Disability Commission Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Everyone, hello.

To the Recording in progress.

Oh. Oh. And I gotta let people in from the waiting room. Apologies. Welcome. The open meeting law 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 is being broadcast on Xfinity channel 26, RCN channel 13, and Fios channel nine six two, as well as live streamed on YouTube where a recording will remain, on the cable channel. With that, I will turn it over to our board chair, Zari. Take it away.

Thank you, Andrea, and good evening, everyone. Happy that you can join this evening. I want to start by introductions. And as a rule from this point forward, I'm gonna ask if we can when we introduce ourselves, if we can just give a little self description of what you look like. You don't have to be very detailed. Just the general description will be great. So hi. My name is Larry. I'm Eva Sany. I'm the new chair of this great advisory board.

I have been a part of this group for over ten years now, and I live in city of South Austin. I'm a female, white, with short brown hair, and that's it. And, Olivia, do you wanna go next?

Sure. Sure. My name is Olivia Richard. I am a resident of Brighton, and I am a middle aged white female with glasses, short hair, and wearing a hat.

So yeah. Alright.

And I'm a wheelchair user.

Thanks, Olivia. Next call, do you want to go next?

Hi. My name is Paul Karen. I live in the West End Of Boston. I'm an advisory board member and proud to serve. I'm a white male, currently wearing a white laborers union, Local one hundred fifty one pullover. I worked as a supervisor in the City of Boston Planning Department and serve as a mental health advocate. I have family members and friends, dear friends with mental health disabilities I'm proud to serve. Thank you.

Tara? Hi, everyone. I'm Tara Lynn Sothard. I am a female. I am a little person using an electric wheelchair for mobility. I am Caucasian, long blonde hair, glasses, and I am from the JP Roxbury area.

Thank you, Todd.

Paul? Yeah. Hi. My name is Carl Richardson. I am a middle aged white guy with fountain pepper hair.

Kinda look like Nathan Lane for those who are into theater. I'm wearing a light blue button down, and I identify as deaf blind, and then I have to do a sensory loss. And if I remember, the note from Andrea also asked us to tell a little bit about what we do to introduce ourselves to the new members that are coming on board tonight, give us a little more background than we normally would give. So I am the Massachusetts State Health ADA coordinator, where it's my role to work with the executive and legislative branch to make sure that all the programs, services, and activities that stay healthy are accessible to people of our ability. I'm the president of the Guide Dog Users Group of Massachusetts and the co chair of the audio description project for the American Council of the Blind.

I don't normally do that. It sounds like I'm blocking. But I remember that Andrea asked us to just give a little more description so people could get to know us. Thank you. And I'm excited about learning from all the new members joining tonight and working with all of you.

Thank you very much. I'm sorry I missed the introduction. For those of you who've already introduced yourselves, asking you to give a little bit about what you do, but perhaps we can circle back next time. Well, see Wesley, can you go next?

Hi there.

Thank you very much for clarifying how we're going to introduce ourselves maybe a little bit more in-depth tonight. So again, I am Wes. I'm a white guy. I'm Wes Ireland. I'm a white guy. Instead of saying my age, I prefer to use a generation. I'm actually a millennial. So I'm a millennial. I'm deaf and I have short, very closely shaved hair and a reddish brown beard. I'm gonna be I'm wearing a black shirt, and I'm using American Sign Language throughout this meeting.

And we have two female interpreters who will be going into English from my American Sign Language. And I've been on the board since 2018. So I served here for quite a while. I'm almost now this is almost my ninth year on the board. So, yeah, I think that's good enough. Thank you.

Did you say me? Yes. Hi. My name is Alan. I'm I'm wearing a reddish, maybe burgundy sweater. I have braids. I look a little bad right now, but I'm wearing a hat. This is my first official meeting as a natural member of the board, so I'm excited to be a part of I'm African American. My skin tone is a little I would say somewhat off of a Kit Kat. So that's me.

Welcome, Allen. Great to have you here. Let's see. Paulette?

Good evening, everyone. My name is Paulette Durette. I live in Mattapan. This, I think, is my second term on the commission. I wear glasses. I'm a black woman older black woman with gray hair. I'm wearing a black sweater striped sweater. So prior to being on the on this commission, I worked for Boston College for over twenty five years as a disability services coordinator for people with physical, medical, and psychological disabilities. Glad to be here this evening.

Zari, I think you're muted, but it looked like you said Richard.

Oh, I apologize. Richard. Yes.

Yeah. Thank you, Zari. I'm Richard Kluski. I live in Back Bay. I am hearing impaired, significantly hearing impaired. I'm one of the few lawyers in Boston. But among my activities as a lawyer is representing I've done a lot of civil rights work in my life, including representing individuals with disabilities. I am not gonna say either, you know, what age or generation I'm from, but I am wearing a blue shirt and a sport jacket. Hate I to admit it, but my ear is pretty gray. And I'm happy to be here. Welcome to the new members of the commission and to the public who's joining us as well.

Thank you so much, Richard. Let's see. Who am I missing? John Beale?

Hi. Good evening. I'm John Weil. I'm I work at the planning department, a colleague of Paul Karen. I'm I'm here this evening to give a quick presentation on our office to residential conversion program. I'm a male, Caucasian with a bald head and wearing a blue button down shirt. So thank you so much for having me here this evening.

Yeah. And I apologize. I'm still getting familiarized with who's our adviser and who's our guest.

Worries whatsoever. Welcome. Welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Of Of course. Sam Pastor?

Yeah. Hi, everyone. I'm Sam. I work for Bass Advocate standing strong. I live in Dorchester. I'm a wheelchair user. Thank

you, Sam. Am I missing anyone except the commissioner?

Yellow? No. I think you're good.

Alright. So last but not least, commissioner?

Thank you, Zari. You're doing a great job. My name is Crystal Makosh. I'm the disability commissioner and ADA ten zero two coordinator for the city of Boston. In this role, I lead the city's collective efforts toward accessibility and inclusion in all things from the built environment, including city buildings, large scale developments, streets and sidewalks, to programs, policies, and services. I am a white woman with blonde hair sitting in front of an image of city hall, and I'm also a wheelchair user. Welcome, everybody.

Thank you very much, commissioner. So do I I wanna see if we should review and vote to approve the minutes for both February and March. Anybody want to

Missus Carl, I I I move that we approve the minutes.

Missus Paul, I second.

Thank you, everyone. Does anybody have any other comments? Great. So minutes are approved. Thank you both, Carl and Paul. All right. So next, we wanna move to the presentation tonight. The presentation tonight is on autonomous vehicles in other municipalities. Presenters Rachel Castigli, Castigli,

who's

the senior consultant, senior Boston Transportation, and public folks will be presenting. Welcome, Rachel, and thank you.

Thanks so much for having me. My name is Rachel Castagnoli. I am a mid forties white woman with frizzy brown hair, brown eyes, and I'm wearing a gray sweater. I should be sharing screen now. Is that working for everyone?

Yes.

Great. Like, what just said, I work for the city of Austin, Texas. We have autonomous vehicles here, and Andrea asked me to come and talk about our experience with them. So just so you know, our typical way of getting autonomous vehicles in a city is they come in and they do mapping. I believe Waymo's already done some mapping in Boston.

Then they do testing, which is typically maybe with a driver. It's someone in the driver's seat, maybe not, but they're practicing their autonomous moving around the city there. And then there's a full deployment where they're taking kind of commercial paying passengers. We have five companies in Austin operating Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet, which is the a Google parent company, Zoox, which is owned by Amazon, Tesla, Volkswagen, and AV Ride. And deployed taking passengers right now are Waymo, Zoox, and Tesla.

And I would just note on this slide that the Zoox vehicle doesn't have a steering wheel. It doesn't have human operated brakes. It has no human operated kind of tools in it. It goes both ways up to 55 miles per hour, and it just has two benches that face each other. So very different looking than, like, a typical vehicle.

We have had autonomous vehicles in Austin since June 2023 when we had Cruise, which was GM's autonomous vehicle company. And oh, it's going. There we go. And what we found was the best way in Texas, we have no regulatory authority, so it's different than Massachusetts. So cities are completely preempted.

But what we found is the best way to work with the AV companies and to kind of get some of the things we need was to form a working group. Our working group in Austin is our first responders, our transit agency, which is Capital Metro, our school district, our airport. And so these are all stakeholders who have a lot of do a lot of work in the right of way. And we get together, we train and prepare for instance involving AVs. Our position is no first responder encounters an autonomous vehicle for the first time in the field.

We make sure all of them have had a chance to to have some classroom work on it. We facilitate communication, and then we do collect data on autonomous vehicle incidents. This is, our dashboard. It's probably updated through last week when Andrea asked me to get this to her. And just to describe it for y'all, it shows a map of the city of Austin with a lot of dots on it.

The dots are color coded to show what type of incident occurred where. And we've got a graph showing incidents over time starting in July 2023. And then we have a doughnut chart, showing how many of each type of incident we have. So, we use this pretty extensively to review our infrastructure, which is to say if we have repeated incidents in one location, we go and we make sure that the striping is clear, the signage is clear, the signal timing is working. You know, we really make sure that our infrastructure is up to snuff since that's what autonomous vehicles are relying on in the right of way.

But almost all of our incidents are related to hand signals or temporary traffic control, so kind of things that we have less control over. In Texas, we cannot give a moving violation to an AV directly. That is because in Texas, when you get pulled over, you sign the ticket, and there's no one to sign it. There's no driver in this front seat. But we do give moving violations through kind of a a roundabout legal process, and we also give parking violations.

And I will say that San Francisco, who we work with really extensively, also gives a lot of parking violations. It's very hard to tell if a electric car is on or not, sometimes. Is it parked? Is it not parked? But we have been, you know, giving parking violations and some moving violations.

Our number one issue with autonomous vehicles is hand signals. Because it's a robot, it really struggles to interpret human actions and the context of it. Autonomous vehicles struggle. So this means autonomous vehicles struggle at special events, which we have several in Austin, South by Southwest, University of Texas football, Austin City limits, and then we have an f one race. Also at construction sites where you see a lot of hand signals during police escorts.

So these are locations where we know that there are issues. And then what we found is that autonomous vehicles will typically obey traffic signals instead of hand signals, which is not ideal. I'm gonna show this really quick video. And just to give you some context, it's a police officer who's mounted on a motorcycle, and he's trying to, coordinate traffic through an intersection where the signals are still operating. So not ideal.

And I'm not sure if the sound came across, but he was running his sirens during that. So, yeah, that's kind of our constant issue. We have meetings every six weeks with Waymo where we bring up these and other issues. We have meetings frequently with Tesla and Zoox as well. And then a few other issues that we have are items that are close to the ground are sometimes hard for them to perceive as well as, really thin items, which is to say, like, on the far right of this, a chain that's going across a parking lot.

Right? The the AV didn't perceive that chain and went right through it, dragging the the pole up. Water crossings or flooded intersections are hard. And in fact, last this past weekend in San Diego, they had a Waymo that was pulled pulled into a flooded area because we're having floods here right now. Cones, you know, sometimes they back into cones.

And then in in the picture on the far left, the Waymo is over an active fire hose at a fire scene. We do a lot of work making sure that Waymo, Zoox, Tesla, all our AV partners know when emergencies are happening. We you know, we automate communication to them directly out of our 911 system, but sometimes they still get into emergency scenes. So and that usually it takes some effort of the first responders to to move them or to work around them. So we're still that's something we've identified and are still working through with, you know, our partners as well as San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and the other cities we know that have EVs.

So there's a lot we can do together. And I will say that Boston's been in a lot of these meetings and and been a good partner on on what we're we're asking for. There. It's not all bad. There's a lot of great things about having AVs. Right? We've heard especially from our disability community that, you know, they service animals are always allowed in the waymo. No one ever gives them any grief about having an animal in it. So we love that. I've talked to many people who prefer them.

They feel it's safer to not have a driver. They are collecting pothole data in Austin and giving it to us, which is great. From an equity perspective, right, we're just not sure who's calling 311 and if if that's truly equitable across the city. So it's kinda nice to have a robot collecting pothole data and sending it to us as well because it doesn't have the barriers some people might have with language. And then not all AVs, but most AVs are programmed to obey speed limit, obey other traffic laws.

So we've been pretty impressed by that. They typically don't go through little yellow lights. Things like that, we're pretty happy with. So a lot of good things, some kind of difficult things. But since we've been doing this for three years, we really have seen improvements.

We haven't gotten a complaint about them not yielding to emergency vehicles in a long time, so we're pretty happy with that. Every year, we have a petting zoo, which is just bringing all the autonomous vehicles in the city together into a parking lot, having people go through their this Texas School for the Deaf and the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired are pretty involved in that. They come and they, you know, are engaged in around the conversation. It's really fun. We work with our transit agency a lot, our schools and our universities, kind of making sure we're all on the same page about what's going on, how to stop a vehicle, how to contact the AV company, how to talk to them in advance about events.

And then we're always talking to TxDOT and our Texas partners as well as our national partners, like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Highway Administration. And then we participate in a lot of peer city exchanges and SAE, which is the Society of Automotive Engineers. And that's it from me. If you want, you can scan this QR code and visit our website and our dashboard where we have that dashboard publicly available. And then I'll take any questions.

Thank you so much, Rachel. This has been so informative, and I know a lot of our members are excited to perhaps having this in Boston. And I think first question I have, and I'll open it up to everyone, is, of course, this is Boston. We are dealing with cold weather, snow, things like that, which I'm sure Texas has not experienced yet. So one of my concerns is, has there ever been or have you looked of any places where they've tested these cars in different types of, you know, climate so that at least we can especially in the wintertime, that's when difficult it's difficult to get an Uber or another ride.

So this would be great to have. So I just wonder if you know any other places that have tested this.

Yeah. A lot of autonomous vehicles are tested in Michigan, right, because that's where the big three automotive companies are located. So they have icy weather as well. Here in Texas, we have pretty rare icy weather, but we did have icy weather this past winter, and all autonomous vehicle companies ceased operations during it. So I think that they're not confident yet in it.

But just because the car I think the hardest thing to make a robot do is feel. Right? So in Texas, we have a lot of, like, pavement that like, pavement markings that are raised or things like that, right, because we don't have plows. And I think that that's something that autonomous vehicles aren't great at yet. So that's where they're working and improving. And I know that they have targeted a lot of colder cities for expansion, so they must be must be confident.

Thank you, Rachel. Does do you have a question?

Did you send me that or I didn't hear you?

Yeah. Just ask if you had a question.

Yeah, I well, I do, obviously. First of all, my name is Carl. Thank you for your presentation. I've written in both Zeus and Weymouth in San Francisco. And so I have a two part question.

One, have you compared the state because safety is also a concern of mine. Have you compared the safety data compared to that of human livery drivers, such as taxicab, that sort of thing, Uber drivers, Lyft drivers? That's the first question. And secondly, do you require and I think I know the answer to this, but I'm asking, do you require the companies that are providing autonomous vehicle service to be accessible in terms of digital accessibility and more importantly, even wheelchair accessibility? I've yet to hear of a autonomous vehicle service that provides a a any wheelchair accessible vehicles because they're all using electric vehicles, and that would be so digital accept safety, digital accessibility, and wheelchair accessibility.

Do you look at those areas?

Yeah. Sure. So we have done comparisons with autonomous vehicle incidents against human driven crashes or human driven issues in the right of way. And having that map really helps us because it helps us determine where our infrastructure is making things unsafe for both drivers and autonomous vehicles. There aren't there's only about four fifty maybe autonomous vehicles in Austin, which isn't enough to give us good numbers to do comparisons yet.

They do have collisions, you know, on occasion, and and they do have issues that humans wouldn't have. But but, yeah, so far, we are liking the data. We think that it's good. We just don't think there's enough of it to say anything. I know that that Waymo puts out its own data, but we don't have the raw data behind it to validate their methods. So not entirely sure, but we're, you know, we're hoping that they'll be safer. And they certainly never drive, you know, drunk or they're never texting. So hopefully that helps. Do we require companies to have digital accessibility or wheelchair accessibility? No.

The city of Austin can't make any requirements on autonomous vehicles because we're preempted by the state. The state does require them to follow the same ADA accessibility guidelines as taxi drivers. Volkswagen, which it does have a vehicle that can I believe can accommodate wheelchairs, but I that they're not live yet, and they'll be launching in Los Angeles first? As for digital accessibility, I know that a lot of the apps have either have accessibility to them. In Austin, Waymo is on the Uber app, so it is as accessible as the Uber app is.

But, of course, in San Francisco, like you said, in Los Angeles, Weibo has its own app. So that's how that works. Sorry. I can't answer more.

Thank you.

Thank you, Rachel. We have a question on chat from Alan. Alan asks, what mechanisms is the companies using for ant sickers, especially for a place like Boston where there's a frequent construction and offices directing traffic?

Yeah. The companies have asked us if we, as infrastructure owner operators, could standardize our hand signals more. That's pretty hard given that, you know, police and fire tend not to be formally trained on hand signals or their training is pretty short. There doesn't seem to be a nationwide standard as to how hand signals are done. However, we have very much modified the way we do hand signals and we advise construction as well to face the vehicle straight on, to not try to do it on the side, and to do a very large motion for at least thirty seconds to give the computer some time to understand what's being asked of it.

I do think that with more vehicles every day, we are seeing the same amount of calls. So it's possible they're getting better. You know, we aren't sure of that, but we do report all the issues we have. And then the AV companies run the run it through a second simulation usually and show us simulated it would have been fixed this time because of the software update. So they update the software.

We are hoping that it's getting better. A real issue is hand signals from the back of a motorcycle, which is really common here. So we're working on on that, and we've made our first responders available. And some AV companies have come and and done data collection with them, you know, doing hand signals on a closed course.

Sam, do you have a question?

Yeah. I think, Zari. Similar to Carl Adams, because I'm I'm a wheelchair user. And did you say you haven't tested a lot of wheelchair, or there's only one vehicle? Sorry.

So the Volkswagen has is the ID Buzz. It's a European model, and I my understanding is that it has room for wheelchairs, and they are trying to optimize it for that. But it's not deployed in Austin right now.

Great. Thanks.

Is there any other questions?

If you guys haven't seen the jokes, they're pretty wild.

I have one last question, Rachel. Have you collected any data measuring equity of service access?

We have not. We don't have access to the pickup drop off locations or the vehicle miles traveled by the AV companies. So we can take what they give us, but we have access to a ton of data. We have asked them to use designated spots at the school for the blind and visually impaired and the school for the deaf who are really eager to have access to that technology. So we've hooked them up with them, but, you know, unclear unclear how how it's working.

But, yeah, when they're ready to to share that data with me, I would love to see it, and we'd love to plug it into the other data the city of Austin uses, because I think it'd be really interesting and a good way for us to modify our work so that we're, you know, bringing autonomous vehicles into our mobility system in a way that is equitable and sustainable.

Thank you very much, Rachel. If there are no other questions

I see a question from Wesley in the chat. Should I answer it? Yes. Please do. How would people be able to tell that AVs are approaching from a distance based on the models of the AVs?

So the Waymo and some of the other vehicles have a very obvious crown with the LIDAR and the radar on it in that they're regular standard vehicles that have that technology added to them. For the Tesla, it is a regular Model y Tesla. So it's very hard for us to see if it's a robotaxi or someone's personally owned Model y that's doing things. The Zoox is pretty obvious if you can see it because it's just a box. Right?

It doesn't have a front or back really. It doesn't have it's a strange looking vehicle that, like Carl said, is is a real trip. But so yeah. As as we build these purpose built vehicles with the radar and the lidar incorporated into them more, it's harder and harder for us to see them. But they all have badging on the side that's

so And if you're if if you don't mind me jumping in, if you're blind and you're worried about telling the car apart from another car, like in the Waymo app, you can make a player melody or honk a horn even or even put your initials on top of the car as it pulls in. I think Duke allows you to honk the horn as well, although that app is still under construction, not fully accessible. The so there are ways to notify the deaf and hard of hearing folk can see the initials on the top of the card. The blind can make it make noise. There are things to do.

On that note, Zaria, if you don't mind me chiming in, this is Andrea with the commission. Rachel, you said that you've worked closely with the school for the deaf and the school for the blind. In your experience, how flexible have any of the companies been to modify their operations or their designs or their apps based on the feedback of those schools?

Yeah. Absolutely. They've been very flexible with especially accessing them. They're both in older built out parts of Austin, so they have like limited accessibility, especially the School of the Deaf is right in Downtown Austin. It has some narrow one way streets.

So we've really worked with all the AV companies on the expectations, you know, around there and on the campus. And they've been really great about that. The School for the Blind has been super welcoming and wanting to have Waymo's and Zoox's and Teslas. And I think all of those companies have been engaged on on making that a reality for the accessibility of all the folks up there. So, yeah, I think, you know, we're always giving feedback about the vehicles and what we think would make it easier for us and for other people to access them and how we want more access to data and, you know, depending.

Sometimes you get, you know, someone who's a really great programmer. Sometimes you get someone who's a little, like, reticent to share. But we just keep asking. And I think that's the most important part is you don't get what you don't ask for. So we keep asking for those things.

And with Zoox, we have gotten external communications, which is to say, right now, firefighters and police officers have to lean into some vehicles to talk to a remote assistance. But with Zoox, they can talk to it through, a speaker and a microphone on the door, which is the preferred way for first responders because they don't wanna put their head in a vehicle that can move. So we are slowly over time kind of coming together as infrastructure owner operators and autonomous vehicle companies to accommodate each other more.

Great. Does anyone else have any questions before we move forward with agenda? Going once, going twice.

Thank you

so much. Olivia. Olivia, there we go. Olivia, go ahead. This is Olivia.

What has been kind of the response to the lack of wheelchair access?

Good question.

Yeah. I don't know that. That's a good question. And I'm now interested in finding more out about it. We've heard heavily from people who have service animals strongly for AVs and more accommodations for AVs, like designated pickup drop off. But for wheelchair users, I'm interested in finding that out more. I know that there's a need and that Volkswagen identified that need. And I think Zoox also has has talked about that need. So everyone all the AV companies tell us they're they're working on it. But I would for sure like to to see more progress there and like to kind of bring this back to my folks in Austin and and figure that out.

Thank you. Okay. If no one else has any other questions, we're gonna move forward with my report. Thank you so much, Rachel. We really appreciate your time.

This was great. Alright. So moving on with my report for this moment. First, this April is autism acceptance Month. April is recognized as Autism Acceptance Month to shift from awareness to a stronger focus on inclusion, belonging, and removing barriers.

Earlier this month, the city of Boston, formally adopted a resolution recognizing autism acceptance months and reaffirming the need to address barriers in education, employment, housing, and civic life. This month is an opportunity for Boston to continue promoting neurodiversity, affirming spaces, accessible programming, sensory inclusive environment, and meaningful representation of autistic residents in policy making. I also want to recognize that we, on our board, should have a representation of people from neurodivergent community, autistic community. So I would welcome anyone who's interested to reach out to commissioner and myself and yeah. So just to make sure that people are aware that we were interested and seeking support from that community as well.

Second, independent living education day is tomorrow, April 3. It's basically a day to advocate across Massachusetts. They're going to gather in the State House. This is an annual event which highlights the right of people with disabilities to live in the community with dignity autonomy and equal opportunity. It also gives residents an opportunity to educate legislators on priorities such as PCA services, wheelchair repair, accessible housing, transportation, health care, and community support.

A major statewide development this month is that Massachusetts House representative restored protection of personal care attendant program in its proposed budget. The governor's proposal included significant cuts, but the House budget instead reestablished the working group with a majority of disability advocates that would need to approve any future reduction to PCA services. This is an important reminder that advocacy works. Community members rallied, organized, and contacted legislators helped make this their voices heard. PCA services are essential to independent living and the community participation for many residents.

Wheelchair report wheelchair repair legislature amendment eight zero three. So we have reached an important moment in the wheelchair repair campaign, and this is where your voice can make an impact. Amendment number eight zero three has officially been filed as an outside section to the house budget. This means our wheelchair repair repair bill language is now being considered as part of the state budget process, giving a real opportunity to move forward more quickly. Right now, we are focused on building a strong legislative support to help ensure this amendment is adopted.

Wheelchair users across Massachusetts are currently facing long and dangerous delays for repairs, often waiting weeks or even months for equipment that is essential for their daily lives. This amendment is critical step forward in creating accountability and ensuring repairs happen in a timely fashion. Through this direction, you will contact your state representative and ask them to co sponsor amendment number eight zero three, wheelchair repair protection in the house budget, and send a letter of support for h four three five eight to the house ways of means and inoculates. This is fast moving moment, and a strong outreach from constituents can make a real difference in whether this moves forward. I will put in a link on the chat so that if you can just, you know, send a letter, or if you don't have time to write a letter, they have drafted one, you can just sign on it.

That would be great. And this needs to be done by tomorrow if you have time. Let's see. Community leadership, I wanna also recognize the continued work of community organizations across our region, independent living centers, health care access, and community inclusion every day. This includes efforts of efforts to protect health care coverage for immigrant communities, support independent living services, and celebrate leadership through events such as Marie Felton award ceremony honoring disability advocacy and services.

Boston Marathon Week just happened, and we recognize the wheelchair athletes and runners with disabilities whose achievements continue to inspire and expand visibility for disability inclusion in sport and public life. While Samaritan legacy includes pioneers such as Bob Ball and leaders such as Sherry Blauer, whose accomplishments have helped shape a more inclusive city. And finally, over the past few weeks, I've had the opportunity to meet individually with several commission members to learn more about their interests, priorities, and areas where they believe this commission can make a greatest impact. These conversations have been incredibly valuable and reinforce the depth of expertise represented on this commission across accessibility, housing, transportation, education, employment, and civic life. My goal is to ensure our future work is informed by your perspectives and responsive to the needs of the residents with disabilities.

With that said, I'll put the links of everything I've mentioned. And if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. Next, we're going to does anybody have any questions or comments about anything I covered? Great. So next, we're gonna review the architectural access report. I I don't know if Patricia is here. Patricia?

I found you, Patricia.

Thank you, Celery. Thank you, Andrea. Hello, everyone. My name is Patricia Mendez. I'm the director of architectural access. I have short, dark hair and glasses. And today, for my architectural access report, I have a featured guest. He give you a sneak peek. Before is John Whale, and he's here to present about our program that is called the commercial to residential conversion program. And, John, if you're ready, you can take it away.

I am. Thank you, Patricia. Thank you for the introduction. Pleasure to be here this evening. As I said, my name is John Wile. I'm the head of office to residential conversion at the City of Boston Planning Department. And let me just share my screen here because I brought a brief presentation. Let's see if this works. Bear with me. It is giving me trouble here.

I'll see if it'll allow me to share my screen. If not, I may need to ask for assistance.

Totally fine. I'm happy to step in if you need me to.

Actually, could you share the screen? It is it is giving me trouble. So I will

and I will try to move quickly through

the presentation just so we can get to questions with share. Are folks able to see that? Yep. Yep. Wonderful.

So if we can go to the next slide, please. So the office to residential conversion program is something that the city of Boston, with the help of the planning department, launched back in October 2023. And as I said, since it's taking older underutilized office buildings and finding new life for them as new rental housing in the city of Boston. And it's something that the city identified early on before the pandemic when they took a look at plan downtown, re envisioning what the downtown of Boston might become with to bring more vibrancy back to that neighborhood. If we go to the next slide, please.

And I think the context of why we wanna convert these older buildings is something that many of you are aware of, which is that over certainly since COVID, we're seeing rising vacancy in some of the older class b and class c office buildings, some of the buildings that are pre World War two, and some of the lovelier buildings that we have in the city, but ones that admittedly have had less care taken to them and probably less updates, especially when it comes to accessibility done over time. But with post pandemic and folks working from home, there really has been a shift towards office workers wanting to be in newer class a glass towers as opposed to these older buildings. And so there's definitely a need to find new life for them. Next slide, please. And this program, which was launched by Mayor Wu back in October 2023, is a direct effort to try to address this issue.

And we view it really as a win win from the city of Boston standpoint. The first win really being taking these older buildings and finding them new life. The second win is trying to take to create new housing downtown. And as all of you know, new housing is something that's a perennial problem in Boston, especially when it comes to accessible housing, whether group two or group one units. So next slide, please.

And so this program really was launched with the idea of providing the city providing a twenty nine year tax abatement to developers who want to take these older buildings, change the use of them from office, and turn them into residential housing. And as part of that process, when you go from being an office building to becoming housing, one of the things that's required, as Patricia knows well, is that you update the building to the current building code. And so that means everything from fire code to stretch code to green energy. But most importantly for this group here, it means bringing full compliance with ADA. And that is something that has been, you know, front and center of this program since day one, and something that we, the planning department, have been very proud to partner with the Disabilities Commission here at the city.

And it's something where I feel that Disabilities truly has been one of our best partners with this program since day one. They've been an active participant and one who's been incredibly creative in finding solutions to make these conversions work. Because as Patricia and Sara Leung can definitely attest to, it's not an easy task taking an older building and converting it from office into residential. But it is one that we feel is worth doing, and that's why the city has been willing to offer this generous 75% tax abatement for 29. As part of this, you know, we're making sure that these buildings also comply with the new inclusionary zoning rules so that there is an on-site affordable offering.

Because one of the things the city really believes deeply in is that we want to make sure that as we transform downtown in particular, we're creating a mixed income, mixed use neighborhood that's accessible to all folks. Next slide, please. And so we're very pleased with the results we've been able to achieve to date. The program's been in existence for about two and a half years now. And it we've so far gotten 24 applications to convert 29 buildings.

The majority of them are downtown, but it also includes neighborhoods like the West End, like the South End, the North End. We're looking forward to hopefully having our first conversion taking place in Charlestown sometime in the future. But we were very pleased recently to get an application from Back Bay as well. And so I think my personal goal is as this program continues to evolve and grow, is I'd like to see a conversion project take place in each of the neighborhoods across Boston so that we really are touching all of the communities within the city and providing this new form of housing. And to date, in terms of numbers, we're looking at about one and a half million square feet of old class b and class c office space that's been taken vacant off the market and is being repurposed and creating 1,730 new units of housing.

And like I said, that includes affordable units on-site. So we're gonna, at this stage, create three twenty six affordable units. And that's both the majority of that is for folks that are at 60% area media income, but it also includes 30 unit for section eight voucher holders as well. And that's something we're particularly proud of at the planning department because in many cases, there have been programs for section eight vouchers in a number of these neighborhoods where we're doing the projects. And, I mean, when it really comes down to it, you're talking about close to 3,500 new people living downtown in the city.

And we feel that this is a great way to bring vibrancy back to the city and the downtown neighborhood in particular, where, as I'm sure many of you are aware, it's felt a little bit darker, a little bit, like, less welcoming since the pandemic just due to the reduction for traffic and not having everybody in the office five days a week. And I think one of the goals that we share and the mayor fully supports is looking to turn Downtown Boston truly into a twenty four hour community that's seven days a week. Next slide, please. And I think, you know, a lot of the success of this program is really due to all of the departments within the city. So the planning department and myself, we spearhead this program.

But without the Disabilities Commission, without Inspectional Services, without Boston Fire, without Landmarks, none of this would have been possible. And it really is that we have a shared sense of success. And it's through the absolute, you know, commitment of both Patricia Mendez and Sarah Leung in terms of their time, in terms of their creativity, and their passion that really has caused this all to become something that is, you know, we view as being a big success for the city of Boston and something that on a national level, we're very proud to share with other cities. And I think that in particular, when you look at these projects, you know, many of the challenges that we find with these older buildings are that as they come into the program, they have not been brought up to ADA standards before. So they may have everything from challenges of a few stairs that go in through the main entrance, so that it is not an accessible entrance.

They may equally as much have challenges around if there are two buildings that are joined on the interior, we found that there are changes in elevation as you move from one building to another building. And so a lot of the things that we have to work with the developers to solve are how do we make sure that we ensure through signage, through the use of lifts, through actually, in some cases, installing new entrances to these historic buildings, find a way to make these buildings accessible not only for residents who want to live there, but also for guests who want to visit friends and family who may live within these buildings. And it is something that we believe deeply in and something we're passionately committed to ensuring in these projects. Next slide, please. And so to that end, what we've tried to do is take the traditional planning department permitting and approval process, which really was sort of a sequential, almost conga line of going from one department to the to gain your approvals.

And flipped it on its head. And what we've tried to do is really bring everybody in from day one, especially, you know, Patricia and Sarah. And what we do is we bring these the proponents in one month after they apply to the program and sit them down in a virtual meeting similar to this, where all of the key permitting agencies are represented and can ask questions of the development team on day one and flag issues up front that may be challenges to turning these buildings into housing. And that's really been our key to success where we're able to have disabilities at the table from day one in conjunction with whether it's landmarks, whether it's the folks looking at concerns around coastal flooding and climate change issues. And that way, can work together as a collaborative team to come up with very innovative solutions to making this housing truly accessible.

So next slide, please. And it's something that is a very hands on process where we have to track all of these 24 projects truly and map out their timelines of the, you know, the boards that they have to get approval from, whether it's AAB, whether it's the state for BBRS for, you know, building code relief, how we get them in for getting their CD drawings done, to going into inspectional services for building permit. And it is there's a lot of very diligent project management that goes on in the background with this to ensure that it's a success. Next slide, please. But at the end of the day, what we're most proud of is the fact that we're creating new housing.

And so like I said, we're creating 1,730 new units of housing. The first building, which is at 281 Franklin Street downtown, those units were occupied as of this past September. We have three more projects, one in the one in the Bullfinch Triangle, one in four point, and then another one down in the South End, which should be bringing their their apartments to the to the market and taking tenants late summer. And so we're very proud of the fact that we're being able to do this in a really expedited fashion and get housing online and people into those beds now rather than five years in the future. And so next slide, please.

And just this is, I think, my favorite slide. And for those, I can just give a description, which is this is a slide which contains thumbnails of all 24 buildings. And so it's pictures of each of the 24 buildings that are in the program. And so it gives a real visual representation of what it really means to convert these buildings. So we have everything from high rise buildings to beautiful brick buildings downtown to more manufacturing style buildings in the South End.

And it covers the gamut really of different styles of buildings. But what we're proud most proud of is that these are now becoming folks' homes. And so next slide, please. And this is something where the city of Boston is very passionately committed to this program and to creating a success, but we can't we recognize that we can't do it on our own. And so we look both to the state level and so to governor Healy, as well as the previous secretary, Augustus, and now Juan Mateus, who are key partners in providing various forms of not only support in terms of building code relief, but also financial support from the state as well through tax credits and other funding.

And we also look to Washington as well to be our partner and trying to find creative ways that we maybe can use, whether it's federal historic tax credits or other forms of whether HUD loans and things like this to help make these projects, more of them, become a reality today. And so apologies, that's a lot of talking from me. But I really wanted to spend some time, like I said, because I view the Disabilities Commission as being one of our key partners from day one and one of our favorite groups to work with. And so I really wanted to spend some time introducing this to you all, but I'll turn it open to questions now, please.

Thank you, John. This was so informative. I'm so excited. Because housing seems to be one of those topics that keeps popping up. So I'll start with the first question, if I may. Absolutely. And that's it sounds like you're already bringing people with disabilities and people who have lived experiences

Yeah.

Into the conversation. So that's great. One thing that I'm wondering about is of the 326,000 Yeah. Affordable units, how many of them are affordable to people who are extremely low income residents and people living on SSI or SSDI?

So, good question. So, of the 326, as I mentioned, 30 of them are for section eight voucher holders. So that gets to a certain level of affordability. And then the rest of them are at 60% area median income. So that is it's not the lowest level of affordability, but it's a pretty accessible level of affordability compared to some projects that we've seen in the past.

And one of the things that we're most committed to is we're trying to strike a balance here because these projects are hard to get to become profitable. And so we're trying to strike a balance between wanting to adhere to the 17% of affordable, but not dip down too far in the affordability to make it so that it's so that these projects are not profitable for the developers. So we're it's a tricky balancing act, but we're requiring the folks to have the apartments, you know, on-site and not allowing them to do them off-site or to buy out of the requirements. So we're doing our best to try to navigate this one, and we hope that between the Section eight voucher holders and the 60% AMI, that will provide a good, you know, outcome. But I am pleased to say that one of our more recent projects, I just saw their proposal, and they are offering some units at 50% AMI as well.

So we continue to be we continue to work with the developers and see where we can make inroads and provide more options.

This

is Andrea. If I could one thing that I know Patricia has mentioned a bit, I don't know if you could talk about that. Some of the developers are, you know, going above and beyond even when we've talked to them about making things accessible. So there's the adaptable units and then there's the fully built out wheelchair accessible units. I understand we've had a decent amount of success getting folks to do both even if both aren't always required.

Yes. And that's something that I think I I know Patricia is particularly proud of. I'm proud of as well where what we've tried to do is especially, you know, approach all the developers. There's definitely an education piece to all of this, and we we push that hard, and we make sure that we ask whether it's possible. So there's a requirement of doing that 5% of the units are group two units.

And we ask developers whether, if possible, they can look at their other units and, to the best of their ability, either make them fully group one compliant or at least, if nothing more, put blocking in the walls and being able to put handrails in place so that folks are able to age in place, as well as if you have people who have mobility issues, that they have that option to help them. And so I think we're we've had very good receptivity from a lot of the developers. And we're very pleased that we've gotten some who are developers who have come through with multiple projects where, at this point, they're automatically offering up that they're going to make the rest of their units the group one. And then with others, it's definitely been a thing where we work at showing them that this is very little additional effort on their part to provide a meaningful outcome to folks who could live there.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah. Wes has a great

Yeah. Question in the Yes. And Patricia probably knows the answer better than I do on this one. But absolutely, there are sensory units being provided in these developments. Yes.

I believe And where possible, we try to also work closely and see that we if we can have a lot of the group two units be our affordable units as well because that's something I think we we feel passionately about is providing this type of accessibility to folks that are looking for a more affordable housing option.

And I believe and Patricia, correct me if I'm wrong, for the group two units west, 5% would be built out for accessibility for wheelchair accessibility and then an additional separate 2% are typically required to be wired for deaf and hard of hearing units. And I'm seeing Patricia nod, so I think I got it right.

I always have to defer to Patricia because she is my go to on this. So and I and I think that we feel that it's what we're I think most pleased about when it comes to this is the fact that we've been able to take these are older buildings. Many of them are pursuing historic tax credits, so they need to keep the buildings as original as possible. But Boston Landmarks has been a very good partner in coming up with some very creative solutions that allow us to not only have a fully accessible entrance, but where possible ensure that the main entrance is the accessible entrance. And therefore, we're coming out with what I consider to be the best possible outcome, which is making sure that everybody can enter and exit their home, you know, with a sense of dignity.

I think that that's very important.

This is so exciting. I think that this is a once in a generation conversation opportunity to become national leaders Yes. In the urban and inclusive housing. So Yeah. Looking forward to all that's gonna happen, and thank you so much.

Oh, thank you for having me this evening. I really appreciate being able to present to you.

One more thing. Yes.

One more thing.

John, I would love to hear more about the existing elevators that these projects are are bringing.

So that's a good point, Patricia. I think that what we're we've been, knock on wood, lucky to date with in that the developers, when they're trying to find buildings to convert, really are trying to find good candidates to convert. And one of the things that they look for when they're picking a building and deciding whether or not to purchase it to turn it into housing is that they tell me all every single one of them, they tell me what they look for is finding buildings with good elevators. And that they're looking to preserve those elevators and make sure, in most cases, wanting to particularly look for buildings which have multiple elevators. And I think it's something that they feel creates a really good living environment.

And I think it's something that we all feel from an accessibility standpoint is very important to maintain. And so I think it's something that everybody involved in this process has been pretty much laser focused on ensuring that we have good elevators that are more modern as opposed to the older ones and also in as many cases, multiples. And so I know for myself when I see a developer come in with a building that has three elevators, the first thing I say to him is, and you're gonna keep all three, aren't you? Because the last thing I want is for somebody to try to take a cost cutting route and try to decommission elevators and buildings. And, you know, even as, Patricia, you know, Fort Liberty Square, that building had two elevators.

We had a few accessibility issues with the previous owner. That building has now traded hands to a new owner. And the first thing the owner said to me is, yes, and we're committed to keeping both elevators in that building. We are not decommissioning the second elevator. And so these are the kind of small wins that I think we're all very proud of, which is trying to ensure that this type of sort of forward thinking is going on. You know?

Awesome.

Yeah. Thank you, John.

Yeah. Happy to. Thanks for having me, Patricia.

Thank you, Patricia. Thank you, John. Great. Does anybody have any questions before commissioner's report? Great. So commissioner, if you get off of that.

Thanks, Ari. And thanks, John. Before you jump off, I know you really talked about how committed my staff is to this program, and we all are. But I also really appreciate your collaboration, and it's a great example of the work that we do. Our office, for the new board members, just so you know, our office's main task is to work on systemic inclusion of people with disabilities throughout city of Boston programs, policies, and then built environment.

This is a perfect example of how we can give input to different departments to ensure that everything they do is inclusive of people with disabilities. And I know I was in a meeting a few weeks ago where somebody at the state level said they had heard about this program in the news, and they wondered if any accessibility would be considered. And they were thrilled to hear how much work Boston is doing. So definitely a leader, I think, in this space. Like John said, a lot of cities are reenvisioning what their future will be. So this is something that we can be really proud of as a city. So thank you so much, John.

You're very welcome. Thank you, commissioner.

And, of course, kudos to my staff, my architectural access staff. Do a great job on all their work. Okay. So Andrea, can you share my slides, please? And I know, board members, you've heard a lot of information tonight.

My report also has a lot of information, but don't feel like you have to take it all in because we will share the slide deck with you, and you can refer to it at another time. So I will kick it off with some updates from the city of Boston. As I've mentioned before, Boston is celebrating its two hundred and fifty we're celebrating America's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary summer. We have a lot of events happening throughout the city, and the main theme is Boston residents who are revolutionaries going from revolution to revolutionary. So the city's working on social stories and historical markers.

One of the places they're considering for a marker is the Perkins School for the Blind because that's a world famous institution that does great work. And it started in Boston. It's it's located not just outside of Boston, but it certainly has a place in history. So the city will be doing just a handful of historic historical markers through this project, but they will be doing many more in 2030 when Boston celebrates its four hundredth anniversary. So mini grants are available for the markers program through May 11.

So this is something that we hope you will spread information on. You can send you more information and email the you can forward your networks. And my report includes a lot of opportunities for the community to get involved, so we really hope we will spread the word. And then we are working hard to ensure that disability history is represented in Boston February in all kinds of ways. Our ADA date this year will honor disability advocates from the past, present, and future.

Looking at Boston revolutionaries, we certainly know people with disabilities in Boston have really blazed a trail for other parts of the country, and they continue to do this work today. And we are hopeful, and we're seeing young advocates who are ready to take out the torch and lead us into the future. So please let us know if you have any recommendations of revolutionary advocates we can relay. Another City Boston update I would like to give, I'm not sure if how many of you know, but the city does offer a taxi discount coupon. This is a program for residents aged 65 and older and people with disabilities.

You can purchase coupon books for $5, so that's a $10 book for $5, and the limit is two coupon books per month. For a limited time, residents can purchase double the coupons, So they can buy four coupon books a month for $20. This gives them $40 worth of taxi rides. So it's a great discount for people in these categories. An ID is required just to prove residency, and they only take cash.

You can buy these coupons at the age draw commission in Boston City Hall, weekdays while city halls open. You can also purchase them at different sites throughout the neighborhoods, and you can view a public schedule at the online link I've included. And you can also view a list of authorized taxi companies at the link on the slide. And we'll go to the next page. Okay.

I'd like to give some updates on my department. So this year, one of our priorities is really increasing and standardizing ADA title two training for city Boston departments. As I've said a few times tonight, our core work is really making sure other departments know the requirements of the ADA and other federal and state codes for including people with disabilities in their work, whether it's ADA compliance or the access Architectural Access board Board code or Fair Housing. There are a lot of different laws and regulations that impact departments work in regards to people with disabilities. So so far, we've completed and we have ongoing title two training for staff in the Boston Public Library, Boston Center's for Youth and Family, and the Elections Department.

We're also implementing a learning management system, and this is basically a platform. Like, if you've ever done a training online, like your ethics training, it's basically a platform that offers information, and it will give you a quiz. It has graphics and audio available. So it's an interactive way of taking a training. So our training specialist, Sophie, is working with the office of language access and communication to set up this new system so staff can take asynchronous trainings on their own time.

And this is gonna be piloted with the office of neighborhood services and the office of the parking clerk. So as you can see, all the departments that we've started with for ADA title two training are the ones that do the most work with the public. So we really wanna get them up to speed on different ways that they can not only remain in compliance, but also do more of it in compliance because we don't emphasize just meeting minimum requirements. We really wanna make sure departments are fully inclusive. On that note, we've worked specifically with the elections department to address elections and voting access.

And I wanted to do a little bit of a deeper dive on this just for your information because we know that accessibility can be challenging at the polls. So we've completed training of all department staff in the elections commission in City Hall. So they've all been trained in ADA type two compliance. And the trainings were so successful that the staff actually asked for further training in communicating with people with disabilities and etiquette when working with people with disabilities. So that will be coming in the future.

We've also reviewed and updated the elections department training materials on ADA compliance and accessibility. So the ADA title two training that's what we did focused just on general ADA compliance and all interactions and communication, But then the elections department does a specific training on elections for the poll workers and things like that. So we reviewed and updated all those materials. We've also drafted a letter to the secretary of state regarding new technology that we'd like to replace the automatic. And I know that the board has a letter pending too, so we are currently reviewing the letter with our internal departments, our cabinet chief, and intergovernmental relations.

So we will have more information on that in an upcoming week. I wanna pause for a Kyle. I see your hand raised. Is this something you wanna ask me now, or did you

wanna wait? I can I can wait?

Okay. Great. Thank you. And then

Yeah. Okay.

Thanks. And then another thing that we're working on, which is a little bit outside of our main task of ADA title two compliance, but we do do some work on ADA title three, and I wanted to update board members about that. So ADA title three covers places of public accommodation. This is everything from restaurants to businesses to movie theaters, department stores, anything that's open to the public that's not overseen by the government. So some of the work that we do is related to government because our licensing board provides licenses to restaurants and other businesses.

So we do have some ways that we can work on compliance. So what we're doing right now is we're doing kind of a focus on restaurants. Last year, we started an accessibility training for restaurants where they could become certified as a disability inclusive restaurant. And right now, we are working last year, we worked with to increase accessibility. And this is everything from service dogs to accessible tables to ensuring that outdoor dining is accessible.

So we piloted it last year, and then we're also gonna work with Weeb Boston this year, ramping up for their Dine Out Boston week, which is in August. So one thing I want to mention on this, one focus that we're having this year is on accessible tables. As I mentioned earlier, I use a wheelchair, and one thing that frustrates me is when I go into a restaurant, and it's all high top tables. So right out of the current building code only requires 5% of tables to be accessible in restaurants. So we're working with internal city departments and trying to get some input from the businesses of Boston to see how they have thoughts on maybe increasing this percentage or even just doing it proactively.

So stay tuned for more information on that. And we also think this is a great opportunity to re up our outreach on the captions ordinance. As you may remember, our captions ordinance was passed by the city in 2022, and this requires all TVs that are on in places of public accommodations to have captions turned on to let people with disabilities, certain disabilities, deaf who are hard of hearing have access to the audio content if they are not able to hear it. And this could really benefit everybody because as we know, restaurants are really loud. If you're at a gym, sometimes they have music on.

So it's important to be sure that everybody can access the information on TV. So we are gonna be ramping up our outreach on that, and that's one thing we're gonna ask you to help us with as well. And we'll go to the next slide. Okay. So upcoming events in our department.

There are three that I'd like to highlight. And, again, I know this is a lot of information, so we don't have to take it all in tonight. But we spoke to you a few months ago that we started up a new program this year. It's gonna be partnering with the Disability Policy Consortium for a six week civic engagement program called the ABLE Lab, and that stands for Accessible Boston Leadership and Department. It's gonna be starting on May 12.

We did work with 20 Boston residents to train them on advocacy and empowerment for civic issues related to people with disabilities. And we really wanted to target residents who we don't typically work with. We know that we're all advocates. We plugged in the advocacy community, but there are so many residents from underserved neighborhoods, communities of color who aren't always looped in as much as they should be. So we really wanna do some work to make sure that they use their voices to let the city know their needs and how we can work with them to improve access in their needs.

So we're really excited about the the cohort starting, and we'll keep you updated as we move along. Our annual disability community forum is on Tuesday, May 5, from two to 03:30 at Suffolk University Law School and on Zoom. I will be producing the 2025 annual report and highlighting our accomplishments from this year. Mayor Wu will be in attendance along with many other cabinet chiefs, department heads, and city staff who work with the public. So I know that we all sit at the front every year, and the commission members, board members.

So I'm looking forward to your participation this year. I have a few thoughts on some roles for the board this year. You always introduce yourself in your neighborhood and talk about your main priority for access advocacy. So I would love it if you do that again this year. And for our new board members, just to let you know what that is, we ask all of our board members to sort of pick an area of focus that they work on and pay attention to.

So for instance, Zari's at this health care because she works hospital. Kyle works at State House, and he focuses on legislation. So if you're interested in a particular topic, it would be great if you could let us know what that is and then kinda keep tabs on it in the public, like attend meetings about those events in that area, things like that. So I was wondering if board members may want to highlight or read some of the bullets from my annual report related to your priority areas. And if you are interested, I can kind of break out some of these bullets and email them to you directly.

And if you're comfortable, you could read those aloud at the phone. So I will get those out to you next week, and you can let me know by your interest. And then our big signature event every year is ADA Day, and this is gonna be held on Wednesday, July 15 from noon to 2PM. It's gonna be at Cockley Square Park this year because as you may have heard, FIFA is taking over the city for the month of July, and that is the soccer international competition. I don't know a lot about it, but I do know that they'll be on City Hall Plaza for the majority of the summer.

So we're gonna move to Compassvier Park for this year, but we'll be back on the plaza next year. This is our celebration in resource fair where we connect hundreds of disabled residents with disability services and agencies. We usually have over 30 agencies attend and, like I said, hundreds of residents. So we are also going to be launching our updated ADA transition plan, and we will be celebrating the Boston revolutionaries. If you can go to the next slide?

And then my last two slides are some engagement opportunities that we want you to share with the public. And you can literally just forward this report to people if you want, or you can copy and paste. I wanna make it really easy for you to share these opportunities. But these are things that are happening outside of city hall, but there are some social events and places to network with other disabled advocates and also places where you can have an impact. So the DPC is having a community social on May 6 in person.

You can see the details on this slide. It is from six to 07:30 at the Lafayette Center in Boston. There's an r s b RSVP link on the slide also. Another community event is Salsa by Michelle. That is going to be ASL Salsa and Dance Celebration, bringing together disabled and nondisabled dancers for an outdoor event at the Hatch Grove by the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade.

So it's gonna be an immersive event with a dance floor for people who are deaf, blind, deaf blind, and military users. It will have audio description, ASL, and protactile interpreters. It's a collaborative event run through Think Outside the Blocks, which I believe is the old VSA, very special arts.

And I'll I'll be going to that one.

Oh, great. Excellent. So we want to report next month, Kyle. Oh, oh, great. And there's also an artist on the side for that. And then an advocacy opportunity that you can attend and pass on to your networks is MassHealth public hearing. On Monday, May 4 at 9AM, they're gonna discuss upcoming changes to the PCA program. And Za already mentioned this briefly in her report, but just to let you all know that I serve on the PCA workforce council for the state. So I'm one of the, I believe, nine member board. I've been on the council for almost ten over ten years.

And this year, I'm also serving on the collective collective bargaining unit, working with PCA Union and PCAs to come up with a three year contract. And I also serve on the work group, as Zari mentioned, to look at potential cost measures to make the program sustainable. I'm on this work group with several advocates, also members of the union not members. I'm sorry. Union representatives, SEIU, and also people from Boston's senior action council, the Massachusetts ARC, and I believe this one in the group.

But, anyway, we look at ways to make sure that program will last into the future because the PCA program is growing That being said, we're not recommending any specific cuts except for three that are already been proposed, and they are gonna be discussed at the public hearing. So you can give testimony online. There's a link where you can register to testify. You can submit testimony by email or mail, and we encourage you to show up to testify and also spread this information. The cuts that are recommended are basically cutting down mail preparation time, cutting down some time to do paperwork because all the the time sheets are now done online, so it's much quicker than filling out time sheets in person.

And then also limiting overtime to sixty hours. So it's And the house debate is next week. Okay. Great. And if you have information on that, Carol, you can send it out, or I'll put it in the chat. It was easy. Sure.

I can I can I'll I'll send it to Andrea tomorrow?

Okay. And then one final slide. Again, I know it's a lot of information. But another opportunity I talked about last month was the US Access Board meeting in Rhode Island. That is in two weeks on May 5, the same day as our forum, but we wouldn't hold it against you if you wanna attend this.

And if you can't attend, please pass it on to your network. So the more people with disabilities we can get involved in all these events, the better off the community will be. And then also happening on May 12 is a semiannual public forum on accessibility at the T. This is gonna talk about the next generation agreement between the MBTA and the Boston Center for Living. As many of you know, there was a settlement in 2006 between BCIL, Disability Advocates, and MBTA, which mandated accessibility upgrades and improvements, many of which have been completed.

We do a monthly meeting with the office at the team that works on system wide accessibility. So we share a lot of information about short term access improvements during shutdowns and diversions to long term planning for stations and things like that. So I know many of you are involved with the RTAG and other disability advocacy But just wanted to share this meeting in case you hadn't heard of it yet. That is everything on my end, and I'm happy to take questions or comments.

I have a quick question. Going back to title two, on Monday, the Department of Justice released an interim final rule that extended title two obligations for websites for municipalities with more than 50,000 residents by a year, meaning that it was next week you had to be fully compliant with WCAG standards. Now they extended it that a year. Is that changing the way that Boston is approaching it, or are you still trying to be fully compliant by next week?

That is a great question, Carl. And that's a great point. I should have put that in my report, the update. So just to reiterate what Carl said, there was a requirement that all municipalities be in compliance with this WCAG, which is the digital accessibility standards for people with any types of disabilities. Municipalities had to update all of their digital content.

So we actually had a meeting scheduled for today anyway with our department of innovation and technology, and we are continuing the work. I think this reprieve for one year just gives us a little bit more time because, really, those cities were really able to fully meet compliance with this. So I think that the feds heard a lot of feedback that people needed more time. That being said, we certainly continue with the work. Our meeting today outlined priorities,

and then we look for,

you know, improvements. Andrea, I don't know if you wanna give a real summary of the meeting. I know you know all the technical pieces of it.

Sure. Yeah. So our strategy has not changed. We have been working for a while. It's for a city of our size, as I'm sure you can imagine, we have a lot of digital tools even if you just think about our websites.

We have boston.gov, boston police, Boston plans, Boston Public Library, Boston Public Schools, you know, let alone all of our apps like three one one and things like that. So it's a big chunk of tools to examine. And so what has already been done was an inventory of all the tools that would need to be updated or but might need to be that are subject to this regulation. Quick checks of all of them to see which ones need the most work. We're now at a point where we are doing deeper audits of every single tool to identify the specific fixes that definitely need to occur.

So that audit is ongoing, and we will remediate what we find. We're also beginning to put together some cross departmental communications and tools for new things that are being created, new PDFs that get created, right, new social media posts that get created. We're gonna continue to work on rolling out that guidance as a requirement. Our plan is not to, you know, wait till next April to tell all of our social media managers that they should start using alt text. Honestly, we were telling them already.

But we're going to continue, you know, starting today or starting now with this work to talk about them as not just best practices but legal requirements. So that that all work is still ongoing.

Yes. And, Andrea, we received an ADA useful grant for this work. And what was that piece gonna cover?

So that is covering the deep audit of our websites.

Great. And one other important piece is that this requirement will also extend to contracts that we use. So third party vendors who do different websites and platforms that the city uses will also be required to meet these also be required to to be compliant with the city of regulation. Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Carol, for that reminder. Well, any other questions?

I actually have a question about the as since elections are coming up, I have a question about the accessibility of the voting machines, and I know that that's gonna be part of our whole business today. But my question is, why can the city better support voters with sensory, cognitive communication, and mobility disabilities on election day?

Yeah. So this is something that is really a priority for the city of Boston. We made some changes already in the last few years because the state's been involved in working with the city. So last year, I believe it was the first year that they had a direct response system set up. So it used to be that when people had a complaint or an issue, they would just call the elections department or call like, they could call our office or call neighborhood services.

And now there is a dedicated place for them to go so that those issues get resolved in real time and quickly. And so we work with the staff who run that process. It's called the situation rule. So the city already has that infrastructure set up. Andrea, I believe last year was first year. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. Yeah. So there's a dedicated email, dedicated phone number, dedicated system set up.

That being said, we can sort of improve the process, give the people who work in the situation room more information, more tools to answer questions when it comes to people with disabilities. So, again, that's part of the training that we did on ADA Title II compliance. But Sylvia also touched on things related to elections that people might not know. So for instance, I use a wheelchair, and I need assistance following up a ballot. So I can write helper with the paperwork. It's my husband or a friend or PCA, and that is perfectly legal. So someone who works at home may not know that. Maybe say, oh, well, you have to do it by yourself. That's not the case. Another thing we remind people about is service dogs.

We know we all know very well that there they have to be a widowed to every place that the handlers go, but everybody may not know that. So those types of things, we do work on with training. And then also things like the auto lag. We can definitely look to improve training for poll workers on how to use the technology. They already have a very, very robust system of making sure the machines work, setting them up before the elections, testing them.

It's just that, as we all know, it's old old Britain. It isn't always what. So that is the basis of my letter to the secretary of state. And I unfortunately, I don't have anything better to propose. We've done some research with other cities to see if they have anything that works better than the auto market.

We haven't really heard of, like, a magic bullet. So we can leave that to more more people who are more capable of finding that out than I am, but we are really committed to to sending this letter. And the elections commissioner is also on board with us. So as soon as we get our permissions internally, we would like to move forward with that. So all this to say that the city is doing a ton of work to support people with disabilities and also just to improve elections in general because it's you know, the main function of city government is elections. So we want everybody's voice to be heard. We want everybody to get out and vote, and this is one of our priorities of the keeper.

That's great. Does anybody else have any questions? I have one other question, commissioner, and this has to do with the open captioning ordinance.

It

seems like we need to do a lot more in that area. I wonder how can we improve awareness and enforcement of Boston's open captioning ordinance for TVs in public areas.

I

mean, I'm happy to do whatever needs to happen. I just wonder as as a adviser for what how can we support that effort? Yes. That is

a great point. So when the captions ordinance was first passed in 2022, it was December, I believe. So the next year in 2023, we did a ton of outreach. We worked with Lee Boston. We worked with the office of economic opportunity inclusion in City Hall. We worked with H Strong and a bunch of our internal partners, the licensing board, to get the word out to small businesses. Every business that's licensed in Boston got an email from the licensing board. Meet Boston sent an email to all of their businesses involved, which is over 500, I believe. So we did a lot of outreach. We offered training in restaurant accessibility in general, and captions ordinance was included in that.

But I think that after the first year or so, just because of capacity issues, we trailed off in doing the outreach. Even though it's still on our website, we still talk about it when we do outreach. It's still in the restaurant training. But I think we can really ramp it up more. For those of you who don't know, we offer business cards. They're really like wallet sized cards that give all the information, all the captions' ordinance. So if you are in a restaurant, you can give this card to the manager. You don't have to explain the whole thing. You can just say, hey. Did you know this is a requirement?

And for more information, you can check out this this card. So I think we will we need to do that and really just wrap up our efforts. Again, we'll work with Meet Boston again this year, and we will also reach out to our internal partners. Because I we haven't found that it's really, like, reluctance to do it. I think in in full surveys and anecdotal stories we've heard, it's that restaurants just don't and we know that they've faced a lot of economic challenges and staff turnover, so I think we'll just do another ramp up of outreach. So thank you for that. I don't wanna take too much time because I know that we have good business to get to, so I'll wrap it up there if that's okay.

Okay. Thank you. Thanks so much. Alright. Does anybody on the board have anything that they wanna pop up?

I don't see Andrea, do you see any answer that I might be missing? I see Olivia. Olivia. Olivia?

Yeah. This is Olivia. Are we doing our spotlight at this point? Is this kinda where we talk about our special interests?

Yeah. Sure.

Okay. I just wanted to highlight that Requipment, the state's DME reuse program is under threat. Right now, there's an amendment five four eight that's been filed in order to restore 500,000 in funding and it's earmarked. It's the language is really important because if we lose that language, we lose the the the program, basically. Recruitment has provided me personally with with pieces of equipment that I found are vital.

They've been there for hundreds of people in our community.

They've

given I I don't even know how many pieces of equipment throughout the state, And they're a vital safety net for people when they need adaptive equipment and no one else will cover it. So, yeah, amendment five four eight. You can go to tinyurl.com/req in capitals and then advocacy in lowercase for their advocacy tool that will send out support to to the the state to try to get this funding restored.

And I suggest that be done in the next day or two because the hearings start on Monday.

Yes. Olivia, could you put that in the chat so we can actually Absolutely. Thank you so much. Right. I see Paul and then Bursley.

Hi. I just wanna give a shout out to Colleen Flanagan and for a gift of engaging others recently around City Hall and the City Hall campus. She's been introducing different disability groups that she's been giving information and tours to. It's been very informative, not just to me, but to other people in different departments in the city. Carly has such a nice way about her, and her skill set on behalf of the Disability Commission has been really outstanding. And I would really appreciate, Olivia, if you would put that address in the chat so we could all reach out for that also. Thank you.

Leslie?

Hello. Hi. My turn. First, I have three shout outs that I wanted to mention. Last week, Boston University hosted a sign language times AI collaborative, and we came together from and individuals all over the world came together.

And it's collaboration on the best practices at the intersection of sign language and AI. And this is from around the world. Second, the shout out goes to Disney. They're releasing songs that are performed in animation with characters who use sign language. Awesome.

Plus, this project also was developed in conjunction with Deaf West Theater, and there was no AI put into production of those. The intention is to approach the work with deaf representation. And I want my girls to see this. It's important that they see sign language and the music within the Disney umbrella with the logos and the songs and all of that. It's important that they see that.

And the third, I just remembered. Last Saturday on Boylston Street, it was very busy last Saturday with the BAA and the Boston Marathon on Monday. And I would just like to bring up that the fencing there was a lot of fencing blocking the curb side, access to the street, and it really did cause issues for us with the stroller and navigating that. So it is something to be considered with issues next year, and, hopefully, the city of Boston will do a better job at dealing with those curb cuts. And the fencing, even though they're temporary, it's important.

So thank you.

Yeah. Definitely important to make sure we don't we don't limit our peep people who use strollers and military users. So, definitely, we'll take that into consideration and conversation for future. Anyone else has anything they wanna raise?

Or I also wanna highlight one more thing. That's happened on Boyle Boylston Street in Cleridan as well. So I just wanna highlight that. Thank you.

Andrea? I think Paulette

has her hand up.

Just wanted to add that I actually attended the hearing that the folks who talked about the PCAs with the union folks and Boston Center for Independent Living and Mass Senior Action Council. There were about 200 folks that, went to the Governor's Office and to, other various offices to deliver their concerns about that. And we really have to keep that on our radar because some folks are being reduced down to one hour a day worth of service. But people that started out with eight hours are being reduced down to one hour. That's unconscionable.

We have to be aware of that, so that it budget cuts so that the governor knows those budget cuts are not accept acceptable to us.

Some of the budget cuts got restored in the house budget that came out last week. Not all of them, but much of it came back. They didn't agree with the governor's budget recommendation. So the advocacy has made a difference.

Thank you, father, for bringing that up. I was there with you, and it was so exciting to be part of the advocacy movement and, you know, just to see that power and energy within our community. So I appreciate you being there. Alright. Anyone else has anything that they wanna bring up?

Alright. Andrea, would you mind covering the old business?

Yes. Thank you, Zari. So we have a few things under old business. In February, you all took three votes to draft three letters advocacy letters. The first is about voting machines similar to what commissioner was mentioning earlier.

It's a letter asking the secretary of the commonwealth to find other machines. Unfortunately, municipalities can only use the machines that are approved by his office for use. So basically, the letter says, we need another option. Please find one. That one discussion happened in the March meeting to amend it and ask to add a sort of a call to action, not just that he do something, but that he respond to you all and and talk to you all about what what he's gonna do.

So the addition that I added based on that feedback was we, the board, would like to meet with you to discuss our experiences with these machines and what steps your office plans to take. From a practical standpoint, I added a sentence saying, you know, you can come to one of our meetings or contact the disability commission to schedule a meeting with the board. So that one is due for a vote to approve if people want to approve that language.

I make a motion

to approve the letter to send out to the secretary of state's office. So

anyone who's seconded that? I second. Eight. So we have

to pick a vote now.

Oh, this Oh, it's

Sorry. I think you cut out, but I think I heard you say all in favor.

Yeah.

Aye. Aye.

Anyone abstaining?

K.

I can see. The eyes have it. I don't see any nose. Great. The

other two letters, excuse me, that were you voted to draft and are up for a vote or could be, if someone makes a motion, are about two pieces of legislation that are at the state house, both related to service animals. So h two zero six six and s two seven one four. I'll start with, which one is open on my computer first? S two seven one four, an act studying discrimination in public accommodation for individuals with service animals. Carl, as the lead drafter of this letter, would you like to say anything about what's in it or the bill itself?

So I actually co wrote this with senator Joan Lovely. We felt that there are changes to be made in in the discrimination process with MCAD as the main mechanism to enforce service animal laws, but we need to in order to convince the legislative body that we need to change the laws, we needed to study this more. And this commission would have Mass Office on Disability, ARC, DLC, Disability Law Center, Disability Policy Consortium, and the two chairs of the children, families, and persons with disabilities from the house and senate on this commission along with some advocates from the community to study it and then make recommendations to the legislature on how to better enforce service animal law. It's currently in house ways and means, and and so we have until July 31, but now would be a good time to send a letter out. And I don't really have anything more to no.

This is death twenty seven fourteen. Right? It's currently in Senate ways than me. Excuse me. And I think this one has a good shot of being passed, to be honest with you.

So I'd like to make a motion unless I can't I'd like to make a motion to approve this letter to support f twenty seven fourteen and send this out to senate ways and means.

I second the motion.

Oops. Sorry. You're muted. So if you're calling for a vote, we can't hear you. Sorry about that.

Yep. Sorry about that. All those in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Any

noes? Abstentions? Ayes have it. Thank you, sir.

Alright. And one final letter under old business, 2066. Carl?

You want me to talk about this one? I believe this one was written by representative Christine Barber in conjunction with BCIL, Boston Center for Independent Living. And this one would fine shared transportation, meaning Uber and Lyft drivers for not picking up individuals or service animals. This one, I think, will need a little more encouragement to get out of house wagering me because there's some concern about finding drivers that they fear don't make enough of a living. But my my point of view is that if they're not breaking the law and not violating civil rights, then they don't have anything to worry about.

This was based on a law in Australia where once they started finding the drivers, the refusal dropped precipitously. So we have a track record to look at and a model to base off this off of. So this letter just simply said it would allow us to find the drivers for violating the civil rights of service animal users. And I would like to make a motion to send this letter to housewife and me.

Anyone else?

I second.

Thank you, Olivia. All those in favor? Aye. Aye.

Great. I believe you have approved any noes or abstentions. Okay. So the the it has been voted or approved. So are we all set with the

That's everything under old business. We don't have anything officially under new business. I do know there are wheelchair repair bills that were mentioned tonight and that Jerry has mentioned. I also know we're out of time, but if anyone wanted to make new business motions for different letters, new business would be the time to do it.

I I think it wouldn't hurt for us if to send a letter to the legislature on the wheelchair bill. It's gone further than it's ever done before, but it it it needs to get crossed over the finish line. I think it would be I don't know who would draft the letter because I'm not an expert in terms of wheelchair usage and repair bills. But I think would be I think it's something that the commission's advisory board should support absolutely.

Is that a motion, Carl, to draft a letter?

That was a long winded way of saying, let's write a letter. Yeah.

Oh, okay. Yes. We will I will work with Cherry and propose a letter, and we'll send it out for preview.

Wait. I so. We

typically have

that. So can anyone make a motion?

I make a motion that we write

a letter of support for the

wheelchair repair bill. This is Paul. I second.

Thank you. All those are approved. Aye. Any abstentions or noes? Great. So we will submit. We will write the letter and submit for review. Alright. Any other business or any questions from the community?

This is Andrea. Just a note from members of the public. You may have noticed you are not able to unmute yourself. But if you have a question, you can put it in the chat. You can raise your hand using the Zoom raise hand function.

You can also turn on your camera and physically wave at the camera. I'll scroll through to try and find you. You will have two minutes to make your question or comment, and we'll go from there. I don't see anything in the chat. I am scrolling cameras to see if anyone's camera is on physically waving at me. I don't see any Zoom raised hands. Not seeing any comments.

Okay. Do I get to make my favorite motion of the night? I'm sorry. I didn't hear you, Zoe.

I said yes. Go for it. I'd like

to make a motion to adjourn.

Oh, one second.

A second. Oh,

sorry. Richard Andrea. Had, I think, left the meeting at some point and came back, so I didn't re give him ability to unmute himself, but he is a member of the board. So my apologies, Richard. I'm giving you that right now. Do you have anything you'd like to say?

Thank you, Andrea.

Good meeting.

Great. Yeah. Think some

of the Richard, I second that. Great meeting.

Good. I'm glad everybody's happy, and everybody call me this motion. Does anybody wanna second?

I second. All that.

Thank you, Paulette. So I bet everybody will approve that motion. Yeah. Bye bye.

I'm gonna go eat dinner. I hope so.

Alright, everyone. Great meeting. Thank you, everyone.

Bye bye.