Disability Commission Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

The open meeting law requires that I notify the public that this meeting is recorded. Therefore, please be aware that an audio and visual recording of this meeting is being made by Boston City company's company's leading the the company's company's very company's pleased made company's we leadership

you very much, Andrea, and good evening, everyone. Happy to see you all here tonight. My name is Zaria Mirasini. I'm the new chair about about two weeks in two months in of the this break group. And I my physical description, I am a woman with short brown hair.

I'm wearing a red sweater. I am a she, her pronouns, and I'm a female with a disability. I admit, will choose. I live in South Boston, and my interest is in the health care. I work at Mass General Hospital, and I turn it in to Olivia.

Hi. My name is Olivia Richard. I am a resident of Brighton, the Washington Square area, and I am a wheelchair user. And I am a middle aged white female with glasses, short hair, and I'm wearing a blue shirt.

Jerry?

Yes. Thank you, Zari. That pesky mute button again. My name is Jerry Boyd. I am proud to represent West Roxbury. I am a white middle aged male wearing a Boston Center for Independent Living red t shirt, and I am also a wheelchair user.

Thank you, Jerry. Paulette? Good evening, everyone. My name is Paulette Duret. I'm an older black woman wearing glasses, and I have on a a black vest, and I represent the Mattapan area of Boston. I've been on the board about three years.

Thank you, brother. Sam? Hi, everyone. I'm Sam Pastor. I'm a wheelchair user, a white male, wearing a blue shirt, and I live in Dorchester, part of Boston.

Thanks, Sam. Richard?

Thank you, Zeri. Richard Glifsky. I live in Back Bay. I'm an older white man with gray hair. I'm wearing a blue shirt. I'm severely hearing impaired. And my principal or my my most important interest in being on this commission is helping with issues relating to children with disabilities.

Thank you, Richard. Carl? Yes.

My name is Carl Richardson. I am a middle I'm wondering how much longer I can call myself middle aged before I fall into the older category. But I'm a middle aged white guy with salt and pepper hair. I'm wearing a I think it's a white button down. And I live in Brighton, and I identify as a deaf blind individual. And then I have a dual sensory loss of blindness and hearing loss, and I'm a guide dog user. My issues that I like to work on are transportation and web access.

Thank you, Carl. Paul?

Hi. My name is Paul Karen. I live in the West End. I'm a middle aged Caucasian male. I rent represent mental health advocacy. It is Mental Health Awareness Month, which I'd like to give a shout out later about. And live in the West End, work at the Boston Planning Department, and I'm currently wearing a navy blue Laborers Union political action pullover, Letterman's pullover, so to speak. So thank you. Proud to serve on the board.

Thanks, Bob. Leslie?

Hi, everybody. Good evening. This is Wes Ireland. My description is I'm a white man. I'm deaf, and I have two sign language interpreters who will be interpreting, and you'll hear their voices, for my sign language throughout this meeting. And let's see. I, additionally, I'm wearing a black shirt, and I live in the North End. And let's see. I'm my interest areas are related to communication access needs of deaf community.

Okay. Thank you.

Thanks, Liz. Tara? Hi, everyone. My name is

Tara Sothard. I live on the JP Roxbury line. I'm a wheelchair user. In my picture, you will see me wearing glasses, white woman, and a little chihuahua.

Thank you, Tara. Am I missing anyone other than the?

Yes. One of our newest members, Denise.

Denise?

Hi. Good evening, everyone. My name is Denise Martinez Pena. I am a Hispanic woman. I'm wearing a brown vest, and I'm representing, my son who has an IEP at the the Boston Public School. And I also work for Mass Ability DDS, the Disability Determination Services of Massachusetts.

Thank you. Welcome, Denise. Lovely to have you. And commissioner.

Thanks, Ari. Hi, everybody. I'm Kristen McCosh. I'm the disability commissioner and a d a t o two coordinator for the city of Boston. I am a woman with long hair and glasses who has an image of City hall in the background, and I also use a wheelchair.

Thank you very much, commissioner. What's next on the agenda?

Approval of the meeting minutes.

Can

someone approve the minutes? I make a motion to approve. I second. All in. All

in. All All Aye.

Great. Any abstentions? Any noes? No. All approved. Great. Thank you, everyone. And next, we have a presenter. Is that correct, Andrea?

That's correct. From the Boston Transportation Department. Isaac, would you like to share your slides, or would you like me to?

Hey. Yeah. Why don't I go ahead? That way I can click through the slides Great. When I'm ready, if that's alright.

Absolutely. If you wouldn't mind just introducing yourself with a quick quick visual description, then take it away.

Yeah. Sure thing. Hey, everyone. My name is Isaac Prezant. I am a senior traffic engineer with BTD. Just a quick background. I've been with the city for about a year and a half now. Prior to working with the city of Boston, I was the traffic engineer for the city of Newton for a little over six years. Had a had a great experience working with commission on disability there and our ADA coordinator there. So this is a conversation I'm looking forward to having with you folks with all your expertise with the city of Boston.

And I am a relatively young, white Caucasian male. I am wearing a checkered red dress shirt with a collar and glasses and a headset. And I will begin my presentation unless I've missed anything.

All good.

Okay. Very good. Let me shoot

the screen here.

Alright. Okay. Okay. If someone wouldn't mind just confirming they can see presentation, and I'll I'll do my best to audibly walk through it as well.

Yeah. This is Sam. We see it.

Awesome. Thanks, Sam.

You're welcome.

Alright. So I I put together a quick presentation. I I I think I wanted to highlight on some a mixture of sort of big picture items and and some some smaller details, but leave enough time to discuss. I think this subject is is one that can go in a few different directions and with with a lot of different expertise and and opinions. And and I I think it'll be fun to get into all that in a sort of more open dialogue.

So I'll try to quick quickly flip through these. So the title is accessibility and traffic signals, discussing accessible features of traffic signal equipment and pedestrian phasing strategies. Folks are completely welcome to interrupt or bring up some other subjects that I'm happy to get into as well, but I'll I'll get through this quickly as possible. It'll need time. So as far as agendas go, a few things I wanted to touch on.

APS buttons, of course, this group's very familiar with, but I'll get into more in detail. I'll I'll touch base on how we're doing as a BTD department on APS installations. I'll talk about signal retiming. I'll talk about our signal policy and, you know, where we're looking to ensure we're compliant. And I'll just, you know, reassure both now and at the end that, you know, we are committed to this effort overall and and hope to reach a 100% accessibility with our APS installations at at traffic signals citywide.

So starting off with APS implementation, we're currently amidst a three year contract that began in the fiscal year twenty five that still has another year to go that has a dedicated line item for APS installations. So far, through the first two fiscal years, which which the second of which we're coming to the end of, we have had $750,000 to spend. So that's been that's been a great commitment that we enjoy as a department because we, you know, of course, like to get work done and and have the latest and greatest technology out there. So it's it's always nice to have a budget for it, of course. We'll definitely be finding out soon over what funding we have for fiscal year twenty seven, but we definitely anticipate it to continue to be a a very healthy sum that we look forward to spending.

That all said, part of that includes a variety of things. It could be brand new signals that never existed before. It could be locations that have an old signal that needs to be fully reconstructed. Those are locations that will absolutely have some form of engineering design behind and will absolutely have compliant, you know, accessible ramps, APS buttons, and, you know, relevant pedestrian signal infrastructure. In addition to all of that, we do go through retrofitting of APS at locations that are older and and historically have not had it or or maybe have some buttons but not fully.

So that's that's an effort as well that's tied into this funding that that we have. And just wanna finish that point off to ensure folks that we are very much in tune with the latest proag, the latest MUTCD, and we'll continue to follow that. Moving on to some more specific numbers. The City Of Boston has nearly 900 traffic signals, some of which are state jurisdiction, but most of which are, of course, City Of Boston. And at this moment, we're at about 471 intersections signalized intersections that are completely fully equipped with APS buttons.

So so we we still have some some some some steps to go, but we're definitely committed on getting there. I think conversations like these are great and and working with you folks to help us ensure we're prioritizing the right things. But so far, you know, we've been prioritizing high pedestrian volume corridors and and transit stops, school zones, medical facilities, and and and areas that have already been pointed out, especially from folks on this commission or maybe just, you know, all of our constituents that have various visual impairments and and other impairments that that really need the help with these buttons, and and it's definitely our intention to prioritize those locations and continue to do so. Moving on to talk a little bit about signal retiming. So this is a big effort that's been going on for many years where we retime good number of signals each year.

And and we go through this process where we aren't just totally tuned into how do we optimize the vehicle movement, but we wanna ensure that we're being mindful of pedestrian, bicycle, and and transit movement as well. So that starts with ensuring we have the latest and greatest data, vehicle, pedestrian, and bicycle counts. We wanna ensure that we have the latest crash data. That's working with the police. That's working with EMS to ensure that we're being informed by, you know, what's happening out at these locations and, of course, field observations as well.

We have a traffic software modeling tool that we use, Synchro. We work with a consultant on this. We take the opportunity to ensure all the clearance calculations are redone for, you know, what what needs to be compliant with the latest MUTCD. And we also go through an effort to essentially run these numbers through our signal policy to help guide some of the decisions, and and I'll I'll go through some of that in some of the upcoming slides as well. Yeah.

I'll move on to that. Yep. As an offshoot of the overall retiming effort, there are some components of that that are very pedestrian signal timing focused and the intention to have the timing and and phasing that we choose, you know, be better than we found it. So that first includes understanding that we need to be mindful of what our overall cycle lengths are. It's really easy to bump up the cycle length to try to process the most amount of vehicles, but that causes unnecessary delay for pedestrians.

So we we try to find the right balance and and always aiming to shorten the cycle length when possible. I do see a hand. I'm happy to stop here or continue farther. Open to suggestions.

I'll defer to the chair. Zari, do you have a preference for holding questions?

Can we hold off and do other questions at the end?

Yeah. Let's do that. Alright. I'll try to try to get through these last few quickly. In addition to overall cycle length, we have formalized a pet delay calculation that we post as part of our our our standards online for consultants to use as well.

We we wanna try to quantify that that pedestrian delay experience when we're putting together our analysis and reports. And this also includes, you know, prioritizing the lock time. I think, fortunately, the signal technology is improving. There are ways to leverage longer crossing opportunities with the signal controllers that that we're we're putting out there. That includes things like being able to to hold the walk haul longer, especially if it has a a corresponding phase that has a lot of green time and there's a safe crossing that can be had without any conflicts, there's no reason for that walk time to not be longer.

Getting into our policy. Our our policy has quite quite a lot in it. I pulled out one table that we use very often where it's a way for us to take in the vehicle and pedestrian counts that that we have gotten and understand, you know, what might be a reasonable fit. Is that concurrent pedestrian phasing? Is that concurrent phasing with an LPI, a leading pedestrian interval?

Or is that exclusive pedestrian phasing? So all this is to say that, you know, our our approach intention is is to have a data driven guidance for selecting pedestrian phasing strategy. It's a policy that is very much a living document. What I'm showing you now is our active policy that was last updated in 2023, and we are in the middle of updating the policy as we continue to learn more. There are other notable strategies in in that document.

You know, we often consider protecting left turn phasing, protecting right turn phasing, flashing yellow arrow indications to to indicate, you know, some abundance of caution. There are locations that we put the pedestrian phase in recall, so it's essentially cycling all day. And there are locations, you know, for example, like a preschool or other areas with vulnerable users where we might wanna lower the walking speed when we do our clearance calculation. So that might mean a result of having not just necessarily long walk, but a longer flashing don't walk and don't walk to make sure folks have cleared the crossing. Up on the screen now, we put together a quick estimate of of of the types of pedestrian phasing we have in the city.

Just to quickly run through it, we're at about 63% exclusive, 32% concurrent, and about 5% concurrent in LPI. What this doesn't quite capture and we are working on is hybrid phasing. So a lot of these locations with exclusive pedestrian phasing have that exclusive pedestrian phase, of course, within the cycle that folks can use, but there are other concurrent there might be other concurrent crossing opportunities within the cycle. For instance, if the main Street has you know, gives an opportunity for a side street to also receive a walk time, especially if there isn't any conflict or the conflicting turns are very low, that'll be an example where we implement that as well. So that'll be a hybrid location.

So that that's something we're working on to get get a little bit more of a accurate representation, but this is sort of a a quick picture highlight of of where we're at from a distribution standpoint. And from there, I'll I'll kick it off to questions and and just reassure folks that, you know, we're we're committed to improving our processes and and just overall at our traffic signals getting to a 100% APS installations.

Thank you so much, Isaac.

Yeah.

I think we have a couple of questions here. First one, miss Carl. Carl, you wanna ask a question?

Yeah. So first of all, thank you for your presentation. So I, as a person who have a dual sensory loss of both hand and vision, I can't see or hear traffic coming. Okay? So when I cross so first of all, the vibrating APSs are a godsend because I will put my hand on them, and when they vibrate, I will go. That brings so that that's crucial. Keep putting in the vibrating buttons. That I rely on those every day several times a day. Mhmm. Okay?

My second this brings me to my second thing. Do we really need concurrent signal? Because if I feel it vibrating, I'm crossing because I can't hear or see traffic from the other side because I can't hear it and I can't see it. So if I feel the vibrations, I'm crossing. Why do we have concurrent signals? Because I feel that creates a danger for people who are blind, deaf blind, that sort of thing. And are we faking them out? Hopefully. Yeah.

I think so this that's a great question. Thank you, Carl. That is an very interesting debate, not just in Boston, but countrywide. You know, how do we choose the pedestrian phasing? In our instance, the policy that we use that is very much data driven has really come out of the fact that so much of this has to be context dependent.

It's very difficult to select one solution for every location. You know, in the city of Boston, we have locations that downtown that operate very differently than locations more so in the neighborhood near a school. And, you know, as we work through our analysis, we're we're constantly reminded of of the need to really consider everything on a case by case basis. That all said

How would you expect the consumer to know that then, case by case, if there's no standardization?

So I would say as as dense admittedly dense as our policy can be, you know, that is something that we put out so that, you know, we can we can point to something. It's something that helps guide those case by case decisions. Of course, we have to use our engineering judgment. We have to take in feedback from folks like yourself. And that might be a reason why there are a lot of locations that, from a pure numbers standpoint, might operate okay concurrently, but they are actually running exclusively because we feel like that's a better fit for that location.

What we've also learned from just looking at the crash data, there's there is not a clear pattern of of where you see crashes sort of in relation to what pedestrian phasing there is. In looking at some of the latest Vision Zero portal data, we actually saw just from a percentage distribution standpoint, more pedestrian crashes at exclusive locations. And and it's tough to understand why. Right? Like, you would think, yeah.

Like, if if they have their own phase, you know, how could it be that there are these crashes going on? And I think that's just a reminder to really look at everything case by case. I think where we have downtown locations, folks just refuse to wait. If if we have to drive up the cycle length and the delay is really long for pedestrians, folks just refuse to wait. And and sometimes the right answer is to make them wait. So I think, you know, all that is to say, I'm happy to see LPIs are increasing more and more. I think that is

You're happy to see what again? I didn't hear that last one.

The leading pedestrian intervals are are growing and growing. Okay. As a good

But you're set but you're you're asking the cars and the pedestrians to go at the same time. So it doesn't matter what the length of the pedestrian I'm gonna cross when the button starts to vibrate.

Yeah. Absolutely. And I think what the leading pedestrian interval does is it allows you to have that initial time where vehicles are still held on red, and you have the walk indication to go out and establish your position in the crossing. It improves the visibility to you. Okay. And and oftentimes, you know, we we try to get it to the point where so MUTCD gives a guide of about, like, three to seven second head start. Oftentimes, end up somewhere in, like, the four to six range, and the idea is that is enough time to get folks roughly halfway across.

Able-bodied folks. Yes. That's my

Fair enough. Yeah. Absolutely. Fair enough. So, yeah, it's look. It it's a conversation that will probably go on for a long time, and and your points are absolutely well taken. I think, you know, this is why we want your input. I I I think there are areas that are absolutely fitting of an of an exclusive pedestrian pedestrian phase. Phase. And as you saw, the the majority of the city is.

Alright. Thank you very much. Did you snap out a question?

Yeah. Thanks, Isaac, for your presentation. Have you ever just wanted to test the size for for folks with wheelchair in mind?

Sorry. Could you repeat that?

Have you ever wanted to use the people in wheelchair to test to see if they if they can get across the street within four seconds? I think you said four seconds is the max. Right?

No. So so so seven seconds is the max, and that and that's just for the LPI. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I think to to try to answer your question, the MUTCD talks about a three and a half foot per second walking speed, but it very clearly points out that you can and should go down to something like three feet per second where you know there are especially vulnerable users. You know, that could be, you know, preschool, senior center, you know, various reasons. There's there's really nothing stopping us from increasing the time. Yeah.

Again, very context dependent and and where the feedback goes a long way.

Yeah. Because I was just thinking if someone someone's chair stops and should fall by itself, you're gonna get stuck. So yeah.

That's a great point. Thanks, Sam.

Sam had mentioned maybe using people in wheelchairs to test it.

Yeah. Thanks, That's a good point. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's that's that's a great point. Yeah. Gosh. I'd I'd love to get more of that in our public engagement process. I've you know, I I I've definitely had folks in in wheelchairs join for things like road safety audits, that experience is is just so valuable. So, you know, whether it's meeting you for a location that's maybe not on our radar or joining us for public engagement on a project that has kicked off, that that sounds great to to get your input on that.

Awesome. Thanks. I I think for that matter, I think based on what Carl was talking about earlier, it would be great to have some sort of a pilot or something where we can actually physically participate and give you feedback because it's difficult to really give you feedback when we don't really know our person real life.

So Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes we just need to take a moment to sort of stand out there together on the sidewalk for five minutes and just take it all in before we even try crossing the street. You know, we can talk about, you know, what I'm seeing from the phasing versus how you've experienced it in the past and and then go ahead and actually try crossing together. Yeah. That all makes sense. I would ask that we try to prioritize locations and and, you start from the important ones. But I think I I think that's a a good thing to try to do together. Absolutely.

Nice. Leslie?

Yeah. Hi. Thank you, Isaac, for your presentation. My thoughts are actually very similar to what Carl has raised because as someone who sort of represents the sensory disability community as well, And also, I'm a deaf person, but I'm a sighted deaf person. So I can My concern that I see is that because sometimes if I'm walking, walking, sometimes I'm driving. Sometimes I'm a pedestrian, sometimes I'm actually a driver. I have to be very vigilant with, you know, my surroundings in traffic. One thing that is an ongoing issue that really bothers me sorry. Excuse me. I've just been interrupted by something.

My daughter is just trying to get my attention. So my concern for some time has been if I'm driving or walking, whether I'm a driver or a pedestrian, with the light, sometimes if there's an ambulance or there's some other type of alternate light, something that's interrupting the normal flow of the pattern, I I don't see it because I don't hear it coming. So I'm just wondering about whether the traffic light has

any sort of flashing mechanism that could actually warn of some emergency situation that's happening where you have an ambulance coming through, that someone who can't hear won't hear it. There's any other type

of warning for people who are crossing the traffic. It And as you're crossing in the middle, you've got this situation that you're not aware of. So I think maybe maybe in some of the areas where you see a lot more emergency vehicles, like near the hospitals or in other areas. Over on Cambridge Street, I'm thinking near Mass General Hospital, that particular area, and Cambridge Street, there needs to be maybe some improvements because sometimes, often, you'll see emergency vehicles coming through that area that disrupt the normal flow of traffic patterning. And so I don't know if there's any other cities, other, you know, any other areas that might be on your list for maybe addressing this emergency the emergency situation?

Yeah. That that's a great question. I think what's tough is there may not be a lot of guidance in our industry on this. What I will say is there is emergency vehicle preemption, which has always been a bit of a challenge in the city of Boston. You might see locations that have, like, a strobe on top of the signal mast arm, and that strobe will start flashing.

And that's an indication that an emergency vehicle with its lights on has been picked up by the signal and is changing the phasing to go green for the approach that the emergency vehicle is coming from. That is a lot easier said than done in a very congested dense area where the just given how how many vehicles there are that are queued up, there doesn't end up being a great benefit to that emergency vehicle to get that preemption. I think, historically, the sense that I have gotten is that the Boston emergency services have not been particularly keen on that emergency vehicle preemption for those reasons. But I, again, think that it's likely very warranted in some areas. But that that flashing beacon, you know, isn't something that I would expect folks to really pick up on, and there's not a lot of guidance on that.

Interesting question. I I will be very interested to see sort of where technology evolves with that.

Jerry? Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much, Isaac.

Thanks, Wes. Jerry?

Hi, Isaac. Thanks so much for your presentation. Along the lines of what some what folks have been saying earlier, what are public engagement current public engagement opportunities for the community to give you feedback around different different crossings and that they might find dangerous or or whatnot?

Yeah. That's a good question. So I think, first and foremost, there's always three one one. But for a location that has a particular project in the works where there is this very formal public engagement process that we would like to conduct. I'm thinking, like, in Andrew Square, which we just held a kickoff public meeting on last week.

I'm thinking of, like, Bennington, Saratoga, which we're gonna have one coming up on. There was various ones for, like, Cummins Highway. Some of these projects are following a more of a standard public engagement process where there's, like, a virtual kickoff, and then there are some focus group meetings out on-site. We're relying, you know, pretty heavily on, you know, newsletters and city councilors and neighborhood groups to get the word out on things like that and posting it on the the city of Boston website. But I think our process, especially with you folks, should and could improve, especially if we have a location that's not particularly on our radar as far as, like, a capital project goes, but it's something that maybe we can tackle more in house, as they say, through just our operating means.

So, yeah, maybe one idea could be if this group has an opportunity to discuss what areas you might wanna prioritize, Maybe we can jump back on a meeting some months from now or whatever the right timeline is and and set something

up. Great. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you so much, Isaac.

Mhmm.

Does anyone else have any questions before we move on with the agenda? I don't see I don't believe I see anyone. Andrea, am I missing anyone?

I'm not seeing any hands. No.

K. Alright. Well, thank you so much, Isaac, and I believe Andrea has offered us to, you know, use the tracker, and they are happy to follow-up with BTD to get something coordinated. So we'll be we'll be working on this, and then everybody know what's what's gonna happen next. Alright. So I believe next on the agenda is my report. So if I'm here, you wouldn't mind pulling up my slides.

Just wanted to wish you folks a a good evening. I'll I'll head out if that's alright.

Thank you so much. Yes.

Cheers.

Thank you, Thank you, Andrea. Can you move to the next slide? Was gonna talk more about this, but I just wanted to personally recognize mental health awareness month, May's mental health awareness. This year's theme is more of the days together, which I think resonates with most of us. And I just wanted to the opportunity to recognize the importance of mental health and well-being and encourage all of us, friends, community members, to participate in awareness activities.

I actually included a website from MHA. So if you're interested in learning more, please visit their website. And before I move beyond that, I want to see if Paul has anything else that he would like.

Oh, yes. Thank you, Zeri. I just have a few things that I would like to share. Mental Health Awareness Month began in 1949, and it started as Mental Health America. And during the month of May, it affiliates and organization, Interests in Mental Health, conduct a number of activities based on different themes each year, as Zari just spoke about.

And I'm just reading a few things. The purpose of Mental Health Awareness Month is to raise awareness and educate the public about mental illness, such as the close to twenty percent of Americans who have depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar, and the realities living with these conditions. During the month of May, there's a few events that are coming up. It's NAMI Walk, Massachusetts, May 16, 9AM, a one mile walk at Boston Common for mental health advocacy, including a fun zone, live music and exhibits. Mental health art workshops are being offered at the East Boston Branch Library, first weekly art sessions to support mental health.

Art Heels workshops will be at Codman Square branch of the Boston Public Library, May 29 at 12PM, and Take Care Together is May 16 at 12:30PM, a wellness event at the SoHa Health and Wellness featuring Pilates Therapist Conversations and a gift bag. Those were just a few things that had come to mind, and I want to just give a shout out to Zari and her good work at the Mass General Hospital in recognizing Mental Health Awareness Month. Thank you.

Thank you, Paul. And those are great activities you just recommended. If there is a way to put those links in the chat so people can visit their sites and participate, that would be wonderful.

Thank you.

Alright. Next slide, please. So in addition to mental health awareness month, On May 21, we also recognized the Global Accessibility Awareness Month. This is a chance to raise awareness around digital accessibility and inclusion and a chance to advocate for accessible websites, apps, documents. And I've included a website so that we can learn more about the global accessibility awareness.

I also wanna say that when I look at these two awareness months, mental health awareness and also global accessibility, I see a lot of intersectionality between the the two because digital accessibility has really evolved and has helped a lot of people with disabilities participate in more events, especially for those individuals with non visible disabilities and mental health conditions. So I really want to make sure that we always when we advocate for these things, we keep in mind how impactful accessibility, digital accessibility is for many of us with a variety of disabilities. So, yeah, so May 21 is GAA Day. Next slide, please. All right.

Related to that, I don't know if you are aware, but was a health and human services issued a final rule for extending compliance deadlines for web and app accessibility. Originally, it was meant to be all organizations that had 15 plus or 15 plus employees were obligated to ensure that all of their websites and apps were fully accessible by 05/11/2026. However, they've now extended it to 05/11/2027 and except for organizations that have less than 15 employees. And that late line is 05/10/2028. Now, the thing that I really wanna highlight in this is that although there is a lot of concerns with this extension.

You know, I know that for all hospitals in GA, you know, people are saying, oh, well, we got another year. Well, that's great because, you know, we wanna make sure we we identify all the gaps and fix all our apps. However, we feel strongly that the government is pushing for this extension so that they can eventually water it down and not really fully make everything an obligation to make all of our apps and websites accessible. But I want to remind everyone that under ADA, we are still obligated to provide full access for all individuals with disabilities. So even though they have this extension, by no means I'm giving green light at MGH for people to take a nap for a year and not do anything.

So I just wanted to kind of raise that awareness as well. Next slide. Heart So heart type hike. Meeting, there's a meeting for the ride. It's hosted by VCIL. It's gonna be on Wednesday, May 27 from two to four. It's in person on the 2nd Floor Board Board Room of Tampa Plaza. So if you can attend and provide your feedback, I'm sure it would be much appreciated. I'm a ride user myself, so I'll probably be there. Next slide.

Sorry. What did they want feedback on? They just they're they wanna hear community feedback about their their system. I think Jerry is already on our tag. Jerry, do you have any more information on it?

Yes, Zari. And, actually, the the meeting is gonna be at 10 Park Plaza. I think the slide is correct. The slide is correct. You mentioned BCIL Temple Place, so I just wanna make sure folks aren't confused.

The meeting is at 10 Park Plaza, and you can register on the TEA for the meeting, either that or by calling DCIO, I'm sure. What the staff that run the ride opposite transportation access is gonna have they're under their vehicle procurement phase right now to to to secure the next generation of ride vehicles, and they're gonna have have examples of of vehicles that are being considered in that procurement on-site. That's why the meeting is only on-site only. So it's a great opportunity for members of the community to take a look at the vehicles and give input as to as to what they think and how accessible we feel they are. So

Thank you very much, Jerry.

You're welcome.

Next slide? And finally, I believe this is my last slide. I believe you must most of us have heard by now from VCIL that PCA services are in danger of the the senate is actually has proposed to cut budgets by 68,000,000, which will impact about fifty thousand people with disabilities that rely on PCA services. And advocates are urging residents to contact state senators in support of the budget protection. I've included a QR code, which is not showing up on this, but Andrea can include it in the chat.

So we are hoping you can contact your representatives by Thursday, which is tomorrow, and let them know how important it is to not cut these budgets because, obviously, a lot of people with disabilities are now able to live in a community independently. And these budget cuts will not only impact, you know, paying our PCAs, but also may impact people living in the community independently with the help of PCAs.

This is Carl. Can I add to that, Barry? Sure. Of course. So the summit debate actually starts next week. So you need to get in touch with your senators. Like Zeri said, tomorrow, Friday the latest, because after Friday, it'll be too late. They'll be debating it on the floor, and they'll be consolidating amendments and everything because they already know the amount they can spend, so they have to pick and choose which amendment. So definitely get in touch with them by tomorrow if you can if this is important to you, Friday the latest, because the Sunday they start from Monday and Tuesday.

Thank you so much for. Yeah. If you can.

You're breaking up a little. Sorry. Did you say, does anyone have questions?

Yes. Yes.

I'm not seeing any hands or anything in the chat.

Great. So next is commissioner's report. Great. Thank you, Zari. Before I get into my slides, I just wanted to thank you very much, Sari, for bringing up Mental Health Awareness Month.

And, Paul, I wanted to recognize you for all your work on it. And one thing I wanted to let the board members know is that, you know, the city doesn't do direct services as far as, like, mental health care and things like that. But one way we take your input and incorporate it into our work is things like quiet spaces and spaces for people who may be overstimulated. We try to work those into into our talking points when we work with other departments. So recently, there was a job fair for Boston Public School students, ages, I think, 18 to 22 or 24.

Or it's for Boston youth. And this year, I believe it was for the first time this year, they had a quiet space for people who maybe would be overstimulated from the crowds and things like that. So I just wanna let the board know that we do take your input seriously, and we try to translate it into programs and policies however we can. And that's just one small way. But if there were a teen or young adult who wanted to attend the job fair but was worried about, you know, hyper stimulation, this is a way that can access their they can access the fair and their physical needs, mental health needs as well.

So thank you for always keeping that top of mind. And we're gonna pull up my slide deck. So my report is a little bit shorter this month because last month, I felt like I gave a really long report, and people didn't have enough time to do shout outs. So I really want to hear everybody's shout outs. So it's a little bit shorter this this month, but we will go over it. Here we go. Okay. So for my department updates, I just had a couple. And first is the disability community forum. I believe that's

the

first page. Yep. So as you all know, our community forum was last week, and I really wanna thank all the board members who attended and let those of you know who who weren't able to attend that we really missed your presence. It was a great turnout as always. People asked a lot of good questions.

Mayor Wu attended along with our cabinet chief of equity inclusion, lots of city staff, lots of members of the public. It was a hybrid event again on Zoom and in person. We didn't, unfortunately, have time to answer all the questions. But as we do every year, we are putting together a document of q and a for everything we didn't have time to answer. So my staff and I are all contributing to this document, and we will release it by the May.

We'll put it in our newsletter, and we'll also, you know, it on social media to let people know that they can always take a look at it. And the event is also recorded, and it should be up on YouTube. If it's not up now, it should be up soon. Maybe Colleen or Andrew could put it in the chat if it is posted already. And then also at the community forum, I released my annual report, which talked about all the work that my office did over the last year, and it is linked in this report for your review.

And you can also find it on our website. So, again, thank you for all who attended it. We really, really value your presence, and I think you set a great example for people in the room to know that people with disabilities really do have a seat at the table. I mean, you set it right there next to the mayor. She listens to you and to us directly, so it is a great opportunity. And just in my work with different disability commissions across the country, not a lot of cities have that direct access to the mayor. So I'm really glad that our city allows that, and I'm glad that you all take advantage of it to let your opinions know. Okay. My second update is on the AIVA Lab, which is accessible Boston leadership and empowerment. This is a new program that we started.

It actually kicked off last night. We had some extra money in our budget, so we worked with a consultant, the DPC, to develop a six week training curriculum on civic engagement, advocacy, and empowerment. And we're hosting it for 15 Boston residents, 15 to 18. I'm not sure what total number will be. But we really wanted to try to identify residents who we hadn't worked with before, especially from underserved neighborhoods and communities of color, because we know that they've had disparate access to local government, and we wanna make sure that they have a seat at the table.

We wanna help them find their voices and make sure that they know that city government works for them, so we want to hear from them. We wanna know what's working and what's not working. What supports do they need? What do the neighborhoods need? So it's gonna be six weeks of kind of a deep dive into how do you get your voice heard in city government. Things like going to a city council meeting or working with a neighborhood liaison or coming to our advisory board, maybe join a different board on commission. So I'm sorry. I was actually gonna invite you to speak at one of the sessions if you're available, and I'll follow-up about that afterwards. But it was a great event last night. I was really happy because I didn't know any of the advocates who attended, so that means we're reaching new people.

So I will I'll keep you updated as the training progresses. Next slide. And then for events, as you all may know, our ADA day is coming up again in July. It's gonna be Wednesday, July 15 from twelve to two. It will be held at the newly renovated Kopaloo Square Park this year because City Hall Plaza is taken up with FIFA and a lot of other Boston events.

It's the two hundred fiftieth anniversary. We have tall ships coming to Boston, and, of course, we have FIFA. So we are gonna relocate to Kaplow Square Park just for this year. It's our annual celebration of the ADA. We have a large resource and information fair with 30 to 40 organizations who staff tables.

Our theme this year is disabled Boston revolutionaries, past, present, and future. So as we get a little bit closer to planning, as we start planning the event, I'll reach out to board members to try to get your input on some people who we may wanna think about honoring for their work in Boston. Mayor Wu always speaks at our event along with other city leaders and someone that we recognize for their outstanding work over the past year. So, of course, we all we want you all to join us. It's a live event only.

It really doesn't lend itself to being a hybrid event because it's outdoors, and it's really meant for people to come together and socialize and have some free food and enjoy some music and give out our famous ADA Day T shirts. So hoping we have good weather and hoping you'll all attend. And on that note, the July advisory board meeting was scheduled for the same evening. So I believe the executive committee discussed pulling it down. Andrea, do you wanna mention that?

Yep. The executive committee elected to cancel that meeting, and so the event will be coming off your calendar shortly. The cancellation notice will still be posted on boston.gov. Like, the event will still exist because we don't want people to think they just can't find it. So you'll still be able to find the event on boston.gov if that's where you get the Zoom link each month. It'll just say, you know, canceled real big. So we hope we can see you out on Kaplow Plaza.

Yeah. And our bylaw or actually, I think it's the state designation for disability commissions requires 10 meetings a year. So we'll still be meeting that threshold because we have a combination November and December meeting, and then the other months of the year, we'll just skip July. And then my last update is on the ADA transition plan. As many of you know, the ADA required municipalities to make to do a self evaluation and ADA transition plan.

It was first passed in 1990. They gave cities three years to do it. So Boston, we completed ours in 1993. And it it was somewhat helpful at the time, but now it's very outdated. So instead of doing a report, we 're actually going to build an interface, which will be a web page, a dynamic in a dynamic web page that will be have the data updated on the back end.

So, hopefully, we'll always be current. We'll have images, maps, tables, and clickable links. So if you wanna know access of, like, a certain library, you can just click on the library. It will tell you if the front door is accessible, if there's an accessible bathroom, the basic accessibility features of these city owned buildings. There's also a curb ramps map that talks about the accessible features of curb ramps. We have an accessible parking space map that shows parking spaces downtown and commercial areas. We don't put the neighborhood parking spaces on that map just because we wanna preserve those for residents. So they those aren't listed on the map. But we're really excited about this transition plan. And we've been working on it for a few years because it's a lot to figure out.

There are so many data sources that we're working with, so to try to get them all into one place and make it manageable and understandable for the public and also fun. You know, we want people to want to to look at it. So we should be revealing that by ADA Day. And once we do, we can definitely present it at the advisory board so you can see any information you wanna know about accessibility in Boston. You can just pull up this web page and hopefully get your information.

A piece of this was we the city and the Department of Innovation and Technology launched a challenge for different departments to do a poster session on some emerging innovate innovative projects. So we actually used a piece of this as our innovation project. We did a poster session on our parks map. Andrea worked with an intern one summer a couple years ago to map out accessible features in parks that aren't captured by the parks department. Like, the parks department will put if it's, like, basically accessible, but Andrea had the intern look at features like accessible play spaces and step free entrances and all these things that will make a difference to people who are just trying to go out and about.

So we put that on the map, and also we put the parking spaces map on our poster session. So we actually won one of the four awards from city departments. So really proud that we're doing this work, and I'm looking forward to reviewing it this summer. So that's everything I want to report on. The only other thing I wanted to mention was last month, I gave a whole slide, actually two slides, on some upcoming opportunities that people could get involved in.

And I wanna do that every month. I didn't get to do it this month just because we've had a really crazy, busy few weeks. But during the shoutouts, if anybody did go to any of the events that I mentioned, I would love to hear about it. Some of the events I mentioned were the salsa class on the hot show, and there was a mass held listening session. There was an MBTA meeting. I think it was actually today. I had planned to go, but it just couldn't fit into my schedule. And then the US Access Board hearing in Rhode Island, which Patricia went to and Sarah. So, actually, Patricia, maybe when you give your report, you could just mention that briefly as well. But I'm looking forward to people's shout outs.

And, again, like I said, if anybody went to any of the things that I mentioned, I'd love to hear about it and happy to take any questions.

Jerry? I have a question. Jerry asked a question. Sure.

Commissioner, thank you for your report. And just to clarify, I believe the the meeting the semiannual meeting was what you mentioned last last month with the t and the new agreement between BCIL and. That meeting was actually yesterday yesterday afternoon, and I was able to to listen in. It was a hybrid meeting, and I was able to to listen in, you know, for a few minutes on the on the meeting.

They just

SWA system wide accessibility just updated, you know, some of their accomplishments and and upcoming accessibility projects. It's always it's always great to hear that the work that they they do. And and that office came directly out of the out of the lawsuit that was settled between the T and BCIL. And and I think it's it's probably one of the best things that that came out of that lawsuit because because I think they do really, really great work on keeping accessibility front front and center at the t. So so wasn't able to attend yesterday. So

I wanted to attend myself, but I had to testify at city council yesterday in support of our budget because it's budget season in the city. So

Shoot. Sure.

Unfortunately, I missed it, but I'm I'm glad you were able to tune it a little bit.

You don't need your salary, commissioner. Don't worry about it.

Yeah. Everybody's under the gun this year. We know that. I also something else that Zari mentioned about the PCA program cuts. I also serve on the state PCA workforce council, and I'm also on a separate group designated by the legislature PCA working group, which was tasked with recommending certain cuts or really trying to uphold the sustainability of the PCA program.

So they asked us to look for a $100,000,000 in savings, which we did not identify. We identified, like, $32,000,000 in savings, and that's why they're currently still looking for 68,000,000 because the group was very adamant that we were not interested in looking at a $100,000,000 because we don't wanna look at any. But if we didn't make any recommendations, we feared that MassHealth would just make the recommendations for us. So we looked at some places where we could cut back a little bit, and we identified $32,000,000 in savings. But, again, anybody who do advocacy to keep the rest of the funding, more power to you. Please please do contact your legislator legislators about that.

Thank you, commissioner. I think we are all on board with that, and we don't wanna see any money cut, budget cuts, but I'm glad that at least we were able to cut it down to 68,000,000 instead of 100. So let's see how much more impact they'll have by calling and advocating. Alright. Thank you so much, commissioner. I believe you said Patricia has a report.

Yes. Hi, everyone. My name is Patricia Mendez. I'm the director of architectural access for the Disabilities Commission. I have short dark hair and glasses, and I'm going to give a brief architectural access report.

I'm going to share screen. And you'll see my screen? Thank you. Yes. Go ahead. Okay.

Oh.

Oh, I went too far. Okay. I'm going to talk a little bit about accessory dwelling units. They're called ADUs in Boston. An accessory dwelling unit is a smaller independent housing unit that can be installed in a home or in a backyard.

And ADUs are great because they can allow homeowners to add a unit into their their home, and that is very beneficial to their family and to their older adults and also to younger relatives. And it provides convenient lower cost, and it's an income generating housing option. Their city has an ADU guidebook in the website that can help homeowners understand what's possible for their properties. So I invite you to check out the ADU guidebook. What I wanna do today is to invite you to City Hall Plaza because the mayor the mayor's office of housing has contracted with a company called the Backyard ADU to bring a showroom model to City Hall Plaza.

And I'm gonna show you a brief video that Colleen took this morning. So thank you, Colleen. And after these slides, I'm gonna show you the the date and the times for the the tours and the schedule for showing up. Okay. So I'm going to show you everything here. And at the entrance, it has a sculpture around.

Observation is wild.

And the video showing entering the living room area with a small table and a couple of windows.

And

then we enter the kitchen on the right on the left. Sorry. And the wash and dry on the right. And then we continue into the bathroom, and we see another window, the toilet, and also a shower. That's that's a brief video.

So here is the schedule. It started on Tuesday, May 12, and it's going until this Sunday, May 17. And it's open from nine to five each day, and they will provide tours. And also at twelve from twelve to noon, they'll provide information about designing, permitting, and financing the ADUs in Boston. Additionally, on Saturday, May 16, the mayor's office on housing will host an ADU resource fair on Seahaw Plaza at twelve from twelve noon to 5PM.

And that is the end of my report. Oh, I was gonna talk about the Rhode Island UX access town hall. But, yeah, just briefly. So Sarah Leon and myself went to Rhode Island to represent the Disabilities Commission, the city of Boston into a town hall organized by the US Access Board. And we brought in commissioner Makosh's statement in which we thank the US Access Board to coming to New England and acknowledge all the the good the good work. Alright. That's it. Thank you all. I'll take any questions.

Thank you, Patricia. I think I see a couple comments from this from commissioner and the others from Jerry. The commissioner just said, accessible shower with a exclamation mark. And Jerry is asking, where the graph bars in the bathroom area?

Oh, no. The bathroom is not, like, an accessible unit, like group two. So it doesn't require grab bars. However, these showers have reinforcement. So if you were if you needed to install grab bars, you you are able to install that.

Richard, did you have a question?

I I do, Zary. Thank you. Patricia, thank you. My question about ADUs is ADUs is this. I I recall it's been a controversial issue at times, especially for those who use the extra units to rent to others as opposed to using for their families. Has that been addressed here? In other words, does this program allow for that, or does it disallow for that?

From the the language there, it says that income how is it word? How did I how is it worded? Like, income generating. So I think that is allowed, but I could look into it and confirm.

That's very interesting.

As long as it meets all the permitting, I believe it is allowed, Richard, but we will all confirm.

Yeah. That's interesting, commissioner, because it was a while ago, but I remember this being very controversial. And I think the hospitality industry wasn't too thrilled about it, But I don't know where it stands today.

I remember when the program first rolled out in Boston, because there were very few housing units that were able to do it. Because at first, it had to be just within the footprint of the house. So it really be like an attic or a basement because we gave a lot of input on accessibility because it's really tough to get accessibility in an attic or a basement. And then they were looking at expanding it to, like, an outside something like that. So it's definitely evolved as a program.

So we have this model unit on City Hall Plaza right now, which is what we really wanted to highlight. But we can definitely get back to you with all program parameters because you're right. They definitely there were a lot of restrictions at first. And we had, like, grant money available, and, like, nobody was really applying for them because it was very restrictive. But I think they did they did expand the parameters on that, but we will definitely confirm.

Thank you.

Okay. Great. So next on the agenda, shout outs members. If anybody has anything they'd like to share, please share. Anyone wants to hang up anything that's on their mind?

This is Carl.

Go ahead, Carl.

So last month at last month's meeting, commissioner McCost mentioned an event called silent rhythms, which took place on the house shell, and it was where a deaf blind woman named Carrie Thompson who has Usher syndrome has a nonprofit where she teaches people the enjoyment of salsa, if that's your sort of thing. I decided to go and try it out. And it was interesting to watch her communicate and teach because she uses protactile sign sign and ASL and oral communication. But she did. She taught a bunch of people with disabilities how to salsa dance, and we even had joggers jogging by, stop and join us right on the floor and salsa dance with us.

For the deaf community, we had a vendor there that provided haptic vibrating vent so that when the music was going, they could feel the beat of the music with the haptic vibrating devices within the vent. They were AFL interpreters provided for the deaf. They were tactile interpreters provided for deaf blind, and they were they even did live audio description for those who were blind and low vision in the audience. So it was a true a true and I think we even had a wheelchair user at ten. So it was a truly accessible event that took place on the hotel.

It was nice to see. I, however, chose not to solve the dance. I just sat down, clapped, and supported everybody. But much to my wife's chagrin because she was hoping to get me on the floor, but I told her when we got married that she was never gonna dance with me. So but it was a fun event.

Well, I was just gonna say, I would have brought tickets to watch you salsa.

Well But you didn't You're gonna save a lot of money.

Oh, well, thank you very much, Carl. Jerry?

Yes. Thank you, Zari. My shout out is just to to really thank the the commissioner and staff and the members of of this party for the wonderful community forum event that happened on the fifth. I thought it was a great event. Very well you know, the turnout was fantastic as as we've mentioned.

And what what I was really happy about was this year, the mayor after her remarks, the mayor actually sat with us. And so it it really brought brought up to me the the mantra or or the a living example of the mantra, nothing about us without us. You know, it really showed that the mayor considers us as part of her team, and and that was very, very impressive and very heartwarming. And like I said, it was great to see so many members of the community, and I was able to meet a few folks after the meeting. And in fact, there was one young gentleman, I believe, the autism spectrum, he spoke up.

He asked a question,

you

know, during the public portion of the meeting, and and he had friends there who who weren't expecting him to to speak. And it was it just goes to show how empowering, you know, to to have a voice like that can be. And, I mean, you could see it on his face. He was thrilled that that he was able to to get his question addressed, and it was great. It was really, really a great event. So

And can I just add to that, Jerry? I appreciate you saying that. And as I said in my remarks earlier that, you know, not every city gives people that opportunity, and we really want to get you all a seat at the table. That's the point of this board. And that's why I really encourage you to to use the power that you've been given in your appointments. I know you all do a great job with letter writing and things like that. But, like, even the presentation we had earlier, it sounds like board members have, like, serious concerns about the concurrent signals. Mhmm. So, you know, Andrea said we can work on organizing, like, a site visit so we can show the engineers what what that concerns us. So I I really encourage you to keep doing those sorts of things because it literally makes a difference.

Like I said, when we give input, we make systemic changes like the the quiet spaces I mentioned earlier. We had one at the community forum this year. I think we had one last year too. That was the first time. But when we build in those things, like, it just makes the events more accessible for everybody. So keep up the good work. And anytime you can have an impact, please take advantage of it because it does make a difference.

Thank you, commissioner. I thought it was a wonderful event too. I second everything Jerry just said, and it was wonderful to have the mayor stay most of the meeting. I think that, for me anyway as an individual with a disability, made me feel like I really felt very much heard and respected, and seen. So I wanna relay that message to the mayor, if possible, how much we all appreciated her being there and staying throughout the event.

So thanks, commissioner. And I believe Wesley had a question or a shout out.

Yes. As part of my shout out, I'm not sure if this is the right time in the agenda for the shout out or under old business. So I just thought I would go ahead and include it here in the shout out. There was an article that was just released about two weeks ago from an agency called Axis. It's a news outlet, and they gave a review of how Boston has been doing with their captioning for individuals and how that's working.

And I know that the commissioner gave a presentation about that in some of her report last month. And the article said that many restaurants and stores in Boston are actually ignoring the captioning ordinance. And their research has found that a total of a 108 places, more than half of them are not in compliance with the ordinance. And I think that I would mention this because it is an issue, and it's something that we should discuss and look at a solution moving forward.

Well, mean, this new is there a risk is there a way for us I'm sure commissioner will be able to respond to this. Is there a way to track where these are not applied or in violations so that we can follow-up?

I can just give a little bit more info unless Wes wants to comment on that.

Oh, commissioner. Go ahead, please.

Yeah. So I was

just thinking. I was thinking. No. No. It's a it's a

good point, Wes. When the ordinance first passed a few years ago now, we did a big push at first to get the word out. But then just because we, you know, we get busy with the everyday work, we we haven't really revisited another push to get the word out. But I do think this is good timing because we have so many events coming up this summer. We have like, there's gonna be street closures, and there's gonna be events, and there's gonna be so much happening in Boston that we wanna make sure that all the TVs are in compliance so that people can get the information they need.

So we are definitely gonna ramp the campaign back up. I think what we found when people are not or businesses are not in compliance, it's mainly lack of awareness. We know, like, restaurants have a lot of staff turnover. It's it's a very civil thing to be in compliance with. So we really think if we can raise awareness, that that that will go a long way towards helping with compliance.

We did work with Meet Boston back a couple years ago to get training off restaurants. It is part of our restaurant training, which we will be doing again this summer. So I think we're gonna with Colleen, we can make a plan, like an outreach plan, on how we're gonna work with the businesses to get the word out again. And we'll definitely keep the board updated on that. But I really think it's just we did a big push, and then we we didn't go back and revisit it. But now is a good time to do it. And I think, Andrea, did we order more business cards for the public?

Excuse me. This is Andrea. We still have quite a few. We will be doing another order as they run out, but we still have quite a few. So if you would like, these are sort of did you know cards. When they say, did you know? This is the law. You know, here's a link to more information. It has the contact information for the commission, and the size of a business card. So you can fit them in your wallet or your purse or your pocket. DM me here if you'd like us to mail you some. Or next time you're at City Hall, come on up to nine six seven, and we're happy to hand them out.

Great. Anyone else wanna bring up anything? Okay. I don't see any hands up. So any new business? I know I don't have anything. Anyone else? No? Okay. So we'll move on to old business.

And there are two things that we wanna cover tonight. One was the wheelchair repair bill support letter with which Jerry helped draft, and the second was the autonomous vehicle discussion that we had last day. So we have a letter that I believe Andrea sent out to everyone. And, hopefully, everyone had a chance to review it. And do we wanna to does anyone wanna make a motion? This is Carl.

Yes, ma'am. Make a motion to send out the letter to approve the letter and send it out.

This is Jerry. I second.

Thank you, Jerry and Carl. Everyone is everyone at all? Can you raise your hand if you approve? Aye. Aye. Aye. You. And any abstentions?

And this is the farthest the wheelchair repair bill has ever done in the legislature, so let let's keep positive thoughts going. Yes. Absolutely. This

is Jerry. I'm sorry. Do you have a sense as to as to if there's momentum for it?

I think so. Yeah. I really do think it has a decent shot this time. God, it's been it's been in the legislature since I started. It's been there forever. It's been

there forever.

Ever gone.

Yes. There is a are a involved with it, but they they call themselves unstuck. It's a group of people who are wheelchair users from disability consortium. And if you're interested, they're actually the ones that really, really have been getting the word out, and they meet monthly. And if you're interested in joining, please let me know, and I can connect you with the person that organizes their meeting every month. It's called the unstuck, just in case you are interested in joining. Alright. Great. So we have one down. One more to go.

Autonomous vehicles discussion. So we had the discussion. Was there any follow ups? Is there a letter that we need to make a motion on?

No. I think Andrea is gonna lead the discussion to start with.

Yeah. So this is Andrea. Let me pin myself. We have been talking about this as a board for quite some time. As you may recall, we had a presentation in December from a professor of the technology who spoke about, you know, what's the state of the technology, what can these autonomous vehicles do, how many companies are there, that kind of thing.

Then last month, we had a presentation from a policy perspective from another city where these are deployed to understand the the challenges and positives they've seen in managing these these vehicles. So the reason I've heard from several of you one on one as well as in the executive committee meeting, and what I'm hearing from everyone is that this is an excellent opportunity for the board to have an input on something from the ground up from the very beginning. So commissioner Makash talks quite a bit about how Uber and Lyft just started operating in the city of Boston without really rules or regulations, and they had no, you know, wheelchair accessible vehicles in their fleet. And it took negotiating with them to to build that access in kind of after the fact, after they were already here in the presence. Autonomous vehicles have not deployed in the city of Boston yet with riders, they are here mapping, but they've not deployed with riders, people in the city, at city council, the mayor, I know at the state as well, our policymakers are trying to figure out what regulations coders should look like, if they should be allowed, if they should not.

And so one thing that this reminds me of is quite a number of years ago, some of you may remember that the little sidewalk robots, like the coolers on wheels that wanted to do like food deliveries on college campuses, the city was considering act allowing them to operate. And the department came to the board and asked, you know, here's the the application that we wanna make them fill out. What are we missing? Wes, you mentioned to them making them have both lights and sounds on the the cooler robots so that they would be, you know, alerting people to their presence. Former member Elizabeth Dean Clower had flagged that one of those robots had, like, broken down on a curb ramp in another city.

And so suggested that the city require those those companies to have a plan to remove barriers from the sidewalk within like an hour or ninety minutes. I forget what the suggestion was. But all that to say, this is a similar opportunity for the board to say as representatives of the disability community, if robo taxis are gonna be allowed in Boston, here's what we think you, mayor Wu, city councilors, you know, state legislators, if you wanna do a couple different things, there's opportunity here to talk about what your concerns are, your hopes are, what you think should or should not be required, of these vehicles. So that's my pitch. But, Carl, I think you, had some thoughts as well.

How did you get I do have quite a few thoughts. First of all, Waymo, you heard Andrea mention that Uber and Lyft came to town, and they never really had wheelchair accessible fleet. That also is a biggest supporter I am of Waymo, a concern to you that Waymo does not have any wheelchair accessible vehicles. So one thing I would put in the recommendation is they require and I don't know how, but we require wheelchair accessible vehicles to have a ramp and maybe a self locking mechanism for people in wheelchair. And I don't know whether we do it by percentage or what what, but I I do think we need to make sure that this time wheelchair users are not forgotten because I was speaking to one the other day and said he actually has less options now than he did ten years ago when they had accessible taxi cabs.

So that's one thing I would include in the document. Second thing is communication for the deaf and hard of hearing. Anything that's said out loud audibly in the car or communication, Is it transcribed? Is it ASL? I don't know.

I would I would make sure that anything that has sound and audio that the deaf and hard of hearing can access, whether it be on the app or on the monitor in the car or something. Third thing is digital accessibility for the blind and visually impaired, whether it be through the app or haptic feedback or or screen reader capability. We need to consider that. I would even go as far as cognitive ability. Do we we keep the interfaces simple so people who may have intellectual or hidden disabilities can also access the vehicle?

Those are just some of the and I might suggest that we start off as a pilot allowing autonomous vehicles in the city with, you know, maybe people from Boston Transportation Department, you know, Department of Motor Vehicles, people from the community. New Jersey just actually passed a law last night saying a lot of what I'm just saying. So, Andrea, why don't you write down New Jersey senate passed law so we can look at that as a template? I haven't had a chance to research it completely. But those are some of the things that I would include, but I'd love to hear feedback from others.

I just wanna make sure that we do it before it comes because Waymo, Zeus, which is owned by Amazon, Tesla, which is owned by Elon Musk, they all have significant resources. And if they can't do it, nobody can. So I think I and they they're gonna wanna come into our city. So I think I think maybe us getting ahead of the game might be a good thing. Thank you.

Jeremy?

Zara, did you say I could speak? You you went out a little bit, Zara. So

Yeah. That's Jared. Go ahead.

Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Carl. I think you hit the nail on the head. I seem to recall during the during our discussions with the mayor prior to the prior to the community forum, she's saying that there may that there is there's a there's a working group either being formed or or already formed, and I believe that the commissioner said that she would like you to be on that working group.

So I don't know, Andrea, if you know any more about it or you can find out more about it and so so you can let let us know when when they're meeting and and make sure that we have representation at on that on that group, that would be great.

Yeah. Thanks, Jerry. That group will have four members of the disability community on it. Carl, Kristen, a representative from BCIL who I believe is also blind or low vision, and Mara. Sullivan. Arc of Massachusetts. Sullivan. Thank you. Mara Sullivan from the Arc of Massachusetts.

So that had they they haven't started meeting yet?

Correct.

No. But, Jerry, I think we don't know when the meetings are gonna start because I think it's complicated because there's labor interest involved and other things. And there's many communities they're trying to align to be involved in this. So so I think the purpose of this discussion is to us to create some sort of work and document, not only for the meetings, but to send to the mayor ahead of time. Is that Sure. Yeah.

This is Wes. I would suggest that we actually add the timing interface with the data to make sure it blocks special events and has the messages that we require so we can avoid going through specific areas when they have large populations of people.

Wes, can you expand? I'm not sure I under this is Carl. I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say.

For example, in the presentation, I saw the woman from Texas had shown that the police officer was able to signal traffic and prevent one of the areas for being accessed. And the automated vehicle went right through that access point. And so we just need to have a real time delay or something that prevents that. And with the AV access just to make sure that everybody in that area knows and they can avoid the area and prevent the car from going into that area.

Okay. Does anybody else have any thought? Oh, well, I guess I wanna hear from the commission. Are we all okay with putting together this document? Because I know there are probably some that have some hesitation.

I think commissioner may have left. Is that correct?

Yes. Commissioner Mikash had to leave. I don't know, Carl, if you meant departmental commission or board No. No. I meant

I'm sorry. I meant commission members. I'm I apologize. Commission members. Do do any of us have any hesitation about doing this creating this document? Advisory board members. I'm sorry. Let me use the correct term. The current advisory board members that are on this call tonight.

Hello? I'd like to look at it and react to it.

That's great. Yes. You should do that.

Because we're throwing out a lot of different ideas about it, and I wanna see what it looks like in its final draft form.

I think that's very fair.

Carl, were you also asking for a general sense of the board about whether the board is comfortable allowing a pilot, saying that Yeah. That the board is comfortable with a pilot. Or allowing

a document to be created, I think, more.

Okay.

Because I it's coming, guys. It's coming whether we want it or not. I personally want it, but it's coming. And I think I think we are will tell you, we I do have discussions with Amazon, Waymo, and and even Tesla because I'm trying to and I'm just critical. And some of them don't wanna do wheelchair accessible vehicles on because they're like, it's hard to engineer.

It costs money. But if we put it in there and we put it in our rules and regs in the law, other thing I will let you know is we have time to work on this because although there are bills currently in the Massachusetts legislature regarding the autonomous vehicles, I have it on very, very good authority that they will not pass this session. And the next session doesn't even start till January. So the bills are gonna have to be reintroduced and start all over again. So we have at least a year. I'm not saying I wanna take a year to work on this document, but we have time to put in the right rules and regulations or thoughts and ideas for others to look at.

So this is Jerry. Just so I'm clear, what Carl, you're suggesting that we work on as a as a advisory board is a is a document that can be presented to the mayor and her team saying this is what we you know, in you know, recognizing that autonomous vehicles aren't coming, but these are these are things that we we think should be included in the regulations before they're allowed to or as they're allowed to come to and operate in the city of Boston?

Function to that effect. Yes.

K. I support that. Certainly.

Yeah. I think most of us will support it. And I said it would be good to take a look at the final draft for input.

Okay. So does anybody wanna I volunteer myself to start. Does anybody wanna work on it with me? Or

Carl, this is Jerry. I'd be happy to work on it with you.

Okay. Great.

Because I wanna make sure that we have enough representation from the the wheeled mobility device community as well.

So Absolutely. And that's the perspective I can offer. Thanks.

And, actually, Carl, it would be great if you could get summer presentation from the developmental disabilities, ASD, mental health group so that they are comfortable as well with the idea. Maybe we can kind of work with everybody and see if we can identify individuals who are interested in participating. Okay. Great. Alright.

I believe that that's all the old business we have. Alright. So is there are there any questions from community members or any anything that anyone wants to raise?

This is Andrea. I don't believe we have any members of the public on the call right now. We do have a board member who joined a little bit late and didn't get to say hi. I don't know if you want Juan Carlos to say hello. But other than that, it looks like it's all departmental staff and board members.

You're breaking up. Finals?

No.

Well, glad you could join us.

Yeah. Sorry about that one, Carlos.

Next time you get the first first take at introductions. So alright.

Do I get the first infamous motion?

I was just gonna ask you, would you mind making a motion, please?

No. I don't mind at all, especially since I have to be somewhere by 08:00. So I make a motion to adjourn.

I second. You, everybody. Good

night. Neighbor. Hi.