Disability Commission Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

The open meeting log requires that I notify the public that this meeting is being recorded. Therefore, please be aware that an audio and visual recording of this meeting is being made by Boston City TV, a part of the City of Boston office of cable communications. And it is being broadcast on Xfinity channel 26, RCN channel 13, Fios channel nine six two, as well as live streamed on YouTube where the recording will continue to exist. And with that, I will hand it over to our board chair, Terry Boyd.

Thank you very much, Andrea, and welcome everyone to the April Disability Commission Advisory Board meeting. I'm calling this meeting to order, which is their first item on the agenda. And next, we'll move on to introductions. If you could please, when when introducing yourself, if you could please give yourself just a a brief description of yourself to take kinda help the interpreters, that would be great. I'll start.

My name is Jerry Boyd. I am a white male with salt and pepper hair. More more salt and pepper.

I've been

hopeful at this point. And I live in West Roxbury. And let's kick it off. I heard dulcet tones, the laughter of Carl. So if you could introduce yourself, Carl.

So my name is Carl Richardson. Richardson. I am a Caucasian male, middle aged with salt and pepper hair, and I am wearing a marine a maroon, excuse me, polo shirt. And I can I identify as a deaf blind individual, and I live in Brighton, Massachusetts?

Olivia, if you could go next, please.

Sure. My name's Olivia Richard. I'm the vice chair of the advisory board, and I am a middle aged white woman wearing glasses, a black hoodie, and headphones.

Paul, if you could go next, please.

Hi. My name is Paul Karen. I'm also a middle aged white male with salt and pepper hair, wearing a white polo shirt. I live in the West End Of Boston. Serve on the executive committee of the advisory board, which is an honor and a privilege, and I serve as a mental health advocate.

Paulette, if you could go next, please.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Paulette Durrett. I live in the Manhattan section of Boston. I'm a older black woman with gray hair and black glasses and a gray, police.

And Elizabeth Dean Clower, if you could go next, please. Elizabeth, are you are you able to unmute? Doesn't appear oh, wait a minute. I think she she is unmuted now. Yes. Go ahead, Elizabeth, if you can. The floor is yours.

Yes. Great. Thank you. Well, I'm Elizabeth Dean Flower. I live in Dorchester. I'm an advisory board member. And in keeping with a theme you're often hearing, I too have salt and pepper hair. I'm a white woman, and I'm a power wheelchair user.

And, Wesley, could you go next, please?

Yes. Hello. My name is Wes Ireland. I'm a board member. I live in the North End. I use American Sign Language. I have two female interpreters who will be interpreting for me. And the visual description, I am a white man, red reddish brown beard, and a green polo shirt. Thank you.

And, Tara, could you go next, please?

Hi, everyone. My name is Tara Lynn Sothard. I am the secretary of the executive board. I am a middle aged white woman who's a little person using a power wheelchair, and I'm wearing glasses and a white t shirt. And I'm in the rock Roxbury area.

And Juan Carlos, could you go next, please? Juan Carlos?

Yes. Hi. Could I unmute? Thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is Juan Carlos. I live in Boston South End. I'm a Hispanic male member of the community. Use a power wheelchair because of a spinal cord injury.

Great. Let's see. I'm not seeing any other member of the advisory board that I may have missed. Did I do you see any any person, Andrea, maybe that I'm missing?

This is Andrea. I don't see other any other appointed members of the board. I don't know if you want commissioner Mikosh to introduce herself, but no other appointed members that I see.

Sure. Why don't we have, commissioner, if you're available, why don't we have you introduce yourself, please?

Thanks, Jerry. Hi, everyone. My name is Kristen McCosh, and I'm the disability commissioner for the city of Boston. I am a woman with blonde hair and glasses, and city hall is in my background on the screen. And I also use a power wheelchair.

Great. Thanks for that. Thanks for those introductions, everyone. Next on the agenda is the approval of the March minutes. Has an has everyone had a chance to review those? And if so, do I have anyone that would, like to make a motion to approve the minutes?

Mister Carl, I make a motion to approve the minutes as as, given to us.

Any seconds?

This is followed by

second. Great. Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll move to a vote. All in favor, say aye or raise your hands. Aye. Aye. Any nays? The motion passes unanimously. Next, we'll have a a presentation from the office of language and communications access with Jennifer.

I'm not sure how to pronounce your middle name. Your last name is listed as long ago. So if you could introduce yourself again, Jennifer, that would be great.

Thank you so much. Hi, everyone. My name is Jennifer Vivar Wong, and I am a Hispanic woman with dark hair, almost 30, and I am wearing a black sweater, and my background is just a white wall. Thank you for having me here today. I will go ahead and start presenting my screen. And give me just a second. I know I want to just put for the record, I'm not very tech savvy. Although, I should be. So bear with me. And I apologize for my puppy that might bark in the background.

He is a tiny little dog. So my apologies. So thank you for the introduction. I am the director of language and communications access here for the city. I have met some of you in passing at different events.

We have worked closely together, but it's great to formally be in this space with you all. So an introduction about our office. We are kind of like the baby that came out of the creation of immigrant advancement and the disability commission. So combined, we work to ensure that all constituents of Boston, regardless of language or communication ability, receive the full spectrum of services offered by the city and that they're able to participate in all that the city has to offer. I wanna give a little bit of history just so that you know how we got here.

In 2016, there was a communications access ordinance that passed to create our programs. So we were a little program under the office of neighborhood services. As the years went by, specifically during the pandemic, we were able to, partner with, great allies in the city council who advocated for the ordinance to be revamped. And so in 2020, that work started in 2021. The ordinance was amended and signed, and we became an actual standing office, which was incredibly great, specifically during that time during COVID where there was a lot of need for language and communications access to be intertwined in everything that was coming out of that city during that time.

And then as you see here on the screen, there is a slide that will show that in 2021, we had three FTEs. And then in 2022, we grew to five full time employees. And currently, we have around 12 full time employees within our office. The accommodations that we provide are focused mainly on interpretation, interpretation, translation, assistive listening devices, assistive assistive technology, and now audio and video accessibility, which can include things like subtitles, captioning, audio description, voiceovers, audio files, and much more. So who we serve?

We serve folks who identify as speaking a language other than English, and persons with disabilities. And we work very closely with the disability commission to put together data which tells us the amount of residents within Boston who either self identify as having a disability or self identify as speaking another language other than English at home. And we use that to inform the way that we are providing accessibility throughout the city. I wanna put on the screen just an overview of our org chart. And so on the screen right now, it shows that our we are a full team of 12 folks and the different kind of groups within our office focused around administration and finance.

We hold a lot of the funds related to providing accessibility for the city. We also have what is called the compliance team which is the team that works hand in hand with departments to guide their accessibility plans when it comes to events or documents or programs and services. And then we have our research and data team, which also houses our in house translator. And they work really on kind of forward thinking, being in the know of new advances within the field, and helping us move in the right direction there. For example, things like AI or other kind of initiatives that happen in the language and communication active state.

And then we have our training and development team, which their main mission is to basically take everything that we want to change, implement, etcetera, and train the entire city on the new direction or how to acquire accommodations, how to provide interpreters, how to use our on demand services. That is their main task. And who is involved? So it's our staff. We have liaisons, which I will get into in the next slide.

Of course, the departments and their own staff, and that is who we work very closely with to create systemic change within the city. But most importantly, we work with Boston community, individuals, CBOs, agencies, ethnic media as strategic partners in this work. In addition to that, we also have other external partners such as quasi agencies like the Boston Public Health Commission, the Boston Housing Authority, and other folks that we meet on a monthly basis to align language and communications access across city. We work very closely with our state partners, specifically MBTA and the R and B, as well as the city council. And then I also listed here our vendors, which are the folks who provide the city with the accommodations that we need on a day to day basis.

And that includes our vendors that provide interpretation services, translation services, ASL and cart services, and other organizations that help us provide cultural sensitive translation relief. So going back to the liaison piece, we're very special in the sense where there is a member of every department who is designated as kind of like the point person for language and communications access. They are usually deputy directors, chiefs of staff, or managers, and they help guide the department, inform them on updates for from our office. But we function a little similar to hospitals where we set the vision that everyone in the city is responsible for providing accommodation. And that we would train the entire city to do so.

So that it's something that is a universe a systemic change throughout the city. And then within our own department, we have what are called specialists, and that is for a full time member within our office who has been assigned buckets of departments, and they meet with the department's liaison and other team members with the ultimate goal of creating what we call departmental language and communications access plans, which I will get to later on. That is them. And Jerry, I apologize if I am taking too too long. Don't be afraid to ping me.

But departmental plan. So what is the departmental plan? That is and they're up on our website and I'll go to it after. But department of plan is basically a commitment from the city to offer accessible services. And that will include vital documents, reoccurring programs, essential essential things like ensuring plate forms are accessible.

And one of the big things that we did at the beginning of this work is that we did partner with our partners, for example, at WorkInc to help us with ensuring that all the departments of plans are screen reader accessible as well throughout the process. And when we posted them, they would be accessible in that set. I'm gonna go ahead and open up this link, and hopefully, let me know if you can see it. Oh, it might not load. Me just Andrea, do you still see my presentation or is it not showing at

all? Yes. Can.

I'm going to skip that for now, but this is basically what, the slides go back. This is what on the screen, you will see a picture of our website, and it just says multilingual departments of plans, and then it has these drop downs that show all the different languages. So if you click on those drop downs, it'll show you all the departments of plans for each department, and it would say Boston Police, Boston Fire in each language, and you'll be able to read those departments of plans in those designated languages. Languages. I apologize that I can't up get the website open.

That is one of our biggest kind of accomplishments, and we're hoping to post another round of departments of plans in the new fiscal year, so after July. The other incredible partnership work that we do on a regular basis is work with the visibility commission as I was mentioning to post disability demographic data reports which gives this city information that comes from the ACA, the census, and gives it's not the most perfect data. There is a lot of room for improvement, but it does give information around the neighborhoods and the population within that neighborhood that have self identified as having a disability, and we help use this tool with departments to create plans for accessible event. Another kind of big highlight that I wanted to share here as well Andrea,

can you see this screen? Okay. Yeah.

This is Andrea. Yeah. I see the highlights general slide that talks about emergency alerts. Thank

you. So this so as I was mentioning, one of the biggest kind of highlights that other other highlights that we have and I'm sharing some of the snippets from the departments of plans that are posted. But within those departments of plans, you'll see some of the big strides that we've made. For example, for emergency alerts, we have those that go out in 11 languages. They're sent in multiple platforms, so they can be sent via text and via email. There are also periods of time where we

hospital.

In We Department to ensure that when they're doing in bed shaker installations that they are done with ASL interpretation that is then via handheld devices. Boston Fire has gone ahead and purchased these iPads themselves so they can make sure that everybody who does this work within the fire department is able to carry this out with interpretation as needed. And then I'll mention one more and then I'll continue. We also work to ensure that the city hall on the go trucks that move around the city, helping folks. For example, signing signing up for parking sticker or anything else that they have iPads as well that have demand interpretation services that can pull up both spoken languages and ASL interpreters.

Moving forward, I wanted to also continue kind of zoning into some of the other big projects that we have.

One of

the biggest projects that we have currently active is our welcoming city project. And what we did is that on the City Hall 1st, 2nd, And 3rd Floor, that is mainly where a lot of the teller windows are that provide services. So we went ahead and partnered with all the departments there. We came in. We ensured that, and I apologize.

The picture that's up on the screen is a little bit hard to decipher, but it basically shows a teller window, and it shows two pieces of paper that are against the window. And that has a notice of rights that are translated in different languages and a a card a stand up card that lists the languages in language and in English for folks to be able to point to as needed or refer to as needed to identify the language that they need interpretation on. And so, basically, every teller window downstairs has an iPad that is equipped with our on demand interpretation service and is set up in this sense so that they have posted rights and the ability to have a language card next to them. I'm gonna start moving a little quicker. Apologies.

I think I'm going over time. The other device that we're going to be switching into in the next few months is what we call our translate live equipment. So this translate live is something that is used at the Boston Public Schools. So we're kind of switching over from our iPads to this equipment to ensure alignment. So when parents go to the Boston Public Schools and they see these devices that are meant for on demand interpretation, they can do speech to text in any language.

They can do even much more functionality such as background, color changes, text text sizes, fonts. Other accessibility features are included. We wanna make sure that they whatever is experienced at the schools is experienced at the cities. So this is the picture on the screen shows very much like an iPad, and next to it, you'll see also our notice of rights, for, all languages and our language identification cards as well. So that is what we'll be transitioning to for the teller windows.

Another exciting thing that we have, the iPads will not go away though. They will be repurposed, and often what we do is we share these iPads with a lot of departments throughout the city. So, let departments do either long term rentals or short term rentals and they'll often take these two events that are things like resource fairs or the picture that is up on the slideshow right now is for one of the vaccine clinics that BPHC was hosting at the city, and we were able to give them an iPad for walk ins that they did not know if we need either spoken language or sign language interpretation. And then for this last one, but I I think we'll wrap up here, the state of the city. Just wanted to give some highlights from this year.

We had both communications access and language access. This is one of the most the third year that we've done this, so we increased accessibility. We had a certified deaf interpreter on stage. We had ASL interpreters on the ground as well supporting constituents with wayfinding. We had invitations that included request for accommodations in different languages.

We had a CART provider on screen, and we also had our iPad as well, and we had printed copies of the program. Language access, we had 28 interpreters that did both the speech interpretation live and also supported a way finding for our multi lingual constituents, and we sent out multi lingual invitations as well. There are pictures on the screen that just show different pieces of the state of the city. It shows the invites. It shows our interpreters with paddles, loop paddles, and vest on, as well as the picture of our CDI on the screen with some of our faith leaders.

I'm going to Jerry, do I have one more minute?

Sure. Sure. I mean, this is your, like, like, your last slide. Correct?

So Yes. Thank you. Okay. So this is the so the last thing I wanna focus on is our complaint process. So on our website, there is a section called compliance process, and you will find a link to our language access complaint form as well as our departmental plan.

And this is very different from the ADA grievance process that has that is under the disability commission but we filter any complaints regarding you know, requests of communications or spoken language, accommodations that were requested, filter any feedback around the quality of that interpretation or translation and be able to take that in, work with our vendors, and improve the system. We also work very closely with the disability commission. So if anything does kind of fall within both of our spaces, we work together to tackle those complaints together. I know that there is a lot that I just mentioned, and I know that there is a lot that we can still improve on. So I'll end with, you know, thank you for having me here, and I'm looking forward to hearing your your thoughts and understanding what more we could be doing.

And thank you so much.

Jennifer, thank you so much for your presentation, and you did great. You did a great job, you you know, in terms of your your time and everything. I I I really appreciate that, and I appreciate you trying to trying to streamline as much as possible. I do see that we have, you know, several members that wanna ask questions. I guess I'll kick things off.

Jerry, can I can I jump in for a minute just to Oh, add something before we get to questions?

Thank you. Go ahead. Go ahead, commissioner.

Hi, everybody. It's commissioner Rakash. I just wanted to thank Jennifer and her team. Jennifer works very closely with Kai, our, accessibility and inclusion training specialist, and Colleen, who is our, liaison to the, office of language access and communications, as well as Andrea, who really is the tech person and the go to person for all these accommodations. They work incredibly hard to ensure accessible meetings, whether in public or, you know, throughout the city, things like that.

But I do wanna also, give a shout out to Mayor Wu, who was, the original author of the ordinance when she was a city councilor. And I worked on that way back in, 2012, 2013. And finally, I wanna give a shout out to our former chief of staff, Jessica Duhnen, who was an incredible partner in this work. She is fluent in ASL. A lot of you remember Jessica, I'm sure. And she really did a lot to advance this program as well. So thanks to Jennifer and her staff and to my staff for all their work in this area. Thanks, Jerry.

Great. And and let me also thank thank Jennifer and her staff and the commissioner and her staff on on advance for advancing this this work very, very much. And, again, I really we really appreciate your presentation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I I think I saw on your org chart, you you listed a lot of different you know, what the specific m t FTEs do. Do you not have a full time ASL interpreter?

Have you ever had funding for that? Or or correct me if I'm wrong on that. Or is that something that you would consider consider advertising for or maybe trying to solicit some some funds for?

Thank you for the question. Hi. This is Jennifer. So, yes. And I'll also defer to commissioner and Andrea if they would like to add anything as well but we did explore this.

I know that the disability commission we had a position that was open. I think for a year or plus, and I what we kinda struggled with was filling that position. So we're happy to relook at it together. I know there was a time period where we also thought about putting that type of position under our office. And, you know, I just wanna say that I am happy to take everything that you all think would be helpful and run with it and advocate for it. And I know that this is an important thing for us as well. Andrea and Commission, I don't know if you wanna add anything.

Hi. This is Andrea. Yeah. I will just add that we've moved away from that after having tried for two budget cycles to to hire someone directly. Part of the challenge is building a enough work because interpreters don't want to, you know, work part time for the city and and part time sort of twiddling their thumbs when they know there's interpretation needs going unfilled.

So trying to find the right balance of, you know, enough work that's predictable. A lot of the mayor's press conferences end up being last minute, you know, when a truck rolls over in Chinatown. So if we do like a part time, that person might not be available when the mayor needs them, but we didn't really have, you know, forty hours a week of interpretation needs that we had come up with at the time. So still open to it, but I think we've we've cobbled together a system that, you know, let me know if if there are needs going unfilled at city events for sure. But my understanding is we've been able to fill pretty much every request, every mayoral press conference for a while, so it kind of backed off the idea of an interpreter full time.

And I see Wes added in the chat that the cost of living in Boston, the requirement that someone live in the city to work for the city does create a lot of challenges when recruiting and we never did come to a solution for whether we could get a waiver for the ASL interpreter role. So

Okay. Great. Thank you for you know, I I I think this is Jerry speaking. I think it's still a good thing to try to explore. I guess my a follow-up question is, so, like, the interpreters at the mayor's may mayor's event events or press conferences, those are contracted employees? Those are people that they just find through through the partners partners that Jennifer mentioned or or or other city partnerships?

Hi. Is Jennifer. That is correct. So it's a combination of our partners interpreting contract. We also have another vendor under that contract named Karash.

But we also if that that is not cannot be fulfilled by those two vendors, we also have worked very closely in the past with MCDHH. When we were implementing contracts, we did try to work with MCDHH directly, but they were because of other factors, we were unable to solidify a contract with them directly to provide ASL interpretation for the city. So what we did do together is we got together and, you know, explored, especially also with the disability commission, you know, the interpreters that were trusted within our Boston community, and we're able to pull a list together which we actually share with our current vendors, partners, garage so that they can kinda see what are the interpreters that are often being worked with in Boston and making sure that we can continue those partnerships with those.

Can I just add a note on that as well? Jennifer talked about a lot of work on systemic accessibility, and we've really pushed that, ASL as, a requirement for major press press conferences. Andrea has a meeting with the press team every other week to go over what press conferences are coming up and which ones really they need to get ASL for. So it's really that systemic push that we've managed to accomplish really well, I believe. Then it doesn't put the work on us to get ASL for every department or on Jennifer's team, but really it lies with the individual offices that are hosting meetings to get get the ASL. So great work systemically on that.

Great. Thank you both, and thanks for the clarification. It was it's great to it's great when we see the interpretation, especially, you know, at events like the state of the city and whatnot, and how it's really kind of embedded in in everything the city does now, and and that's a reflection of the of of the great work from Jennifer's team and and the commissioner and and her team as well. So thank you for that. I see we have several questions. Carl, you've had your hand raised. Go ahead, please.

First of all, Jennifer, I wanna commend you and your staff for your language access. I think overall, you guys do a great job. Secondly, I wanted to ask you about you mentioned audio description earlier, and that is something you do. I'm wondering if you could elaborate on how and when do you use audio description. And I also wanted to mention to you as a potential resource that I am the chair of the audio description project for the American Council for the Blind and consult with Netflix and Amazon on video. So I have quite a bit of background and work quite often in the field of audio description if you ever need a resource to reach out to. But if you could just elaborate on what you're doing for audio description for the blind, I would appreciate it.

Thank you so much, Carl. And I don't know if you remember, we met briefly last year. So it's wonderful to be reconnected here again. And thank you so much. I will definitely be reaching out to you regarding, you know, this area of work. And thank you for asking. To be very transparent, this is something new that is going to be that is in our contracts this year. And so this something that we are still working on to expand and explore. I would need to check. So, the way that our office functions is that we get a lot of requests from different departments.

So, I would need to track down within our records. How many departments have been providing certain different accommodations specifically in this space and I can get that back to you. I apologize that I don't have that in front of me. But I do believe most likely it would be very very limited. I think this is an area that we can frankly explore how to expand. I think right now, the focus over the past few years has been very language justice. I think where we wanna get to oh, sorry. Let me correct myself. Is language access communication access? And what we're trying to get to is this basic language justice.

And that I think is where we could definitely use more support.

Great. Thanks for your question, Carl. And, Wes, I saw that you had a question. Go ahead.

Hi. Yes. Jennifer, thank you for your presentation. It was great it's great to see Boston doing such tremendous work and doing such a great job with access for language diversity within the city to bring everybody up to par with accessibility in Boston. I have a question for you For the service provision of interpreters and translators, who tends to pay for that? Is that your department or the individual departments that ask and request the services?

Hi, well Wesley. This is Jennifer, and I am also glad that we're reconnecting in this space. I know that we interact a lot with yourself and your wife via email and work for interpretations on the request that you all have. So it's great to connect here in this space. To answer your question, technically, the majority of it all falls under our budget.

So roughly around I I know this figure. So roughly around last year, we had around 880 requests for accommodations from our office that includes communication access and language access. And I think we've roughly have spent around 9, maybe $8,800 something. Maybe I'm not the best figures person on accommodation to date. Last year, my apologies, last fiscal year.

Our so, yes, it is a centralized budget, but to be very honest, we also have ARPA funds, which are used to fund accommodations for ARPA funded projects.

This is the interpreter. Are you saying ARBA, a r b a?

Thank you. ARPA, a r p as in, hag.

Thank you.

And it stands for, the American Rescue Plan. I don't know what the other Are there any you? Plan act. Yes. And then some departments often might have a little additional funding either through grants or through other federal or other miscellaneous funds that they have. And oftentimes, if for any reason we cannot cover accommodation, they will use their own funding as well.

Okay. Thank you. I do have an additional question.

Go

ahead. Your office of language and communication access, does it have any involvement with the Boston Public Library for their ESOL programs for English for non English speakers, other languages?

That is a great question. I guess it depends on how you define involvement. Involvement. So we are involved in the sense of if they need lawyers translated, we'll translate them. Or if they that is most likely the majority. In terms of the actual planning, implementing, executing, that is all under the BPL. We don't we actually don't right now do any work related to English as a second language learning. That often sits within the libraries, the schools, or the office of workforce empowerment.

Okay. Thank you. The reason I ask, I know that other public libraries such as Cambridge, Brookline offer free ASL classes to the community, and that's sponsored by the disability commissions and the libraries and the office of language and communication access. I am hoping to see that type of program offered within the city of Boston to the community members for free ASL courses. And it would work for other languages as well.

For example, individuals within the community want to learn Cambodian or Vietnamese. It would be wonderful if we could offer those languages on a free basis to the community.

Thank you so much. I will take that idea and circle back. There was a period in time where we worked with Deaf Inc, where we were kind of tossing around the idea of having ASL classes within the city. And I think it was mainly due to their and and we have had some in the past too for, like, particular folks who wanted to learn, but we haven't really expanded on that. And I think what we'll do is we'll connect with disability commission and see how we can maybe move this idea forward because I think that is a great idea. So thank you so much.

Thank you, Jennifer, for your time.

Yes, Jennifer. And and thank you for your time and your resources and your and your good work. Again, this is Jerry, speaking. And thank you, to the board members for such thoughtful questions and and comments and ideas. We just heard, you know, a great idea.

Hopefully hopefully, that can can bear bear fruit. Thank you, Westwood, for bringing that that forward. We are gonna move on in the agenda now. Before before I just take a few minutes to give a a brief report, I did notice during Jennifer's presentation that that we had a couple of more advisory board members join us, and I wanted to give them an opportunity to to introduce themselves. If you could, when called upon, if you could just give a brief visual description and also just say what neighborhood you're from and and and whatnot, that would be great.

Why don't we start with Charlie? It's good to see you.

Thanks. Thanks, Jerry. Appreciate it. Hopefully, to start with background noise in the general area. But my name is Charlie Kim. I'm a resident of the North End. I'm wearing black glasses, have black hair, and wearing a gray hoodie. And I'm on the advisory board representing parents and caregivers of disabled with disabilities.

I should be there. Thank you. And Richard, we saw we I saw that you joined us during the last presentation. If you could just take a few moments to introduce yourself,

please.

Sure. Thanks, Jerry. Richard Blusky. I live in Back Bay. I'm hearing impaired. I'm wearing a brown jacket, blue shirt, and I guess I have to confess somewhat gray hair.

Great. That was a was a trend that we noticed, you know, earlier in our descriptions. Most of us had to talk about our our salt and pepper here. So some of us more salt than than pepper at at this point, Richard. Definitely.

Thank you. Next on the agenda, we'll move just briefly to to the chair's report, my report. What I'm just gonna really highlight and and echo is is what's come what came out on Friday, the Disability Commission electronic newsletter highlighted that that April is is fair housing month, which and and I know that we all realize that that housing and access to accessible housing is a key issue for all residents of of the commonwealth in Boston, but particularly folks with disabilities. We we all know that the housing stock, needs improvement, and there isn't enough accessible housing out there. So so it's very, very important, and I'm I'm glad that that that the newsletter highlighted several offices in the city that work on on accessible housing.

And and I'm glad that the commissioner I wasn't aware that that the commissioner and her staff put together together a video on how to access how to access accessible housing and some resources available. Maybe, Andrea, maybe you could put that put that access to that video in the in the chat so that folks who who don't get the the e news letter yet can, you know, can avail themselves of some of those some of those resources. I quite recently, over the, you know, last fall or so, I availed myself of of the Boston Home Center and was part of the lottery process to get an get an accessible wheelchair accessible condo unit in the city. So I went through I went through the whole process in terms of taking a first time homebuyer class and and, you know, just really, you know, went step by step through the process just to educate myself on on on what it would be like. And I gathered all my all my financial paperwork and and, you know, saw whether I would be income eligible.

It's an opportunity that I didn't end up go going, you know, fully forward with with you know, I decided that renting was still the best of the best option for me, but it really opened my eyes in terms of the resources available to to residents of the city. And I know that that it's been a really, really big push of the current administration to increase housing stock, increase affordability, and and increase accessible housing. So so it was good to go through that process. You you know, even though, again, I decided not to go fully forward with it, but just to just to see what the process what the process would be like, and I would encourage any and all, you know, folks here and and listening at home and watching at home to to to go to the Boston Home Center website available available through boston.gov and avail themselves of of, you you know, the resources resources available to folks to to see about, oh, hey. You know, maybe maybe maybe purchasing my own home, you know you know, it can be a reality for me.

Before I decided to go through through the process, I didn't think I you know, I thought of at my age or or a particular situation, I didn't think that was a real possibility. But lo and behold, there are so many programs available. There are so many programs available through the city that that, you know, it really was possible, you know, to for me to pursue, and I'm glad I'm glad that I I did that. Just another resource I wanted to I wanted to share with folks, and I know on the city website, they have a a metro list that lists, you know, a lot of accessible housing both in the city and and in other towns in the Commonwealth. But another resource is the mass access housing registry.

I don't know if people were aware of that, but I just thought I would share that, that for folks. They have both home home ownership opportunities as well as rental opportunities. So so just some resources. Again, you know, maybe Andrea could pop some in the in the chat. But, this highlights this highlights really the good good resource that the that the disability commission's e newsletter is.

It's got a lot of very useful information every month. So if people aren't on there, you know, again, maybe, Andrew, you could share either in the chat or in person just now how folks could sign up for that because I you know you know, I I found out about that home ownership opportunity through the through the newsletter actually. So anyway. So so that that's my report, and we'll move on to the commissioner's report.

Thanks, Jerry. And just so you know, Andrea did put a link to the webinar on housing and also to Metro List and a link to sign up for our e newsletter. I want to give a shout out to our constituent service specialist, Chris Morowski, who does a newsletter every week. He does a great job, so I do hope everybody's signed up for it. And just two points on Jerry's report before I get into my slides.

First of all, we did the webinar on housing as part of our work last year on National Disability Employment Awareness Month in October. We held four live webinars that we recorded. And we know that employment involves a lot of things, and one of the things is housing. So we did a webinar on gaining housing, and it has a lot of good resources. So I would encourage you to click on the link that Andrew posted.

And I would also encourage everybody to go to our YouTube channel. We have all our advisory board meetings posted there. But we also have a whole slate of trainings that our disability access and inclusion training specialist, Kai Kennedy, has recorded on a number of topics. And we have our National Disability Employment Awareness Month trainings there as well. So really valuable resources. And I actually clicked on it a few weeks ago, and I was very impressed with the amount of trainings we had on it. So please use that as a resource. And one of the main things that you can do to help us is spread these resources to the community. So just like Jerry said, the housing one is very helpful. I hope that you all push that out to friends, relatives, and, you know, your different email groups so that they get the information as well.

A final note on housing is that a few years ago, we established a disability housing task force. Olivia served on that with us for many years and we made a lot of good strides. And then it kind of concluded the work that it was doing. So we wrapped it up, but we're going be launching another disability housing task force in July. So stay tuned for more information on that.

And now we can go to my slides. Alrighty. So, to begin my report, I just wanted to talk a little bit about the City of Boston budget. You may have read recently that Mayor Wu submitted her budget to the city council. So, the next few weeks will be all about the city council reviewing the budget, asking questions of different departments.

Our department will be presenting our budget to the city council later in April and we did find we had a slight decrease but it won't impact impact on programming and the mayor's budget overall has a slight increase but we know that there are uncertain times federally. So, we're all trying to pay attention to that. Luckily, our department does not receive any federal funding, so we won't be impacted at all by things that happen in Washington. Although some of our colleagues may may be impacted, especially a few in the equity and inclusion cabinet, but we will be fine for now. I wanted to let you know that the Boston City Council has called for a hearing on sidewalk accessibility.

No date has been scheduled yet, but we will keep you, updated once the date is scheduled. And this would be an example of a great meeting that board members could attend and give input on just to emphasize the importance of accessible sidewalks in the city. So watch for a date on that. And Chris also posts relevant city council meetings in our email newsletter. So if you do get the newsletter, make sure you watch for relevant city council hearings.

And if you don't, please sign up after this meeting. Andrea brought this issue to my attention. It seems that court reporters right now are seeking a raise. There was an article that came out, this week because court reporters haven't gotten a raise since the nineteen eighties. And as many of you may know, court reporters are classified as court reporters, and we know they play a vital role in providing access at meetings.

So there is currently legislation proposed to support this raise. It's H1649 and s 1168. It was filed for the eighth term, and it's getting lot of advocate support on Beacon Hill. So I wanted to throw this out to the council to see if this might be something you would want to write a letter on, a letter of support, and also share with your colleagues to see if they may want to support it as well. So I will hand that off to Jerry as chair to discuss after my report.

Next slide. Okay, some department updates, just a brief of events that we have coming up. Our disability community forum is Thursday, May 8 from two to 03:30. It's at Suffolk Law School and it will also be on Zoom. We really want to encourage people with disabilities to come out in person.

We know things changed a lot after COVID, but it would be great to see each other live again and really connect with people and, you know, share our stories and our concerns and our power as a disability community. So please spread that invitation as well. We will get a flyer out to you soon about that. And then also, I had mentioned before that advisory board members may be able to participate this year when I present my annual report. And I usually report out about different categories.

So I was hoping that in the categories that you've selected as your area of interest, you might be able to talk about a certain meeting that you've attended or a meeting that happens on a regular basis or something that you know about in that area. For example, if it's housing and Olivia wants to talk about something that the VHA is doing, that would be a great time to give an example of something that the board works on. So please think about that and we will ask for RSVPs for people who are able to attend in person and those who can attend on Zoom. We also mentioned that the ADA thirty five is gonna be a group event. It's gonna be a march and rally on Wednesday, July 23 at twelve noon.

We're gonna do a flag raising at Boston City Hall Plaza, then a march to the Boston Common, and a rally at the Embrace Statue Memorial. And the City Hall Plaza piece will be led by by my office, but we're not gonna do the information tables this year. It's gonna be more of, like, a call to action to protect disability rights and protect the ADA. So we'll just do the flag raising, and hopefully, mayor will speak on City Hall Plaza. And then Bill Henning from BCIL will lead the march to the common and really rally folks to, you know, to do a call to action, whether it's to reach out to the legislators or write letters or whatever is the hot issue at the moment.

So stay tuned for flyers on that, and we hope we get a big turnout for that rally in March. There will be a meeting of organizations who would like to participate next Tuesday a week from Tuesday, April 22 at 10AM on Zoom. And if you are part of an organization, watch out for an invitation. And if you know of any invitation any organizations you'd like to be sure are included, please email me and Andrea. And then I also mentioned last month the Ped Blue project, which is a pedestrian bike lane user experience.

You may remember that Mayor Wu put a temporary pause on curbside infrastructure changes, bike lanes, and bus lanes. She did that in March, and we were able to give input on the accessibility issues related to the changes in curb use. So that was wrapped up and a report was issued to, the mayor, from what input, the public works, team found was, residents were feeling about these changes. So, we will continue to provide input from our collaboration with IHCD on the pet loop program. So, we are working with Valerie Fletcher to go out and look at bike lanes to look at what is working, what's not working to help the city create best practices in design.

And that will be happening over the next few weeks. And we're also going out with our tech who is doing a shared space project to also look at bike lane access and recommend best practices. Next slide. And just some advisory board updates briefly. I know I heard from a lot of you about your area of focus. And if any of you have have thought thought about it and want to add to yours or if you have something identified. I know Jerry is interested in transportation PCAs. Olivia housing. Tara Food Justice. And Tara, we did reach out to the Food Justice Department, and they're gonna come to a meeting soon.

Paul is a big mental health advocate. Charlie, Boston Public Schools, and you also mentioned being a parent and caretaker, so I can add that to your description. Carl has a lot of input on legislation. We thank Carl for that. Wes, I know you're interested in emerging technology and communication access, Zari health care access and accommodations.

And I'm not sure I've heard from Juan Carlos, Richard, Paulette, and Elizabeth. I if I missed an email, I'm sorry because I was away for ten days, so I may have missed an email. But if you haven't gotten back to me yet or you do know what you'd like to concentrate on, please let me know. And all this really means is that we would love it if each of you could be sort of a liaison to the communities that you are involved in the issues you've chosen. So things like attending a meeting, like if there's a fair housing meeting in April, maybe Bolivia would go and report on to the board.

We'd like you to propose presenters on your topic. Think about actions the board could take on an issue. Like, if it's something like writing a letter, maybe you could draft the letter if it's in your focus area. Invite people to attend our meetings, not only present, but actually to attend to talk about the issues. And then share information out at our monthly meetings, which is a new agenda item that we've implemented for 2025.

And then as we've also mentioned, some of our board members are transitioning off the board and we do have some people who are interested in coming on the board. We've submitted some names to Mayor Wu, and we're anxiously anticipating some new appointments coming very soon. And we'll go to the next slide. So this is some opportunities for advising board members to participate in, as well as to spread the information to community members. And I'm going to turn it over to Colleen to talk about this. She did go over them last month, but I wanna have her reiterate them because they're really great opportunities and they are still timely. People can still participate and spread the word to neighbors and colleagues and friends. Colleen, are you on?

Yep. Thanks, commissioner. I'm just gonna talk quickly about some engagement opportunities that we would love your help with. The disability outreach tour at BPL Neighborhood Branches is gonna be going on all year. You can go to our website, boston.gov/disability, and see this under our initiatives tab. You'll see all the upcoming dates which are mainly gonna be in the summer and fall months. But if you see a tour date that you'd like to come and attend or share information, please let me know. We'd love to have you at every single event. Also happening right now this month in April is the ebike incentive program. We would love your help spreading the word.

If you are a Boston resident who can use a standard bike, Applications are open right now, and they're gonna close on April 30. You can go to boston.gov/ebikes to learn all the eligibility criteria, but I'm gonna summarize Residents who are either senior, people with disabilities or chronic illnesses, or low income are eligible to apply for a standard ebike from April. If you do apply for this standard traditional ebike, you're gonna be entered into a lottery and vouchers will range between 800 and $1,500. If you are a Boston resident with a disability or chronic illness that requires an adaptive bike, it is a rolling application process. And you do apply separately, and your vouchers will cover either $2,000 or 50% of the actual bike.

All month long, they're gonna be ebike tryout events. There'll be one on April 24 in Matapan, April on City Hall Plaza, April 27 in Roxbury, and May 8 on City Hall Plaza. No matter what type of bike you want to apply for, really encourage you to come to these try and ebike events to learn more and see if this would be something that either you and your family would benefit from or someone you know in your neighborhood. Thanks, Kanish.

Thanks, Colleen. And I know that the board is always looking for action steps they can take. So, again, this is a huge action step. If you can spread the word, a lot of people with disabilities love adaptive adaptive rec. So, this is a chance to get a good bit of money towards an electric bike and I think I read a statistic that twenty percent of all the applicants last year were for people with disabilities.

So it's a huge population, whether you have an ambulatory disability, a visual disability, any type of disability and you want to try out a bike, we encourage you to go to one of the events to try out an adaptive bike. So we'll go to the next slide. And I want to turn my presentation over to Kai Kennedy, our disability access and inclusion training specialist. Kai has put together a lot of great trainings for different city departments on disability one hundred one, disability one hundred two, and as part of their training they included this link to a video that they found online. And when I was watching the video, I noticed something very special in the video.

So Kai is gonna play it, and then we'll talk about it afterwards. Kai.

Thanks, Kamesh. Yeah. I just wanted to give a little bit

more background and then with Andrea, the sharing screen, it'll it'll start the video at the agreed time slot. But this video, I found on YouTube and gives an amazing kind of history of disability rights and things that disabled folks kind of both endured and, you know, persevered through as well as rights that were, you know, earned and and by protests and things like that, the Capitol Crawl and the five zero four sit in. And so we're gonna play the video, and Andrea has the time to stop it at so that we can show our our little secret secret shout out to someone very special for the board. So, Andrea, go right ahead.

Did we hear sound? Did the sound come through?

This is Kai. I did

not hear sound. No. I don't hear any of this.

Still no?

No sound. No sound.

One second.

Sometimes when you click on screen share, you have to click a do a checkbox to share my sound?

You're exactly right, and that is what I hadn't done, which is why I stopped sharing.

Section 5 Francisco and across The United States gathered to push rally and protest to make sure that regulations enacting section five zero four of the Rehabilitation Act be put into law. Let's set the stage. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibits discrimination due to disability in any programs, agencies, or by contractors receiving federal financial support. Going on three years later, the regulations in order to enforce that law still have not been signed by Jimmy Carter. People with disabilities said, we want access to the things that other people are taking for granted.

Federal buildings, education, employment initiatives, demonstrations took place all across the nation. In San Francisco, about a 150 people led by Judy Heumann occupied the Health Education And Welfare Building.

Archival footage of protesters occupying the Hugh headquarters.

People came together in the community. There was intersectionality before the word existed. We had support from churches, unions, civil rights organizations, gay groups, elected politicians. We had the great panthers offering support. We had the black panthers providing food. Twenty eight days later, five zero four was finally signed.

Kitty Cohn giving five zero four victory speech.

Here we are over four

decades later, and that's still the longest sit in, the longest occupation of any federal building recorded in The United States Of America. Why aren't we using that as an example to say, this is what happens when communities come together? These are the changes that can occur when we stand together, roll together, sit together in solidarity. 1990. Nearly a decade after Section 5 zero four protest, the stage was set to take it to the next level.

Organizers such as Justin Dart and Yoshiko Dart met with activists in every state rallying, organizing, protesting, ready to create what will become our own landmark civil rights legislation, the Americans with Disabilities Act. No.

No. I did the pausing wrong.

No. It's okay. Well, you have a time stamp, so

We do. '19, communities come to and mark civil rights legislation, the Americans with Disabilities Act. Over 30,000 activists across the nation.

Perfect. Now, does anybody who can see the screen recognize, anyone in this photo? And I'll give a hint. This oh, I see a hand. Jerry, go ahead.

Is that Zari holding up the flag?

It sure is. It There go. Yep. Commissioner Makosh, pointed that out to me, the first time that he saw the video on one of my trainings, and I had no idea. I know Zari how I know her now. And so, yeah, commissioner Makosh pointed this out. I thought it would be a a great, you know, little cameo to show the disability advisory board here. And I I agree this is an incredible kind of just testament to how far back the advocacy of our advisory board goes even before it existed. So, Kamish, is there anything that you'd like to add?

Thanks, Kai. Just that, yeah, I've known Zari for over thirty years. We went we were together when I was a student at UMass, and Zari worked in the disability student services center, and I recognized her right away. I was like, that's Zari I knew back in the day. And I don't know if Zari's online. Is she at

the meeting today? No. Unfortunately not.

Okay. So, anyway, this link is in my slide deck, so feel free to share with others. It's about a ten, fifteen minute video, eleven minute video, so feel free to take a look at it in your own time and share it with your colleagues and groups. Thanks, Kai. And that wraps up my report. I will, close it out and send it back to Jerry.

Great. Thank you so much, commissioner. Make sure I'm not muted yet. Yep. I'm not muted. Good. Sometimes I have problems with that as we've known in the past, but I'm not muted now. And so next up on the agenda is the architectural access report with Patricia Mendez. Take it away.

Hi, everyone. Good evening. Can you

hear can you hear me? You're a touch quiet, Patricia. If you could speak up a touch, you'll be good. Okay. Can you hear me now? Hello? Yep. Okay. Great.

Andrea, would you be able to share my slides or do you

want me to share them? I can do them. Just give me one second. If I can't find them quickly, I will kick it to you. Got them.

Great. My name is Patricia Mendes. I'm the director of architectural access for the Disabilities Commission, and this is my architectural access report. I would like to share that the construction season started for utilities company. So, what we do every year is that the public works invites us to have this big meeting.

All of the contractors for the utility company are required to attend. And we talk about the expectations regarding accessibility, so it's very well attended, and we pretty much hit the five or six takeaways. So people are hearing directly from us. Some of the department's attendings are the public work department who's hosting this big event, the transportation department, Boston Water and Sewer, and also other departments. Next slide.

Please. So the main point of our of my speech this time is that during the construction, the accessible route must be maintained. So I break down to the the pieces of that maintenance of the accessible route. And I remind all of the construction companies that when they are building something or underground on the sidewalk, they have to create a temporary accessible route around the work. And they have to keep that accessible route at night when they go home for the evening and at all times.

It's not something that comes in and out. They have to maintain it the entire time. Part of the accessible route is to keep compliant ramps. So when they're creating the accessible routes, maybe they don't have the usual curb ramp curb ramps, but they need to either build, mount with asphalt, or put a piece of metal or a piece of wood and create a temporary ramp that gives access from the sidewalk to the street and then back to the sidewalk. Also, the barricades that the contractors must have need to be cane detectable in order to be useful and safe for acoustic joints who are blind and low vision.

The other reminder that is important that I share is that when they need to close the entire block to put appropriate signage, visible signage, especially at the beginning of the block. So if somebody comes walking or rolling down the street, they see the signage, and they know to go to the other side across the street instead of going halfway and then having to turn around and and go back. The the next big takeaway is that the curb ramps and crosswalks need to be clear and and usable. So when they have to do work around the curb ramps or the crosswalks, they need to be mindful and maintain the the accessible route. And also when they're having work near the curb ramp and the crosswalk, they need to keep those clear from the work so people can continue to use them.

Next, we talk about the temporary patches and plates, and our ask is always to to be mindful and when they use the patches or the plates to make sure that the edges are smooth and they're level, so everybody can use those safely and they don't become, tripping hazards. Okay. So before we go to the next slide oh, we can go to the next slide. So the reason that we're sharing this with you is so you are way aware of the requirements for the utilities company. So if you see something like this happens happening, and I'm gonna share some photos with examples.

If you see that there is construction and that the sidewalk is blocked and there is no ramp and there is no accessible route, that is not okay. Though you can contact our office and let us know, and what we do is to contact the transportation department so they can pass on the the report so it can be fixed quickly. Okay. So the other thing that we talk about with the contractors is that the the on street accessible parking spaces need to be maintained, and this is state the state law. So contractors are required to contact our office with some time.

We ask them for two weeks so we can help them find another spot so the spots can be relocated instead of just, you know, blocked or taken away. And we shared the our our email, and we shared our form that we use for for to make that communication easy. And the last point that we remind the contractor is to be mindful of the MBTA bus stops when the work affects the location of a bus stop and maybe the bus stop needs to be relocated to the next block before or after. It's important to communicate with the MBTA so the MBTA can send out notices to the users, especially our blind and low vision population that rely very much on their memory to where the locations are. So when there's changes, it's a big deal for our constituent.

Okay. Next slide, please. And I'm gonna go really quickly with the with the photos. So these are the best practices. I have two pictures on this slide.

One of the photos has a temporary wrap made out of asphalt, and that that is temp compliant temporary ramp. And then in the other photo, shows a blind constituent using a white cane, and, he's able to detect construction barricades that have a lower rail and also a top rail. So it is really important that these barricades have the bottom rail for for the cane detectors. The other useful barricades are the the ones that are called jersey barriers that are, you know, more and more massive. But these with the lower rail are also helpful.

Alright. These are best practices. So let's go to the next slide. These are things not to do. And here on the left, we have an example of what not to do, which are to just use a small orange cone.

So the orange cones are not useful because they're flimsy, they blow with the wind, and they're not significant barriers for for constituents that may be transversing a work area. And then the picture on the right is what not to do because the whole sidewalk is blocked with big barricades in the shape of barrels, and they're also blocking the curb cut. So that is an example of what not to do. Next. Okay.

These are also examples of what things not to do. The one on the left is a sidewalk next to the street, and on the sidewalk, there is a construction fence that takes all the accessible route. It blocks the entire sidewalk, and it doesn't have a ramp going down from the sidewalk to the street or it doesn't have the other ramp too that belongs to the other side from the street to the sidewalk. And there's no signage saying that there is a detour. Okay.

And the last photo is a picture of an accessible parking spot, and there is a construction dumpster right on top of the parking spot. So that is something not to do. Alright. And I think that is the last slide. So thank you much for your attention. And as I said before, I'm sharing this information. So when you see construction around and you realize that there's no accessible route, please let us know so we can report it and have it fixed. And I'm happy to answer questions.

I see. Thank you for your report, Patricia. This is Jerry speaking. And I see Paula has a question or a comment. Go ahead, Paula.

Well, I'm assuming that the same applies for snow dumped into handicap parking spaces that we should contact disability at, you know, the email that you had listed there? Will we see that? This presentation was particularly for construction. Yes. Worse. I know that. I was saying that I assumed that same process would be in place for if we saw snow in a handicapped spot that we would contact your office the same way. Could we could jump in. Yeah. Patricia.

Thanks, Colette. Yeah. Unfortunately, the city doesn't have the resources to shovel out any parking spaces. They concentrate on clearing streets, and they're able to do some sidewalks and curb ramps in priority areas. They do all the sidewalks on city of Boston property, but they just don't have the resources to do parking spaces. That being said, you can always send it to 311 and our office and if there's any way we could get it done, but it's definitely not something I would expect to be done. We do get those complaints every winter, but it's just not something that the city does. They don't shovel out any parking spaces. They just don't have the capacity to do that. And, Andrea, do you wanna add anything?

Yeah. This is Andrea. I'll just add that you can't clear snow from your property into the street no matter what the use of the street is at that curb. So if you see someone, like, digging a bunch of snow off their front sidewalk and dumping it all in the street, that you can report to 311 and can be ticketed. But that would be the same for any amount of the public street, not just for accessible parking, unfortunately.

And even if they get fined, it doesn't mean that the city's gonna remove the snow, unfortunately.

Okay. Do we see any other questions?

I

don't. So thank you very much for your report, Patricia. And now we'll move on to our new agenda item, the community shout outs. This is an opportunity for for members of the advisory board to really highlight something they've been working on or a meeting they've attended or or an issue they've been working on for the past month. So I I don't know if anyone has anything they'd like to share, but now would be a great time to do so.

If you if and I'm sure, as I said in my my report that was read last month, I'm sure all of us, you know, have worked on the things over the past month or so that that deserve to be shared and and the community should should be should be aware of. So don't feel like this is a I'm putting you on the spot, but I definitely want I just wanna highlight the the great work that we all all do. So I don't know if if anyone has something they'd like to share, but now would be a great time great time to do so. And I'll I'll I'll give it a minute here. I'm not seeing any takers.

We've all gotten a little shy. I will share myself.

These three hands up.

Oh, okay. Hands up.

There there there is. Okay. I'm sorry.

Charlie, and Paul.

Yeah. I must have I lost that. I apologize. Go ahead, Olivia.

So I attended the office of housing one year plan meeting on March 13, and a good amount of the community input was centered around disability issues and housing. There were two people interested in ABU or accessory dwelling unit. There was someone who was looking for information on how to retrofit stair lift into their into their their home. So they heard they heard from the community on that. Great.

Great. Anything we should follow-up on, Olivia?

I gave them I put in the chat the disability commission information because a few of the constituents would benefit from contact with with the disability commission, particularly the stair lift issue because she was looking for, like, where do I go?

Sure. Sure. Great. Thanks for that. That's a great example of of some you know, why why we the executive committee thought that that this this agenda item would be would be useful. So thank you.

Go ahead, Carol. Thing I had.

Oh, sorry. Yeah. Two things. I'm sorry, Elizabeth.

Sorry. Is that the elevators in my building, we have three elevators. It's a Boston Housing Authority complex. Two of the elevators went down, cutting off access to the 6th, 7th, and 8th Floors.

Oh, no.

They went down on a Friday evening. They were fixed by Sunday morning. So I have to say the housing authority is getting better with these issues.

That's great. That's great. Awesome. Anything else before we That's move it. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead, Carol.

So, yeah, as many of you know, I'm a service animal user, and lately, I've had a number of trip denials with Uber and Lyft. And frankly, I'm getting rather annoyed at that. And unfortunately, the way the shared transportation services work, they won't share with you the information. And then after the driver canceled the trip, the trip gets deleted from the app. So there's no way to get local enforcement involved because that's not the way the state laws work.

There's no way to track down the driver and file a complaint with MCAD even if you wanted to. So I'm working with representative Christine Barber who just filed their bill 20 house house bill twenty sixty six on the fireman of Lyft and Uber, and I'm also it should be also submitted any day now working with senator Joan Lovely who will be submitting the bill given local hopefully, given local police authority the ability to enforce service animal laws. So I will keep this commission updated as the bills get assigned hearing dates. Right now, the first bill I mentioned, eight twenty sixty six, it was the labor and work for the committee. And as soon as that gets assigned today, I will let you know as soon as Joe Motley does a Senator Motley does a late file for the other one, given plea the authority to find bills find violators of that, I will let you know.

So just stay tuned for more information, but I just wanted to let you know that's one of the things I'm working on.

Can I just follow-up on that comment, Carl? Yes. Commissioner McCoch. So we had a meeting with Uber about some other things we're working on with Uber Wave program. And they did let us know that recently they put on the app that you can check off if you have a service animal. Right. So the driver will know and expect it. I don't know if everybody knows about that. And we do have at Uber that we're gonna be meeting with moving forward, so we can always raise this issue more specifically. We were concentrating on WAVE wheelchair accessible vehicles in the meeting, but but we can certainly circle back to

this issue. Are you working with Britney?

I don't know that that was the name. No. I don't think so.

The head of accessibility at Uber.

We are meeting with the head of global accessibility.

No. That's what's her name? She's got an Irish name. Maybe I have the wrong person. But I yeah. I I love San Francisco. I just sent her an email. So thank you. But, yeah, there is an ability to self identify depending on who you talk to in the blind and low vision community. Some are okay with that.

Some not so much because they feel we shouldn't have to identify in order to get a ride in the civil rights. So it it it kind of controversial depending on who you talk to. The what I would like as a blind and low vision consumer is when a driver cancels a ride, the ability to get their name and license plate number so that I can then file a complaint with m c d MCAD or somebody or DOJ or somebody. But right now, the way they set it up is when you're denied a ride, there's nothing you can do because perfectly delete the name of the driver. And they so how can we take legal action?

They said they have a zero hauling policy, and they will not accept that, and they'll investigate and punish the drivers. But you don't know what the repercussions of that is because won't share the results of their investigation. So Uber or Lyft will not share the results of their investigation with the individual that they happened to, and b, they won't get to the name of the driver. So I feel like there's a lack of both transparency and accountability.

Carl, this is Jerry. Have you would you be willing to speak with with Cat from BCIL?

I have spoken to Kat. We're working on this together.

Great. Great. Because I know our tag has has been doing a lot of work with Uber and Lyft on on this very issue.

So Right. And and we're looking at how because when I booked the ride, I did it under the Uber Flex program. I'm also considering it a violation of section five zero four because they were driving on behalf of Lyft. Right? So so I'm hoping that they rewrite the contract in such a way when it's up in a year or two to have stricter stricter and forth.

Great. Thanks for sharing. Charlie, you you had a issue that you wanted to share?

Oh, not an issue. Just an update. Can you hear me okay? Yeah. Great. Oh, great. Just wanted to talk about a tour that we took. The the commissioner and I have been serving on a, I think, a working group or an advisory group for Boston Public Schools transition program for students with disabilities that that also age through the age of 22. It's called STRIDE program, and it's an acronym that stands for supporting transitions to reach independence through vocational experiences. And we took a tour of facility or building that they're actually going to be dedicated to students.

And I know that the commissioner and the disabilities commission, I think, Andrew, you've also been in the background working closely across the public schools to kinda make an apple. And the building that we've built, it's the old Edward M. Kennedy facility, so it's really nice, fully accessible. We had a tour of it. But I think the the bigger story is that we're actually dedicating the facility, but then also focusing on transition services and also working with the students for she become independent, work job, work towards training.

And I think in relation to this group, my goal is to work closer with the director, Lady Marsh Fitzpatrick, at Boston Public Schools to have them introduce the students and also the parents and the caregivers to start paying attention to the disability commission meetings where they could start learning more about the services and offerings that that are available as they transition to adults. I think when the children are younger and the students are younger, there's a lot of different groups like the parent advisory councils and and a lot of parent support groups. But I think one of the areas that that I was focusing on and and finding, you know, when is that transition period where where the students then move towards, like, a kind of and trying to find independence with with for some new job children. So I want to thank the the commissioner. I know that, you know, work closely with them, but, you know, that tour is really, really cool facility.

So I'm glad to see that that's actually got one that's been in the works for several years. And I know, but I'm sure it's been longer than just several years that I was involved in robotics.

Great. Thanks for updating us, Charlie, and and thanks for your work on that, and the commissioner and her staff work on that. Please keep us updated and let us know how we can support for you, you know, in that, you know, making that connection to the STRIDE program and and and how we can illustrate it and and get it out to our communities as well. So thank thank you. Paul, I know you've had your hand up, but you also looks like you need help unmuting. So, Andrea, can we help Paul with that?

It's all set now. Thank you. Great. I just wanna say how strong and positive the war administration and councilor Sharon Durkin have been with mental health advocacy, and then coming up in May is mental health awareness month. So in preparation for that for April, I know it's a tough season for a lot of people with anxieties, depression, bipolar, any kind of mental health.

So what I've been reading up on and talking to its constituents is, you know, a lot of sunlight, a lot of activity, a lot of positivity. It's easy it's easy to get down, and whether it be a power of prayer, reading, or keeping motivated, setting routines, it's a big help. I wanna also have a little more to say next month in May, it being mental health advocacy month. And like I said, the ward administration and councilor Sharon Durkin in particular have been very helpful and strong in mental health advocacy, and it's been it's made made my my job easier as an advocate to to help others. Thank you.

Great. And thanks, Paul, for your continued work on on this issue. I really, really appreciate it very much. And Wesley says in the chat about Jared Duran, the Red Sox, the player who Years. You know, has been so upfront about his own mental health struggles. Mhmm. You know, and I you know, anything we can do to highlight the issue, I think it it it's great.

I think personally, I feel everything everyone's breathes the same air and everybody's human, whether it be Kevin Love in the NBA, Jared Durant, you know, high ranking politicians and business leaders. We all breathe the same air. Everyone's human and comes across the same problems, and sometimes it's people are more apt to get more professional help and have have that at their fingertips more than others. So, I mean, my line's always open for any kind of assistance by email or my cell phone, which the commissioner has.

Great. Thank you. And let us know how we can continue to support Paul. And we look forward to to working with you on the on the those issues and championing mental health issues in all the work we do. Richard, you you had something you wanted to share?

Yeah. Thanks, Jerry. Among other things, I'm on a list that US district court falls upon from time to time to represent individuals in civil rights cases, including cases involving ADA issues. I think I've done nine of them for indigent defendants or indigent indigent plaintiffs. Also, think it's worth mentioning for those who aren't familiar with it, it's bigger center for children at Mission Hill, which is very focused on kids' mental health.

It's really it's the smallest of all the Harvard institutions, but it's the one I think that probably dollar for dollar was the most for society because it helps families and children deal with significant mental health challenges at the school and all that. So to the extent we're unaware of that or folks are unaware of that and, you know, are looking to make an impact on kids' mental health. I would recommend that they consider that at some point as a place to perhaps support.

Great. Thank you. Thank you, Richard. And thanks for everybody for sharing. Is there anybody else that I'm I'm missing that hasn't had the opportunity to share that would like to share?

Again, not to put anybody on the spot, but thank you for for those of us who who did share this month, and we look forward to to to folks continued work and and and sharing in in future months. So next on the agenda is old old business, and the old business that we have, I believe, is the the letter to the new owners of the abilities that we spoke asking asking them to consider coming to Boston. Do I have that right, Adrienne?

Yes. It is.

Great. So so everybody should have a draft of that of that letter, you know, gotten a a draft of that letter with their packets. I'm looking for someone to make a motion to approve that letter.

This is Carl. I I I would like to make a motion to approve

and set the letter out. Any seconds? You need a second?

Charlie, is that a second? Second.

Thank you. Charlie. Okay. Thanks, Charlie. And so we'll take a vote. All in favor, aye.

Aye. Great.

Any vote? Aye. Nope. Great. Any nays?

I should have asked any discussion first. But, anyway, a little out of order there, but it appears that the the letter pass is the motion passes unanimously. So, Andrea, I know you'll work on getting that letter out as quickly as you can. Thank you. And thanks for everybody who gave input input on it. Next on the agenda is new business. Does anybody have new business that they'd like to share or an item possibly for new business? This is Carl? Yes, Carl.

So earlier in the meeting, I believe Andrea mentioned that or maybe it was commissioner McCosh, mentioned something about court reporter's not getting a raise. And then she said that also send it to card writers. I I question that a maybe the court reporter that work in the court systems haven't gotten a raise, but I know that the contract that I used to hire card riders here in Massachusetts, MCVHA have raised their rate at least once, if not twice, in the last seventeen years that I've been involved. So I I don't know if the rate that they the court reported get the same rate as the car rating. So I'm a look.

I I while I wanna support them and potentially do a letter, I just wanna make sure we have all the facts.

Yeah. This is Andrea. Good question. So this would be a raise for people producing transcripts in a court, which right now are usually court cart right cart providers. One thing I do wanna note is a cart provider watching from home did send me a message that there are some concerns about the bill allowing for non cart providers, human cart captioners to be court transcribers.

So while the raise is certainly something that has supported CART human CART captioners right now work as court reporters, and in their work as court reporters, yes, they would like a raise from, I believe, $3 a page to $4.50 a page. But this person is is happy to provide some additional information on behalf of the Mass Court Reporters Association at your next meeting if you'd like.

I think it I mean, I I would support a race based on what I know, but I I would still love to have the person come for the next meeting and perhaps educate us if that would be helpful.

Yep. We can definitely reach out to the association and have someone come. I guess previous versions of the bill have explicitly included language to allow for basically AI generated captions instead of a human. The current version is not as explicit, but could be made since that version has existed in the past and they they wanna make sure that change doesn't get made. So, yeah, I can invite them to come or or send a member.

Is it federal legislation or state legislation? Because forgive me, I'm not aware.

Yeah. It's state legislation. So if there is a transcript being made in a court, it is subject to rate in law that does not have any sort of interest, you know, as as the cost of living goes up, this rate goes up with it. There's so it's just a flat rate that was set in 1988.

Thank you.

So from what I'm hearing is that Andrea will reach out to this person watching from home or the association association that they're a part of and see if see if we can get them to come either to the next meeting or or or one, you know, in the near future and or get some more information so that we can we can clarify and decide decide then whether whether to write a letter in support of the current legislation

or not. Do did I

hear that? Do did I capture that correctly?

Yes. I think so.

That sounds correct to me. This is Andrea. One thing I will note is with new state legislature attempts to move bills more quickly, they do have to report on this bill by June 7. So we do have one more meeting. If I could suggest the board could have a motion to consider a bill or a letter at the next meeting, and you all can finalize it and vote on a final letter at the next meeting if you would like to get it to the legislature before that committee deadline.

So actually, Andrea, the ruling, the bill has to be reported fifty days out of committee after the bill already has been heard. Has the bill already been heard?

Yes. It was heard this week.

Oh, that changes things a little bit. Okay.

Alright. So we have sixty days. Yeah. So just so I'm clear, are you suggesting, Andrea, that that maybe we want to, you know, start drafting a letter and then vote on it for next meeting? Or I'm just I just wanna be a little clearer.

This is Wes.

Can I contribute to this conversation, please? This is

Wes.

Please, Wes.

I think it might be better for the board to review the bill prior to drafting a letter because we don't have as much information about what's in the bill yet so that we could review those materials, and then we can make a decision based on what the content actually says explicitly or implicitly whether and how we wanna respond.

Thank you for that, Wes. Maybe this is something that we we should have we should take up with the at the next executive committee meeting, Andrea.

Sounds good.

Okay. So we'll do that, which which, you know, we we meet two weeks prior to the next meeting. So we'll take this up during that meeting, and then then if you know, based on that, maybe I'll send out an email to folks, and that way we'll have as much information as we can to to maybe make a little bit more of an informed decision, at the main meeting, if that sounds okay to folks.

Questions on you? Okay.

I know we're running really short of time, but West, under new business, I didn't know if anybody had anything under new business that they wanted to wanted to share and maybe have us consider. Hi.

This is West. I do actually have new business. Sure. But, Jerry, I think you also wanted to speak about the same issue.

Was it about the the mayoral the mayoral questionnaire?

Yes. Exactly.

Yeah. Yes. You for for bringing up that issue issue, Wes, and we did discuss it at the executive committee meeting. And what what came out of that that meeting was that I outreached to to BCIL because they've done some work work in the past on putting together questionnaires for the mayoral candidates in past elections as well as for state folks from state office running from state office as well. I did reach out to Bill Henning.

He's he's willing to consider doing that work again, but he would want it to be more he would want it to be really targeted. The questions questions that that be asked be really targeted so that so that we don't just get a pro form a response from both candidates or from any any and all candidates. So I didn't know whether, Wes, you feel comfortable. Can I put you in contact with him, and maybe you can take the lead on this issue? Or I are you comfortable with that?

It's Wes. Yep. I'm comfortable with that. But I also wanted to add, if I remember correctly, the last time this was a discussion, the last election, things sort of fell apart, and, I would like to make sure that that doesn't happen again this time around.

Right. Right. Totally understood.

And Last mayoral race the last mayoral race, I believe, we tried this and it fell apart. So I would be hopeful that in addition to being careful about the language, that we're making sure it goes through.

Sure. Yeah. Sure. So, again, I think it's an important issue, and I'd like to see us I'd like to see us, you know, follow through on it as well. Hopefully, we have some time, and let me get you in connection with Bill, and and we'll go from there.

And I'll support you in in whatever way we can, and the executive committee will support you in whatever way we can. Great. And is there any other new business that folks would like to share or propose? Hearing none, we do have just a couple of minutes for public input. Any member of the public with an issue?

This is Andrea of the Disabilities Commission, members of the public. You may have noticed you're not able to unmute yourself, automatically. Please use the raise hand function in Zoom, raise your hand on camera, or note in the chat that you would like to ask a question or make a comment. Once you are recognized by the chair, I will send you a request to unmute and you will have two minutes to make your comment or ask your question. If you need pinning ability to connect with the ASL interpreters to sign your question, please also let us know that in the chat.

Andrea, I'm not seeing anyone from the public at least, you know, at least online, you know, raise their hand or or whatnot. I didn't see anybody in the chat either. Did I miss, did I miss anyone?

If you missed it, I did too because I'm not seeing any virtual Zoom hands hands or chats.

Andrea, this is Rachel. We didn't hear your last comment. Oh,

I muted. Okay.

Can you hear me now? Great. Sorry about that. We got muted in the room. I am not seeing any hands or chats either, Jerry, so no one is indicating a public comment that I can see.

Great. You know, I would encourage members of the public to take advantage of this opportunity, and we'll try to we'll try to leave a a few more minutes, you know, at future meetings to make sure that that folks have have have their two minutes to to to make a comment. So but please please feel free to and I would encourage everyone to of the public to use use this opportunity going forward. So but hearing none, I would request that someone make a motion to adjourn. Jerry? Jerry, this is Carl. Yes, Carl. I'd like to

make a motion to adjourn.

I second. And Paulette seconds. All in favor.

Yes. I second. All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Great. That that motion also passes unanimously. I feel good. The first meeting that I've shared in quite a while, all the motions passed unanimously. I don't know what that says, but anyway, thank you everyone for the for the great great input tonight. I'm sorry, you know, that I missed missed some folks with raised hands. I will try to do better with that going forward, But have a great, great, rest of your evening, and thank you for all you do, and and look forward to, working with you and hearing about all the good work, we do, next month as well. Take care.