Meet the Technical Assistance Team at the Northeast ADA

In this episode, we explore the expertise and ADA backgrounds of Technical Assistance responders Jennifer Perry, Chris Sweet, and Joe Zesski. From New York City building accessibility codes to service animals in the public, they hear it all. For a transcript of today's episode, please visit the Ask About the ADA podcast feed on BuzzSprout.

 

NortheastADA.org

Transcript

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>> Welcome to this edition of Ask About the ADA. Joining me this week on the podcast is the Technical Assistance team from the Northeast ADA Center, as well as our student worker, Grace Fairchild [assumed spelling]. We're going to have a conversation today to learn a little bit more about the Technical Assistance team and what we do here at the Northeast ADA, in terms of providing information to the public. With that being said, Grace, I'll turn the microphone over to you.

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>> Next, we'll go into everybody's area of expertise with technical assistance, so I'll start with Jen [assumed spelling] for this time. So what is your technical assistance specialty area and how did you develop this knowledge?

>> My title here is Access Specialist, and my primary focus is providing technical assistance and training for people looking to learn more about physical accessibility requirements. The ADA contains what are known as the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design, and these are very clear requirements that apply to the design and construction of our built environment. So -- and lots of our stakeholder groups have questions in this area. You know, people with disabilities to -- of course, as I mentioned earlier -- architects, code officials, engineers. Lots of people have questions about the built environment and physical access. So that's my primary role here. I also do a lot of training and education around Title II of the ADA, which applies to state and local governments. And the unique thing about the physical accessibility requirements is that they apply across pretty much all titles of the ADA. So whether you have a local police department or retail store, the requirements for accessibility and the nuts and bolts of it -- what the toilet room should look like or what the entrance should look like -- really don't change. There are some nuances, of course, but those nuts and bolts really don't change much. So the ADA standards apply to a very broad area. So we get a lot of calls from a number of stakeholders there. My background, I worked for 15 years as an Accessibility Consultant for a nonprofit called United Spinal Association. When I started there, they actually were known as Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association, and they were a group started by veterans with spinal cord injury. And they provided education and awareness for veterans who had, as I said, spinal cord injury. And my primary focus there was working in government relations, advocating for better building codes at the local level, to improve access for people that use wheelchairs. And I then morphed into obtain my -- it's called an Accessibility Specialist Designation through the International Code Council. And I've held that since 2001. There is no certification under the ADA to be an Accessibility Specialist. Lots of people think there is, but the reality is that there -- there just isn't. The closest thing you can kind of get right now is this designation through code enforcement, through the International Code Council. So my -- my other role here at the ADA Center, as -- as I'm sure you know, we cover a specific region that includes New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. There are, in some instances, differences between what physical accessibility requirements are in place under the building code in our region and what's required under the ADA. In most cases, the building codes are going to be more restrictive than what the ADA requires. So if somebody were to call us and ask about -- I can use as an example, an employee workspace requirements, I can tell them what the ADA requires, but I'd be remiss if I didn't tell them about some of the additional requirements via the New York City Construction Code that require a higher level of accessibility. So that's a unique nuance of our region. So we try to relay that information as well. And I also am involved in the development of the accessibility requirements. I sit on, as an example, the New York City Accessibility Code Committee that every few years updates the building code. And my role is to try to make sure that ADA requirements are either met or exceeded through local and state building codes in our region.

>> Thanks, Jen. That's really interesting. So, Chris [assumed spelling], what are your specialty areas and how did you develop some of this knowledge?

>> I tend to think of myself as a general information specialist. And so spending a lot of time on the technical assistance line, I really do a lot of thinking or research around every issue that may come up under the ADA. I've been designated the service animal specialist. I'm not sure how that worked out, but apparently, it is. And so, you know, so I do a lot of trainings around service animal, and service animal topics seem non-nuanced, but it could be actually a little bit more --

>> Very complicated. It can be, yeah.

>> And people think -- you know, so I'm very thankful that I have such a good team. You know, over the years, I've tried to, you know, be more in tune with building codes and different things like that, but thank goodness, Jennifer's there for that. And as well as Joe [assumed spelling], with getting into those really technical Title I employment issues. But for the most part, I think, my background comes into working with disability services and program management, over the past 27 years. I've also done counseling. I've done career counseling, and I think that has helped me in managing callers, because sometimes what happens is, we get people who are maybe being impacted at their job or impacted some other way in the community and don't really have a good understanding of their rights and responsibilities and whatnot. And so sometimes it takes a good ear, to be able to flesh out what their question actually is or what they're really needing from us in the technical assistance, that we will provide them. And I think that's been helpful, working with individuals over my full career and, you know, on many levels. And so, you know, sort of that background, I felt, has assisted me. But overall, you know, it really is a matter of just, you know, doing a lot of research. And so in between calls or if I get an interesting call or, you know, and sometimes, there might be times where I have to say, let me get your information and I need to give you a call back, because I really have to research what's going on. So that's sort of, you know, my role is just to, you know, have a base knowledge of -- of anything that could possibly come in and rely on my team when I need to.

>> And Joe, do you have any specialty areas?

>> Yeah. I tend to help field questions like Chris mentioned about employment and also education. I am the Program Manager at the Northeast ADA, but I also serve as the New Jersey affiliate through an independent living center called Resources for Independent Living in Burlington County, New Jersey. And before I began to have my role as the Northeast ADA affiliate, at the Independent Living Center, I did work on transition for youth from high school to college, which began my familiarity with the education setting and employment issues related to people disabilities. And so that's where my background started. And on a personal level, I'm a person with a disability. I'm a blind individual, and I've always had a personal interest in assistive technology. And by default of my own personal interest, I've become our in-house sort of access technology person, go-to person, in terms of web accessibility and other issues related to that, because that's been a personal interest. And I've been fortunate that I've had the freedom to learn and explore that personal interest. And it's something that's become a little more relevant now, in terms of the work that we do, in terms of access and digital access. So that's my -- my areas of specialty.

>> So moving to the next question, what are some of the most common questions that you receive on the Technical Assistance line and what are some of the most challenging questions that you receive? Chris, we can start with you.

>> So as we referenced before, we get an awful lot of service animal questions. And just, you know, people not understanding -- say, a business not understanding what they can do, not wanting to deny somebody access, but also not wanting to, you know, be taken advantage of by people that might be just trying to bring their pet into a business or into a place where animals aren't traditionally allowed to go. A lot of employment, that I handle anyway -- and, you know, whether it's an individual who is looking for a job and wondering what their rights are or how to negotiate a reasonable accommodation. It could be a business for the first time having to provide an individual with reasonable accommodations and not understanding what they can ask for and what that process is and how to do that without creating more of a headache for the person that has that need. And then there, you know, tends to be a lot of just general disability questions, whether or not they're related to the ADA. But we do try to either refer people out or make sure that we can at least offer them something, to either assist them on their way or, many times, just provide them the information they need. Some of the challenging ones, I think always for me, fall under Title I employment issues. There could be very gray areas that, you know, the ADA addresses. But what we need to understand is that there are, you know, within our region, thousands and thousands and thousands of employers that do different things. And so, you know, you have very physical jobs. You have very task-oriented jobs. And plus then you have individuals who are very unique and have unique disabilities and have unique needs. And so trying to steer them in a way that is helpful, that they understand the process, that they understand their rights, but then also understanding where there are very good employers that will seek to accommodate them, and then there's employers that don't understand their responsibilities under the ADA. So -- so, you know, there could be a lot of emotions involved. There could be a lot of nuance in the advice that we're giving them, relative to what the ADA says.

>> Right. Jen, what are some of the most common questions that you field, and what are some of the most challenging?

>> It really kind of runs the gamut. In terms of physical accessibility, it's ironically one of the hottest topics, and it's been this way for as long as I can remember, actually. It's something that seems so straightforward -- and that's accessible parking. That's one of those issues that is always very high importance to many people with disabilities. So we get a lot of questions about accessible parking. You know, where and when are spaces required, what should they look like, what kind of signage is needed. So we still to this day, 30 years in, accessible parking is still one of those hot topics for us. In terms of calls from -- I can kind of address stakeholder groups, from architects and engineers, design officials. The -- the questions I get from them are generally, of course, a little bit more of a deeper dive into a specific project that they might be working on and trying to figure out, you know, how many accessible entrances am I required to have and where can I locate it. And toilet room questions are often very difficult to address just because there's a lot of moving parts in toilet design and layouts and making sure you have all the required clearances. And I'm probably boring all of your listeners already, but toilet rooms are, believe it or not, another hot topic. And then there's some, you know, even under physical accessibility requirements, there's gray areas. One topic that -- we get a lot of questions about the region that we serve has a lot of beaches. You know, we cover Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and New Jersey and New York. So particularly in the summertime, we get a lot of questions about beach access. And this is one of those areas where we don't have firm and fast technical requirements in the ADA standards for how to make things like boardwalks and beaches accessible to people, particularly those with mobility disabilities. But we have some other regulations that have not yet been adopted as an enforceable standard that we look to, to educate stakeholders about what they can do to provide access to beaches. Because we know that under Title II of the ADA, you can't discriminate against people with disabilities that want to go to a to a local or state or municipal owned beach. But it's difficult, from a design perspective, because you don't know where to look to find how do I build it. Does that look like? that's where we can be of assistance to the community, and we try very hard to do that. Same thing with areas -- public trails, things of that nature. Public rights of way is another area where we get a lot of questions from municipalities that might be doing projects like street resurfacing, redoing their on-street parking in a downtown area, trying to figure out, you know, what does that parking look like, because it's, again, one of those things that isn't explicitly addressed in the 2010 ADA standards for design. So we're able to point them to another not yet enforceable, but a published standard public rights of way guidelines that is viewed as a gold standard, if you will, for those issues. So we try to connect the dots for people that just don't know what dots they should be using, to help themselves.

>> That's a good way to put it. Joe, what are some of the most common questions or challenging questions that you field?

>> For me, I mostly have challenging questions related to either employment and reasonable accommodation or web accessibility. With employment, reasonable accommodation is an interactive process. It's two sides trying to find a solution so that a person can be able to do their job and their responsibilities for a job. And sometimes that can be very tricky because it's not clear-cut. You know, there's not a clear list of -- if this is true, then you must do this. It's a matter of -- for both the person who has a disability as an employee, and for the employer side as well, knowing what your rights are and your obligations, about going through the process and trying to assess fairly and even-handedly what is or isn't reasonable. And there are ideas or information provided by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that can help to guide the process. But it doesn't mean that it's necessarily simple or -- or that someone won't have a question of, am I a covered employee or not? Am I, as an independent contractor, am I an employee? And, you know, things -- things of that nature, where the ADA may or may not apply. And in terms of accessibility, web accessibility, I should say, it's another area, like the ones -- some of the ones Jen was just referencing, where we have this requirement in the ADA for electronic accessibility, web accessibility. However, we don't have any clear standards. So navigating that space is very tricky and can be difficult. And so a lot of times businesses, nonprofits or even individuals will reach out and say, you know, I want to make my website accessible, but I don't know how, or I'm trying to access this, but I can't. You know, does this -- you know, does this meet the ADA? And going through that thought process can take -- can take a bit of work -- understanding best practices that are out there, what indications we've gotten from the government about how to know what is or isn't accessible and things like that. It's an ongoing process, and it's definitely a somewhat tricky area at this point, because there is a lot of grayness in Web accessibility.

>> Well, Joe, Jen and Chris, thank you so much for joining us.

>> Grace, thank you. And thank you again to Jen and Chris.

>> if you're interested in submitting a question for Ask about the ADA, visit our website at northeastada.org. If you are also interested, follow us on social media, at Facebook, on Twitter and on Instagram. Look for Northeast ADA. Thank you for joining us.

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