housing through Housing Connect, and sign up for it, if you're a person with a disability. Get on the waiting list or the lottery list. They don't go as fast as the other apartments, because A, people don't meet the income requirements, and B, people don't know about them. So we haven't gotten rid of all those apartments.

So if you're a person with a disability that meet those income requirements, feel free to apply to it.

Health.

VICTOR: It's important to keep people healthy. Jonathan?

NYC Well. On the right, there's an image of a person holding a cell phone, just a close-up on their hands. And I think it's kind of pixelated. You can't read it.

But it says: Thank you for contacting NYC Well. What would you like to talk about today? And on the left is... There's text.

It says text WELL to 65173. Call 1-888-NYC Well or chat online at Nycwell.cityofnewwork.us

VICTOR: We want to keep people healthy. We're working with the greater New York hospital association to really talk about effective communication for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. So we're gonna be holding some symposiums to that. Because just imagine if you're deaf and you have an emergency, and you go to the emergency room, and they're not able to provide a Sign Language interpreter, what happens?

It's just not right. We need to be able to inform our hospitals what effective communication is. Some of them that have plans, some of them do well, some of them don't do well, but I'm pretty sure if you asked a person who is deaf or hard of hearing, you would hear a whole different thing. So we're working on that.

We want to hold another symposium about women's health care, and how a woman with a disability has access to a GYN table that's accessible to them. Or a mammogram machine. Mammography machine that's accessible for them. So these are really important issues on health.

And that's what we're doing.

Education. Building a culture of accessibility. There are two images. On the left is a screenshot of the New York City 311 website.

Full of options that you can interface with, such as make a complaint, check status, make a payment, my neighborhood, get the NYC 311 app, and a whole bunch of other resources, regarding different aspects of city resources. Or city life and services. On the right is the back of Walei Sabry's head. (laughter) As he is using his computer, listening to headphones.

VICTOR: Actually, he's got a better hair cut there.

Ohhhhhhh!

VICTOR: Walei, I said I was gonna say it! It was a joke we were talking about before. So the culture of accessibility. We've done so much to really think about accessibility, digital accessibility, and Walei is the first chief accessibility officer...

I know. Walei always makes fun, because I put his title up higher and higher every time. But he really is the face of accessibility in New York City. Through New York City government, talking about accessibility on so many different levels, from accessible websites, every link, every picture, every attachment -- he's gonna talk more about it, but Walei really is just one of the guys that are just leading the initiatives on a broad scale for accessibility.

Of course, he has a partner, and that's Jonathan. Jonathan is another guy that is really big on accessibility, and the people that are here with me tonight -- without them, we're not able to push New York City to be accessible in digital accessibility. So Walei, you want to take over this? Jonathan, you want to chime in?

I'm gonna lead the next slide to you guys.

So why don't you talk about what you do?

So as a digital accessibility coordinator, my job is... Well, just to give the scope of what we're working with -- just websites, right? We have 50 Agencies. We have about 300 websites.

And we have about 50,000 pages associated with those 300 websites. So not a lot of work for one person, right? (laughter) So my job is to basically sort of... Help city agencies get up to speed with accessibility.

I can do that in many ways. I can test their website and work with them on improving the accessibility. Right? And John helps out.

So I'm more of an expert, obviously, in screen reader testing and keyboard access. Right? Jonathan helps me with the visual stuff like color contrast, fonts, as well as the visual focus of the keyboard focus. So we do that.

We also do... We wrote a report on the state of the website accessibility in NYC in 2017. It was mandated by Local Law 26, which was passed in 2016. And that law actually requires New York City to make a reasonable effort to make its websites accessible.

And it also requires to write a report on the compliance of our websites. And the first one was published in 2017. And every two years from then, July 2017, there needs to be a new report submitted to City Council. So that's some of the work that we're doing, as well as we're getting out there and creating guides.

We created lots of guides, like -- whether it's for accessible web design or accessible documents, accessible videos, accessible social media guide, and we circulate those internally in the city. Some of them are public, and we're hoping to finalize more and more of them. Actually, pretty much a lot of them are available online, in public. Just not on the MOPD website.

I'll let you guys know why in a minute. Along with these guides, we do a lot of trainings. I heard somebody was here from DOE, right? We did a training for you guys a long time ago.

Somebody was here from Vimeo? We did like three trainings for Vimeo! (laughter) So we mainly focus on city agencies, but we also train community partners. Anybody who is interested in accessibility, because if we are helping make a more accessible experience for New Yorkers, then I feel like I'm doing my job.

So yeah. That's what we do. Part of that is awareness raising. So next slide is...

Is the 2018 inclusion and accessibility conference. So there is an image, which once again has Walei, but this time it's the front of him. He's looking pretty good. Sporting a white cane, black pants, black mobility cane, and he is speaking to a crowd of people!

All right. So to celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day this year, we held a conference. We were working with a small city budget, so we kept it internal. Our conference was focused on digital accessibility and inclusion.

So focused on topics of web design or electronic documents or video accessibility. Accessibility for older adults. But also on topics of representation. In promotional and outreach.

So it wasn't just accessibility focused. But mostly it was accessibility focused. Because it was a small-scale, we only -- or a small budget -- we only invited city employees this time. And we had about 150 city employees show up.

And that's a great number for us to train, right? And just more of the same training, the information that we've been pushing out. But a lot of new people, a lot of old people, that are just having that same information reinforced. And as part of that conference, we actually had an awesome presenter, Thomas Logan.

Who was kind enough to bless us with his time and his knowledge and wisdom. And we also released a digital accessibility tool kit, which we can probably follow up with the link for the conference page. So we made actually a website for the conference, and we released a digital tool kit that includes accessible web design, documents, videos, social media, inclusive terminology, you can download those in accessible PDF formats on that website.

We can follow up with Stacy or Thomas or whoever, with the link to that website, so that you guys can have it as well.

VICTOR: I'm constantly pushing Jonathan and Walei to think outside the box. Figure out ways that we can just affect city government to be able to do the right thing. Because we have to, by law.

One last thing. We would love to -- and this was the first accessibility conference. We would love to make it an annual thing. And we would love to also open it up to the public.

So we would love to be able to partner up with anybody who is interested in putting on a digital accessibility conference for city employees and the public.

Speaking of that, I have this handy-dandy clipboard.

VICTOR: Wow, we've got props and everything.

Some blank spaces, that say name and email and phone number if you're interested. So this is one event that we had, as Walei mentioned, there's another on the way in terms of digital accessibility and trying to make it more public. But also, as you'll hear later on in the presentation, we're working on a hackathon right now. Pretty much if you want to stay up to date on what we're working on, kind of an extension of this presentation and more, feel free to sign up.

I'm just gonna pass this along and keep this train rolling.

VICTOR: So it's really important for us to be able to add accessibility to everything the city has to offer. People with disabilities fight an infrastructure right now that was built in the late 1800s and the early 1900s, and it's not accessible to us. And right now what's happening is there's an infrastructure that's being built, and it's the digital infrastructure. And it needs to be accessible for people with disabilities so we aren't fighting two different tracks.

And that's why accessibility is important and the City of New York has to lead that way. And that's all the work that Walei and his partner Jonathan are doing in crime right now, to make things happen. So thank you, Jonathan, for everything you guys do.

Access. (applause)

VICTOR: So one of the things that we realized is that people with disabilities need to be represented throughout every city agency. To ensure accessibility is happening. So there was a local law that came out, and it said such: That a disability service facilitator needs to be in agencies across the city. And what these disability service facilitators actually do, which -- we have 46 of them -- they work in every city agency to ensure that they are meeting ADA codes and requirements.

That they are providing programs and services. And that their infrastructure that's being built is accessible for people with disabilities. And we don't follow the ADA codes and standards. Well, we do...

But what we do is we look to go over and beyond in every way that we can. We have design guidelines that come out that talk about going over and beyond ADA codes and standards. And that's the only way to affect government, is to be going over and beyond. Because the ADA codes and standards are minimal.

We need to be able to go over and beyond that, and we look at ways in design and in lots of different ways as expanding floor area, is it increasing access to digital access, is it making websites accessible? It's just every way that we can go over and beyond, we are pushing really, really hard to do that.

And I'd just like to note specifically that this image in the background here -- so this is disability service facilitators. There's just a few examples of some of our disability service facilitators. NYC Parks, human rights, fire department, police department, HRA, but of course, that list goes on and on and on. I think we have upwards of 50?

VICTOR: 36, but over 50 agencies.

It's available at nyc.gov/dsf. This will include the name of the DSF, their phone number, and their email. But in the background here, we have what seems to be a lecture going on. So this image is actually from our DSF quarterly meeting, in which we share best practices, as the Commissioner was saying, making sure we're on top of everything possible.

Standing and presenting is Michael Edwards, going over best practices for ADA compliance during a two-day training for disability service facilitators. Trainings like this happen frequently, and we want to share our information with the rest of the country, so actually last year, in Pittsburgh, we attended -- and a handful of our DSFs -- the national ADA Symposium. And Walei, you talked there, and we hope to go back and continue sharing learning best practices.

We want to be on the cusp as much as possible.

VICTOR: Because we need the most...

Accessible city in the world?

VICTOR: No! We need... We need the most educated people, and we need to be able to educate them and give them all the tools to succeed. Because if we don't give them the tools to succeed, we end up with an inaccessible city.

ASL Direct. So the ASL Direct image is a person sitting at a desk signing to a webcam at a computer. The text is: Point to point communication in American Sign Language,: nyc.gov/ASL, and video phone: 646-889-2626. So within the deaf or hard of hearing community, there's a big barrier to access for information.

What a lot of people who don't know is that: Specifically for somebody who is born Deaf, there's a difficulty with reading comprehension. ASL is their first language. English is their second language. Therefore they might have a significantly lower reading comprehension or they might not be able to read at all.

This is important, because when we think about: How do we get access to information? We check our phones. We look at things on websites. We read, et cetera.

So it can be difficult to have information. It can be difficult to get an answer. So what our office has done is created ASL Direct, which is a direct video conferencing service, so somebody who is Deaf can take out their phone and video call our office directly, and be connected with a member of our staff who is fluent in ASL, who can directly provide services. Now, you might be thinking...

Well, doesn't that already kind of exist with relay? Kind of. But this is direct. You're not speaking to another person to speak to a person.

We have actually taken the ASL, the fluency needed, and added more personality. Added more personableness to the experience. You can contact somebody directly. You know, Monday through Friday, reasonable times, 9 to 5.

So ASL Direct is currently available in our office, and we're looking to expand it into other agencies as well. You know, so no relay. No TTY. Just direct communication.

So you can go to nyc.gov/ASL and be connected, or you can call our ASL specialist. Her name is Noelle. Very nice. 646-889-2626

VICTOR: We're always looking to increase accessibility for everyone. So Jonathan explain the slide? He's so much better than I am.

I do this 60 times a day with social media and everything, so it's like bam. Link NYC. Two images on the left. There's a Link NYC kiosk, it has a giant screen that says hello, world!

And on the right is a close-up on the keyboard and more of the physical tactile materials of it. It says: 911 with a big red button with Braille underneath, audio, with an audio jack, with Braille underneath, a numeric keypad, and there's also USB power, in which somebody is plugging into, to charge their phone.

VICTOR: How many people have seen these on the streets? The majority of hands have gone up. So the interesting thing about this is we knew this was coming, and what we did is we strategically placed ourselves to be the people that wrote the design guidelines for that. Talking about captioning on there.

Talked about high color contrast. Talked about VoiceOver. Heights for people with physical disabilities. So we were really smart in being able to write the design guidelines, and put all of this in the request for proposal.

So when it came to being built, it had accessibility built in it. Now, the interesting part about the accessibility about this -- we told them what to do. And we gave them everything. And the day they opened it...

They didn't turn it on.

Oh, no!

VICTOR: What do you think happened next? Yep, they got sued! (laughter) Next slide, please? (laughter) So we've done a lot in there.

Jonathan, you want to talk about this?

Text to 911. Two images. The left is a focus of a screen with a keypad, dialing 911, and on the right is a person who is texting or using their phone.

VICTOR: Text to 911. We hopefully soon will be the first big city in the United States to be able to add text to 911. Pretty awesome. Pretty awesome.

We're really, really excited about this. Lots of different things that we have to do, though, to get there. We are taking an analog system, and mixing it with a digital system. Right?

Because this is not next generation 911. This is pre-next generation 911. So being able to tie that together, get a culture of organizations to be able to work together, to be able to understand this, is something that we've been committed to do. This is the way that we're moving forward.

The City of New York gets it, understands that it's not only for people who are Deaf, but it's people who have speech disabilities, it's people in domestic violence that will be using this. Text to 911 will be a life saver, and New York City will be one of the first biggest cities in the United States to be able to push this forward. We can open some questions in a little bit. I'm running out of time.

So I kind of want to move here. Inclusive innovation for smarter cities. Jonathan, you want to talk about this? This is tomorrow.

Yeah. This is tomorrow. It is tomorrow. So this is just an example of some of the work that we're doing.

Inclusive innovation for smarter cities. "smart city" gets thrown around a lot. So we want to take it up to smarter city. As we're discussing technology, as we're discussing ways that we can make innovative solutions for people and kind of create an atmosphere in which we can use technology to do everything that we dreamed about, whether it be access to information or flying cars or what have you, as the Commissioner mentioned before, a lot of times people don't care about disability.

People don't think about disability. So as we're planning for the future, we need to make sure that disability is included. And the best way to do that is to make sure there is inclusion within these thinktanks, within these tech locations. Within all of these.

So we hope tomorrow at Grand Central Tech, to detail both the social benefits and business opportunities for New York resulting in inclusive innovation. So innovation for everybody! Innovation for people who use wheelchairs, people who are deaf or hard of hearing, people who are blind and low vision, people who are little people like myself. We want to catalog accessibility standards, universal design principles and usability concepts that every urban incubator and accelerator should be aware of.

And we want to define the most significant factors that can ensure inclusion is a part of the innovation process in New York.

So in plain language, we're holding a focus group with experts tomorrow, collaborating with G3ICT and World Enable, and we have folks coming from government sector, we have folks coming from the private sector, people with disabilities, all sorts of experts. And we're basically having this round table that's basically a focus group of some sort. And what we're hoping to get out of that is basically to get a bunch of information and then release a tool kit for the world on how to create accessible smart cities.

VICTOR: Because really, again, we've got to build that infrastructure to include people with disabilities. Jonathan? What's next?

And then social hackathon. So on the right is an image of Google. And on the left is a few bullet points. So we are hoping -- we are in the midst of planning a social hackathon.

We want to bring together a community of people... Such as yourselves... Who are interested in using technology to create a more inclusive environment. Trying not to be too buzzwordy.

I realize I went off pretty intensely, which is why you're like... Hey! So we want to identify multiple problems being faced within the disability community, and then in an 8-hour hackathon, split into diverse groups of people from different backgrounds, different disabilities, different perspectives, and come up with technological solutions to these issues that people with disabilities are facing. The winning team of the day will get to pitch their idea to Google developers.

This is still in development. If you'd like to be involved, sign that sheet that's going around. So as we finalize details and more information comes out, you'll be in the know. That's it.

VICTOR: All right. So... Jonathan, you want to read this last slide?

Yeah, sure. New York City Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities logo. Just a list of contact information. Voice phone, 212-788-2856.

Video phone for ASL, 646-889-2626. Our website is nyc.gov/disability, and our social media is @nycdisabilities.

VICTOR: So this is all the small things that we're doing to make New York City the most accessible city in the world. We have to. It's imperative. We can't do this in a bubble.

That's why we're here talking to you. We need all your help and all of you are committed to accessibility, and I'll tell you just as I said that, I got chills. Because I'm excited to see that we're not alone in this movement. So thank you, each and every one of you.

I have a few minutes to answer some questions. I do have another event to get to, unfortunately. So I'll spend as much time as I can. So if there's any questions, please let's go.

Let's make it quick! (applause) Questions? You had a question first?

I did have a question. I just learned a ton that I had not even thought about, before. And with the 911 -- when people -- it seems to me it's not just the technology. It's also about hiring people who are more sensitive.

VICTOR: Yeah, it's a bunch of different things. So A, understanding what text to 911 is. It's a very complicated system to get to. I'm not gonna go into the details.

But there's a big reliable infrastructure now. Right? That we have to make sure is reliable and digital. That's number one.

And then when it gets to the dispatcher, that text has to be deciphered. Right? So on a call, you can get that. Right?

But in a text, you might not be able to get that, because remember, Jonathan talked about some people -- English is their second language. Right? People who are deaf, their reading level isn't so high, so that might come through differently. So we've come through scenarios of what other things might look like, so we can really prep the dispatchers and all that.

So there's a lot of training mechanisms. We hired people who are Deaf to be able to push this stuff through, to really get that consultant part of it in there. And really talk about what this would look like. So there's a lot of work that goes into it.

It's not like... Oh, text to 911. It's there. It's not.

We have to do a lot of preparation, because this is life safety, and we've got to get it right.

I'm doing a research project on Link NYC and accessibility. Do you think Link NYC can be rethought as something more like a platform, a resource for people with disability? And incorporate kind of technologists who talk about accessible dispatch and video phone?

VICTOR: Great. Thank you for saying that. Because I did forget to talk about that. Yes.

So what I envision Link to look like -- remember, we were talking about that pilot program that the Department of Transportation is doing right now. Right? I really think of Link as that convener. The Link that's gonna be able to talk -- remember, we talked about vehicle to infrastructure.

And people to infrastructure. That's where I really think Link plays that way, that communicator, that buzz thing, that's gonna help people cross that street, that's gonna bounce off there to the wearable, that's gonna tell of their safety. Absolutely. We are looking to add video relay for people who are Deaf now.

We're planning to work to make sure that text to 911 can exist on there, and we're hoping to get American Sign Language Direct on there as well.

I can also speak to some of the work we've done to make it accessible too. So the last we heard, they just didn't turn on the accessibility features. And then they got sued. So three weeks later, they turned on the accessibility features.

And so it's an Android-based device. So we got TalkBack, the screen reader, we worked with them, as well as NFB and other advocacy groups. And we tested, we told them what was working, what wasn't, and we also gave them suggestions. So if you don't like using a touch screen, you can actually use the keypad to navigate.

You can just use 6 to go forward and 4 to go backwards and 5 to activate. Right? Kind of like a screen reader keyboard access. So we...

And that's something they customized for us. Right? Then there is the 911 button. When you pressed it, it used to just have a visual message on the screen.

They recorded audio for it. Press the button one more time to call 911. And also saying: If this is not an emergency, you can get arrested. So it also gives you instructions on how to cancel, in case you pressed it by incident.

There's also the Vonage app that you can use to make calls, and we told them it needed to be accessible, and they worked with Vonage, actually, to make that app accessible to TalkBack.

VICTOR: The reality is: Whatever Link does, all the consultation we gave them is gonna make their product more desirable somewhere else. But we're leading the way. We don't care about that. It's all about accessibility.

Can you give direct contact information for how to access the services about working?

VICTOR: I'll work with you. Jonathan will get your contact information. We'll have someone get it directly to you. No problem.

When you talk about accessibility in these big organizations, do you talk about how making something screen readable on the web actually makes it easier for them to garnish their Google results and things like that, how it will benefit them beyond accessibility? Because I feel like when I talk to people about accessibility, I don't say like -- oh, you have to make it accessible. I try to talk to them around how it'll benefit them more than it'll benefit us.

Because they could honestly -- I feel like most people aren't getting it yet. So you want to see how... You want to sell it to them how they can win out of it. Not like you have to make it accessible.

You want to show them how they can win.

Right. And so... Yeah. So when I work with city agencies, let's say, I try to use the carrot approach first.

So I might be like... Hey, I noticed that your website could be better for accessibility. Let me help you do that. While complying with the law.

And reaching a broader audience. Right? Reaching more New Yorkers. That doesn't work, I maybe try a few more approaches before I say...

Well, you could get sued. You're breaking the law! Right? But generally speaking, yeah.

We definitely...

What's the last one?

No, that's the last one.

VICTOR: No, then you come to me!

I have before! And so we try to use the positive approach first. I will throw in things like that. Yeah.

As you make your website more accessible, adding more alt text to images, and things like that, it yields better Google search results. And it just makes a better website in general. It's a better design. More people can use it.

We're a city of immigrants. It's not just people with disabilities as well.

VICTOR: And one of the things we have to be really cognizant of is the data deficit for people with disabilities. Right? Remember, I mentioned there's 928,000 people with disabilities. We know that number is bigger.

Right? We know that number is a million and a half, maybe close to 2 million. But people are scared to self-disclose. And when we do that, it's harder to show what the market share is.

Right? It's harder to build that information out for people. I mean, we're large! We're large numbers of people with disabilities.

So it's detrimental to us, when we don't have appropriate data. Because it really doesn't reflect who we are and what we use and how we use it and how much capital we can bring to an organization. So it really is upon us, people with disabilities, to really talk about and disclose our disabilities and be loud and proud about them, and request and demand and insist that it's there. Because when we don't, it's detrimental to us.

Because nothing gets built. Right? There's that old saying... You know, the idea is: Nothing without us, period.

Period. I have to go. (applause) I'm going to leave the very capable Jonathan and Walei to answer the rest of your questions, if you do have them. They can answer.

Honestly, I may be the Commissioner, but without them, at my office, I don't exist. And my staff is really part of who really drives this forward. Within New York City. So thank you, everyone.

Thank you for what you do. It's really important that we have you. Because technically, you're an extension of MOPD. Have a good night!

(applause)

Guys, I think we're gonna just wrap up and have the rest of our conversations just be kind of amongst each other. Because we've had excellent captioning. I'm blocking it tonight. I would like to say thank you so much to Mirabai Knight.

From White Coat Captioning. If you watched our captions, they're so accurate. So amazing. So thank you to Jonathan and Walei also for being here.

This was a master class in explaining the images and actually giving very good audio descriptions. We will share this as an illustration for other presenters that come here to learn from that. This was our best described presentation ever. We will have about 30 minutes, probably, to socialize here, afterwards.

I just want to say... We already have our December and January Meetups planned, which is a milestone for us. (applause) So if you go on to the meetup website, you can find our December and January events, and we'll also be putting out the newsletter again. And if you ever have events or things you want to let the community know about, if you message those onto the board, we can put those into the newsletter as well, and help distribute that out more broadly.

But thank you for such great attendance, and we look forward to conversations after this.

Walei, did you want to talk about that job opening?

So we recently connected with a company called Seamless Docs, and they're really jazzed about accessibility. They currently have a job posting for an internship, but also an internship... They're calling it ADA coordinator, but it's basically a digital accessibility coordinator, and there will be a full-time job posted soon. So if anybody is interested in looking for work right now, the internship is available.

Feel free to forward me your resume, and I will pass it on to them.

And lastly, thanks again to Thoughtbot for being our host here tonight. (applause) Providing the space, and also thank you to Level Access for giving us funding to be able to have captions and Sign Language interpretation at other events. Thank you, guys! (applause)