Transcript Victor Calise

MR CALISE:  Thank you everyone for having me here, it's a pleasure to be part of the National Disability Authority and this conference, having the Minister here today reflects the great work that they are doing and hearing the Minister's commitment to housing and more importantly to people with disabilities it's extraordinary, so thank you Minister for being here, I appreciate that.  And thank you National Disability Authority for the work that you are doing here in your country, because it reflects on the world.

So New York City, let's see ‑‑ that's the mayor of New York City and every time the mayor challenges me to go places he writes a letter and he wrote a greeting I'm going to read to you now.  It says, "Dear friends, it is with great pleasure to send greetings to everyone attending the National Disability Authority's conference 2016, "Ordinary Homes Ordinary Places."  My administration is working hard to make New York City the most accessible city in the world.  And thanks to the leadership of Commissioner Victor Calise and the Mayor's Office for people with disabilities, we are transforming our buildings, infrastructure and public spaces to ensure that they can easily be accessed by all people.  The National Disability Authority shares this commitment and has improved the quality of life for many in Ireland.  And through its Centre for Excellence in Universal Design it is promoting design practices that are equally inclusive and safe for everyone.  This year's conference will focus on the development and latest advancements in the field of design, technology and construction that are creating more accessible and independent housing options for those living with disabilities.  And I am proud to applaud everyone in attendance for helping ensure that no‑one is left behind.  On half of the city of New York I offer my best wishes for a productive and informative conference, sincerely Bill de Blasio, mayor."

[APPLAUSE]

That's the mayor and I having a conversation on accessibility.  He is committed to making sure that people with disabilities are represented in our city.  He has an aggressive agenda at that, to help everyone, and disability is certainly one of his top things.

I'm going to show a video right now, it isn't audio described, but the version that we'll have on the internet that the NDA will put up, will be the accessible version, it will be audio described, so I'll describe it a little bit.  It's a person in a wheelchair trying to get around New York City, he runs into lots of obstacles and transportation and through our city.

It's a good reflection of what happens in New York City for a person using a wheelchair and how difficult the environment is.  So it's a good thing for everybody to see, so I'm going to play that in a second.

(Video plays)  "TAXI DRIVER:  I can't pick you up buddy, I can't do it."

MR CALISE:  So there are ‑‑ that was a person with a disability in a wheelchair, trying to get around New York City through our local subway and he had a gift for his daughter, and she was playing and waiting for him the whole time, he arrived when she fell asleep, because getting around the city on public transportation isn't always the easiest.

So recognising that we have put together a report called Accessible NYC.  It is the state of people with disabilities in New York City and it addresses lots of areas that deal with public transportation, that deal with education, that deal with access into the city.

It's very important because I have a slide up here right now that shows that there are 948,000 people with disabilities living in New York City.  Those are the people that have disclosed their disability.  We know it's way over a million and it's important to be able to address these needs throughout the city.

As I talked about Accessible NYC, it's a report we have put together and our office has been around since 1972, it started off as the Mayor's Office of the Handicapped, in 1990 it was changed to the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities and in 2008 the mayor at the time, Mayor Bloomberg, raised the office to a commissioner.

So it's equal across the board for me as the Commissioner to be able to advocate for accessibility across every agency throughout New York City.

We originally set up to be a resource for people, but we do a lot more than that and this is the first time that we came out with this report to hold ourselves accountable and make sure that we are addressing the needs of disabilities in New York City.

We're talking about wheelchair accessible cabs, employment for people with disabilities because we know that is one of the biggest issues in our communities, to have people with disabilities employed, access into city government and education, making sure people with disabilities are educated and transferring from middle school to high school and into the workplace or into college, that's important for us.

Because we know that people with disabilities are either unemployed or under‑employed.  Of the total people that are employed in New York City, close to 4 million, only 136,000 are people with disabilities and our population is huge.

One of the big things that we held responsible for our Accessible NYC is something called inclusive design guidelines, this is the second edition, we are actually releasing it here in Ireland today, so it's our international debut.

It really is a voluntary way for designers to build and think about how they can build and go over and beyond the Americans With Disabilities Act codes and standards.

It looks at lots of different things and we call it inclusive design guidelines, because it includes everybody.

I have some examples of the IDG, we'll get to those in a bit, but I want to talk about housing.  Housing is a important.  For people with disabilities in lots of areas, because as the Minister said, it provides ways of life and a roof over our head and a way to be part of our community and our neighbourhoods.  And our mayor has committed to building 200,000 units of affordable housing, that's big in New York City with the density that we have.

With that, 7% of that is accessible for people with disabilities.  Now that's great because we have to find a way to get people with disabilities into this accessible affordable housing.  And that 7% consists of 5% for mobility and 2% for hearing and digital.

Now what's great about my office is that we sit and chair the New York City building code.  So everything that happens in New York City in the building code has to have accessibility in there.  Accessibility is important and we chair that part and the Americans with Disabilities Act set guidelines, set the standards, but we try to go over and beyond that, so within our building code we ensure that accessibility is never regressed on and it continues to be built and improved on.

Now I talked about housing, and people with disabilities needs to get housing and that's how come the 7% are there.  But we need to find a streamlined system to get that, so we've created a website called Housing Connect that allows people with disabilities to participate in this online lottery, in the past we would have a system where every application was included and they would find a person with a disability and maybe get that person an apartment, but now with Housing Connect we streamline the system, those applications are put into a disability pool and then we're able to draw eligible candidates.  So Housing Connect really streamlines that process and makes it easier for people with disabilities to get those apartments.

Now we want to talk about the inclusive design guidelines, and how we are using that.  Well we want to make sure that developers, when they are building things, to think about how we make things beyond accessibility.  Now a slide that I have up now is something in the inclusive design guidelines that have closets aligned on top of each other, because as you age in place or need to make renovations in your apartment or house, you have these aligned closets that can be converted into an elevator to get from floor to floor, this is some of the ways that we're thinking about getting accessibility into homes.

This slide happens to be a turning radius inside an apartment or a house and generally the Americans with Disability Act guidelines say it is has to be 60 inch turning radius, we're thinking of reconfiguring that and not having a galley kitchen, but more of a U shape and having Universal Design, that's 72 inches wide that can encompass lots of different wheelchairs and scooters.

We're really thinking about multi‑purpose bathing compartments, making sure you have a transfer shower and also walk in tubs because people need to be able to get into those as well.

Automation is a great thing, happening more and more, automation in our toilets and automation in our sinks, which continue to grow and grow.  But that automation generally doesn't work for a person with a disabilitie, we roll into that sink, so being able to streamline that and making that better for people with disabilities with something we're committed to in IDGs.

This all relates to our neighbourhoods and how we operate in our neighbourhoods.  We have active design guidelines throughout our city, talks about lots of different ways, it's a guide for community groups and changing the sidewalk experience.  Within our communities we have made sure that parks are within a ten‑minute walking distance from somebody's house, that's important, we understand the importance of green space and making sure that green space is accessible.

We have lots of naturally occurring retirement communities, otherwise known as NORCs throughout the city, people grow old in the city and want to maintain the independence and that's how come we've worked with the Department for Ageing and we've come up with the ageing in place guidelines for build owners, making sure that they are including ageing populations in their guidelines, so we work with the Department for Ageing on that.

We want to make sure that New York City is age‑friendly.  Lots of different ways we're doing that with the New York Academy of Medicine, having ageing in place guidelines like I mentioned earlier and having an age friendly New York.

Another slide I have upright now is benches that we are putting up around the city, because we understand that the ageing population can't walk those long distances and will need breaks in between, so we have city benches that our Department of Transportation is installing all around the city.  We are also making sure that bus stops have these as well.  So people can rest as they move along and be able to get and navigate our city easier.

A slide that I have up now is a playground.  I worked for the parks department for six years and when I looked at playground design I found lots of different things within the playground design.  One was that it wasn't accessible enough and when it was accessible they only had ramp systems one way.  As I watched kids, typically developed kids, get through the space, they were able to walk through every space, but a person with a disability wasn't able, they'd have to go up one ramp and come down the same one and not experience that in its entirety, so we have come up with ways to have elevated equipment that allows children with disabilities to move through that space, when they're moving through the space to have all types of equipment, ground level equipment and elevated equipment that they are able to get to as well.

Because playgrounds are important, not only for people and children with disabilities, but also for the parent with a disability and that grandmother and grandfather that want to be able to bring their child and participate in play with their loved ones.

A slide I have up now is a great way that we are showing inclusive parks and this is in Central Park, in Manhattan, and the great part about it is you're able to move through all of these spaces that are in there.

Now we talk about moving through the space, again there's Laurelton West playground, another slide that I have, it talks about ‑‑ it shows in its conception to the actual ‑‑ from planning to its conception and the great thing about this is it showed accessible benches, elevated play equipment and how everything is fully integrated into this environment.

Lots of park features like I mentioned, I have a slide that talks about ground level play features that allows kids with disabilities to be able to play with the ground level play features.  Another slide is accessible beaches, we have 14 miles of beaches in our city, and all of them need to be accessible.  So we have put these blue mats that go onto the sand and allow, over time it becomes a hard, firm stable surface and allows people with disabilities to participate on the beach.  We hold lots of different things on the mat, yoga and exercising for people with disabilities and every population.

And what we tend to see is this is the most travelled path, the most desired path of travel because people with disabilities and without disabilities want a nice easy way to get onto the beach.

We have lots of community gardens and this slide shows paths of travel through that, along with elevated community gardens so people don't have to bend over, they roll or sit with their walkers and be able to do gardening at a higher level instead of bending.

The city, with our Department of Transportation, have redesigned the way New York City looks for lots of different reasons.  The mayor has put together a programme called vision zero and vision zero is to cut down on traffic deaths in New York City and we put lots of bike lanes to promote exercise and cut down on emissions.

We have open plazas, 42nd Street used to be a maze of cars and roads coming through, now it's more of an open plaza with two lanes of traffic through it and it provides lots of accessibility.  But with accessibility you want to make sure that there are accessible tables and through our plazas we have accessible tables now, with lots of toe and knee clearance because neighbourhoods are important and being able to engage in that environment is important for people with disabilities.

The slide I have up from our inclusive design guidelines is really talking about automatic receptacles, making sure the garbage is accessible for people with disabilities and having the automation is important and we're producing these in the park systems throughout the city.

Another slide I have up is talking about ways that we cross the street.  One of the things that I saw here in Ireland is all your accessible pedestrian signals that allow people with visual disabilities to cross the street in an effective way.  We are also looking at ways to do that, we're adding more, but not as much as they are here in Ireland.  But we're looking at ways of embedding LED lights in the crosswalks that allow for people with disabilities to cross the streets in a more efficient way.

When we're looking at the accessible pedestrian signals we're finding, through the inclusive design guidelines, to have Braille within them so it gives a person with a visual disability a way to cross that street better.

And one of the things that we noticed throughout our city and I noticed here in Ireland as well, there's always one step into a store, that one step is very frustrating and can be a mountain for someone to get into.

So there are lots of challenges to eliminating that one step, so we've come up with something called convertible walkways, I'm going to show a video, if I can get some help here putting that up, that would be great.  There's no sound to it, but it's showing how a person with a disability can actually operate this convertible walkway and it rises, it allows automation for the doors to go in, so I'm going to show that video now.

So there's an elevated step here and it converts down into a ramp.  And it done by automation of pushing the button, it allows a person with a disability to get in and out in an effective way.  We want to install this throughout business improvement districts in the city, so people with disabilities can get in a store.

And sometimes it's done electrically, but if it breaks for some reason, right now the slide is showing that it can be done manually.  It goes up and down manually as well.

Automatic doors for ambulatory use, if somebody is walking that wants to use it, they can easily get in and it works for people with disabilities as well, it's universal in design or inclusive as we like to say.  You can operate the doors manually, it doesn't always have to be depending on that, so if anyone wants to use it without using the ramp they can as well.

They have safety features and pressure sensitive mats, so if somebody does step on it while it's in operation it will not go down, we haven't seen anything like this in the world, but there's a company in California that has come up with this concept, they have ‑‑ and they have submersible pumps in it, so when it does rain and snow there's a way that they can deploy water and things that do get in there, so it will keep from freezing and everything that's there, because we do have a lot of inclement weather.

It automatically returns to the original position on its own.  So like I mentioned, we haven't seen much of this in the world, it is a concept that we have included in the inclusive design guidelines that we'll be studying through our business improvement districts, and we're going to have at least two of them installed within one of our Grand Avenue improvement districts in the next year.

So everything that we are actually doing is guided not only by our office and everything that the city is doing, but advocates.  Advocates have a big say in the things that are happening in our community, and we meet with advocates daily to talk about what we can do to make the city accessible.

Sometimes advocates are vocal, they raise a lot of awareness throughout the city and when push comes to shove we do what we need to.  But we don't want it to be that way, so what we do is we have advocate groups, we meet, we discuss, find out ways to include accessibility in everything that the city has to offer.

I will continue to talk through some of the other information that we do have.  As we talk about accessibility, we have redesigned our pay phones, there's been lots of pay phones on our streets, and they don't work anymore, they're old, so what we've come up with is something called Link NYC and it is a way to include pay phones to be accessible in ‑‑ I'm just trying to get the words out in a way that, without the slide, to describe it.

It's a big screen and with that screen we're able to have pay phones that are in there.  Well they aren't pay phones anymore, you are allowed to make calls for free.  People can navigate maps throughout the city and we wanted to make sure that accessibility was certainly built into those designs, so we made sure that there's ways that you can talk into the system and it talks back to you, have loop systems in there, so it's really important to be able to build for that, and we put out our request for proposal, made sure that those designs were in there from the beginning and then we were able to produce a product that worked well for people as a whole.  People with mobility disabilities, people with visual disabilities and people with hearing disabilities.

One of the things that we have certainly been talking about in there is beacon technology and beacon technology, what it is, it's basically connects your phone via Bluetooth and it gives you information about where you are.  There's lots of GPS systems that people with visual disabilities use, but sometimes there's GPS systems fail, but beacon technology doesn't, it's very localised and with our Link NYC these are re‑inventing the pay phone there will be 10,000 links throughout the city and will allow a person with a visual disability travel from link to link and these beacon technologies, it's really cutting edge and we're looking to install that within our streets to be able to get people with visual disabilities around our city in a more efficient way.

We've talked about things that are in the inclusive design guidelines to improve neighbourhoods to make sure we have tactile strips to improve walks, which is important, people with disabilities can get around with not only beacon technology, but with tactile walkways, it's something we're testing right now in one of the safe cities that we have in New York City.  It allows us to do a test run, be able to get that moving.

We have also, looking at ways to improve transportation with 50% of our cabs will be, yellow cabs will be accessible by the year 2020, will allow people with disabilities to get around in a more efficient way.  Also we are increasing our ferries, we are having a ferry service by the year 2017 that will be all accessible for people with disabilities, they will have accessible bathrooms, accessible gangways, hearing loops inside them, accessible spaces to get around and it's going to go all the way from Rockaway, Queens, all the way to the Bronx, that will hit all five boroughs and will be the price after metro card, which is $2.75.

We are also proposing a streetcar system fully accessible for people with disabilities and we have something coming up called the New York Wheel that will be on Staten Island, it's a wheel that will rise about 100 storeys, it will allow people with disabilities to get on it and be able to view the city in its entirety.

And as we try to make New York City the most accessible city in the world we need partners, and partners are in city government.  We talked about employment, how important it is for people with disabilities, but also making sure that education is there and educating our government.

Our government needs to be educated and we have been doing that by placing disability service facilitators in all of our key agencies, like the Department of Transportation, Department of Parks, Department of Design and Construction, Department for the Ageing, so these disability service facilitators act as a conduit to our office and more importantly to the agency to make sure that they are providing accessibility in their programmes and services and their design and construction.

This is the way that we're tackling accessibility and inclusive design, improving our neighbourhoods, making sure that people with disabilities are engaged, making sure that the ageing population is engaged and making our city usable for everyone.

I want to thank you for your time and happy to answer questions later on and have a good day.