 and run the mics. So if you don't mind kind of moving in, we promise not to bite. So welcome. I'm Danielle Linser. I'm the curator of education and interpretation at the Andy War Hall Museum here in beautiful Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And I have the pleasure of facilitating today's session on basics, planning for accessibility. This is a great building block session for those who are starting out or for those who want a refresher on kind of getting access moving at your institution, be it a museum or a performing arts venue. And we are very lucky to have today Robin Jones, who is the executive director of the Great Lakes ADA Center with us, who is an expert on these matters. Robin is going to walk us through a presentation and then we'll have time for Q&A afterwards. So unless it's extremely urgent, I encourage you to kind of jot questions and comments and ideas down because we will have time for a rich discussion after the presentation. But I'm going to go ahead and turn it over. And thank you all so much for joining us this afternoon. Glad that you were willing to move in a little bit. It's such a huge room for this. And it's cold enough in here hopefully to keep us all awake at the same time, which is a positive. So let's kick off and use our time wisely to talk about planning for accessibility. Just for a quick, how many for you is this new to you? Is this something that you're just coming into that you're here to learn more about how to go about the process? How many of you have that? How many of you are it's like a refresher? You've kind of been in it? You're coming here just to see if there's anything new or anything different that you haven't thought about? Okay, great. Thanks. I just wanted to get kind of an idea about that. So what we're going to be doing is going through a step-by-step through developing an access plan itself. I'm talking about some tools that are available to assess what you do and don't have and how you can use them. We're going to talk a little bit about methods for developing some sound policies, practices and procedures. And then some ways to go about getting buy-in from the disability community and your colleagues. So one of the first things is calm, take a deep breath. It's not as horrible as you might think it is or overwhelming it as it is. But then as soon as you get into it, now you can panic and freak out. Because it is an overwhelming task to get to think about because there's so much to it and there's always that fear that I'm not doing enough, that there's more that has to be done or I've done it wrong and what's the consequence of doing that and such. So hopefully as we talk through these things today, I can alleviate some of that panic scenario, give you some framework in regards to how to move forward to even wrap your head around some of these issues and please understand that this is an ongoing process. This is something that you will be doing for a long period of time. This is not something that gets accomplished in a week, a month, six months or whatever. Because like anything in your organization, it is something that has to be sustained. You can't do it once and think you are done. Every time you're in a theater, you have a new show, you have to think about it. Every time you're at a museum having an exhibit, you have to think about it and such. These are not things that you can just walk away with. Yes, in an architectural context, once I've built my building accessible and I've got my ramp entrance and I have my accessible bathroom and in some ways I can let my guard down a little bit about those things but stuff happens and concrete breaks up. You've got snow and ice on that ramp. You've got a grab bar that breaks or a fixture that breaks. It doesn't work anymore and has to be fixed. And what are you going to do as an alternative in the meantime? All of these things like anything else in your operations, they do have sustainability issues associated with them, some more so than others. So why should you have an access plan? Just a little bit from historical. One of the reasons that I think, as Bryce articulated by Access Australia, says that the process gives organizations the opportunity to undertake a cycle of continuous improvement in relationship to access and gives them an opportunity to add value and increase their impact. I think this is a valuable kind of rationale and this is why the message we want to be taking to our administrators as to why is this important for us to do because they need to understand that this is something that we want to make sure that we are reaching everybody, that we have a global and broad impact in what we do for all of those who might be participating in our program. And then the more negative side but the reality side of it is that there's also a legal reason to consider as to why we want to have an access plan. You're going to have inevitably, and you don't want to end up. So if nothing else, if you can't sell it on the altruistic reasons why you should do this, add a little fear. It doesn't hurt. Sometimes when I work with people with disabilities in the community who contact me and talk about being trusted because of access issues they've tried to resolve with the organization. They've tried to advocate on behalf of themselves or others to try to get an entity to change and that entity doesn't listen. They just keep pounding away and say, you know, they either get brushed off or something else. I often say a well-placed complaint can often accomplish more than anything else does because it does bring attention and causes people to have to react. It's not the best way to do it but sometimes it is the only thing that works if you can't move things forward. I've actually had individuals working within organizations who have actually encouraged their customers to file complaints because they're not able to get their administration to listen to them. And they're internal. They're trying to advocate that things done and they're not able to do it. And so they actually encourage some of their participants to say, file a complaint with us. This will help me. If they hear from you from the outside that this is an issue this will help me to accomplish what I need to do. So there's sides to everything. Some of you may be familiar with what is often referred to as the drive-by lawsuits type of a scenario that's happened to different places across the country. Now coming from Chicago, drive-by lawsuits is not a terminology that I really relish because the drive-by context is very negative in Chicago from a violence perspective but what is basically occurring in many places across the country is lawyers are teaming up with individuals with disabilities and they go through Main Street and they go around and they don't even necessarily come into your facility but they'll do an external review of your parking lot or they'll look at your entrances and things of that nature and they'll file complaints and then they'll come back at you and say, well we'll resolve this issue if you provide us X number of dollars we'll withdraw our complaint or whatever else it might be. They don't necessarily result in more access but they can be kind of an extortionist plan in some scenarios if you want to look at it that way. You don't want to be in that circumstance. So the better and the more prepared you are you can never protect yourself 100% but it's something to think about in regards to that. So what is an accessibility plan? It outlines a simple approach to how your organization intends to proceed to become more accessible to people with disabilities and we know that if we can make ourselves more accessible to people with disabilities a much wider audience is then served because it's not just people with disabilities that benefit from wider doors from rape from elevators from grab bars in the bathroom and things of that nature. It's mothers with kids and strollers it's mothers with children of opposite sex in the bathrooms it's individuals who don't see themselves as disabled that may have limitations and thus benefit from grab bars and other kinds of things it's individuals with temporary disabilities. There's a lot of different reasons why access is something that benefits everyone not just one sector of the population. It serves as a blueprint for your board and your staff etc. to follow. It's a guideline something to look to it's not just talk about it it's actually gives us something to refer back to in a written format. It documents the process so that as your staff change the concepts are not lost. So often with organizations and entities I've worked with there's been that passionate person in the front office and a passionate person that's worked there who's driven the process and then they leave to greener pastures or they retire or whatever and a lot of that is lost because it was contained in their mind or in their processes and it wasn't documented well in regards to what was needed and what needed to go through so that's why it's really critical to think about documentation. Also documentation serves as a good faith effort documents a good faith effort should you ever be subject to a complaint so that it's not just me saying well we were considering that we've been working on that issue when we're questioned but we actually have documentation to show hey that this is something that we have in process we have a plan in place we may not have achieved 100% of that plan but we have a plan in place versus the person who can't even show or entity that can't show other than verbal discussions that they've ever even done anything. It also sends a message to the public that your organization is serious about these issues and such when we go through this process when we know that we're going through this process we understand that it's not something that you take my concerns lightly that you take my concerns seriously and you view me as a valuable member of your audience or your customer base. So an accessibility plan covers four different areas one is we look at physical what's the bricks and mortar? When I think of the physical I take a building and I turn it upside down and shake it and when I put it back upright again everything that is still there is my physical access that's my bricks and mortar of the entity those other things like the stuff that fell out it's not permanently installed et cetera into my building like my temporary chairs that I might put in change my layouts and things of that nature my bleachers my tables and chairs and things of that nature all of that is part of my program accessibility that's what I'm doing to make the program overall accessible to people so I've got my physical access my building the bricks and mortar and then I've got the program to take place inside of it that may move around temporary, permanent, you know things of that nature communication huge issue and communication is not just you and me talking to each other it's how we communicate everything whether we communicate things through visual whether we communicate things through auditory whether we're using multimedia who we communicate with telephone the methods that we do our website our flyers our posters our ads in the newspaper radio spots whatever we're doing and then of course our administrative processes those policies and procedures that make us tick those policies and procedures that we follow to make sure that things go along the way they should go along in a consistent manner that drives what we do and how we respond to things so we're going to talk about all of these areas as we go through today don't forget employment oftentimes there's a lot of focus in this conference and it's been on the customer side your participant side of things we are all also employers and whether we're large or small the chances are we're going to have people with disabilities in our workforce either visible or invisible and hopefully we're in the process of also looking at how inclusive our employment practices are at the same time so employment is a piece we're not going to focus on employment it's a whole other thing but I do think that employment is a huge area that people need to make sure that you still also take into consideration because there are still policies and practices in employment your employee could be the one with a disability not just your program participant an accessibility plan identifies what are our assets what do we currently have going for us you want to document your asset what do you have already in place what is already accessible but it also documents none of us are perfect even those that think they have the most accessible facilities in the world takes one janitor to put one garbage can in front of an automatic control or something of that nature and you just negated your accessibility so you have to think about that in the context that nobody is perfect you still have all areas what are our priorities not only are priorities from our own internal perspective what are our customer or our client's priorities we want to understand what is most important to the people that serve that we serve to come to enjoy our facilities or participate in our programs what are their priorities as well and how do they mesh with our priorities in that regard and then what actions need to be taken which should be inclusive of what is the time frame that we are going to do it in is it a three month is it a six month is it a year is it a five year capital campaign issue and then who is going to be responsible and who is not necessarily a person's name but it could be a position because we know people moving out of positions so this is the responsibility of front office this is the responsibility of house manager this is the responsibility of whatever not Joe, Sally, Sue or whatever because again you have a plan here that should live should not be tied to a specific person you want your plan to recognize the diversity of needs within the disability community and you want it to integrate access into the fabric of your organization or institutionalize we don't want it to be that oh yeah we should think about this when we have a new show coming in we should have that issues all of those issues on that same checklist as all of the other issues are it shouldn't be we go through all that whole checklist and say oh yeah we need to consult with X, Y and Z about people with disabilities participating in this program that is the after the fact it should be in and up front you want it to become institutionalized these are things that everybody thinks about all the time we do purchasing procurement when we do planning and scheduling when we do budgeting etc one of the most irritating things in the world for me it comes up and says that we don't have it in the budget why don't you have it in the budget because you did not integrate it into your planning process when you did your budgeting when I figure out my costs for a show I should be including silence and tripping costs I should be including real-time captioning costs I should be including other things if I need to replace or add new assistive listening device systems or things of that nature that should be included in the cost of production the cost of implementation etc up front not oh yeah after the fact let's figure out what it's going to cost now to become accessible and let's figure out who's going to pay for it that needs to be in the whole process so when we budget we determine our fees we determine whatever but that's all integrated into it for some of us we're there for others it's still that extra or that special or different we want to change that mentality and change that culture and get it across to our administrators that this is something that is part of our onboard it's not something we're doing special it's not something that we're doing out of the goods of our whatever we're doing this as part of our this is business this is regular operational procedure taking into consideration the organization's unique circumstances and situations understand that one size does not fit all there's so many variables in your organizations so what works in one children's museum may not work in another children's museum there's differences in how you run you know or one theater may not be the same as the other theater is your resources are different your staging is different the types of performance that you do are different your scheduling is different so one size does not fit all you can learn from other people in regards to their accessibility plans and that's why it's really great to have consortiums and things of that nature where you can share your best practices and things of that nature but understand it may not work in your facility you may have to tweak it or change it make that same thing happen you may never get to that same place but you might get close or you might get something slightly different but it fits your organization you need to really understand that and embrace that and so as you look to examples out there and I'm going to be providing you some examples use them as guides but remember it's got to be internalized to your own organization in order to be effective you can't just pick somebody else's stuff up and say oh we'll make it work here most importantly it respects the need and with dignity get to get in get around and to meaningfully participate engage with the continent programs if you keep that in mind this is our ultimate goal you want your participants with disabilities to have the same or equivalent opportunity as your participants without disabilities so the minds of that well we can help them do that we can help them get up we'll have somebody stationed at such a... think about it is that the best way to do it? does that allow the person to independently do that? is that person going to be dependent on somebody showing up at a certain time to open a door or do something? that's not necessarily giving them the same dignity and same rights as everybody else does so think about those as the context for framework and again as you're selling these things or talking to your administration about these things so let's talk about the cycle of planning for accessibility key, organizational commitment how many of you here can say right now that you know you have organizational commitment to these issues? unequivocally great obviously you're here so somebody paved your way and agreed budgetarily or otherwise that it was important for you to come to the conference that's good, that's a step in the right direction right? but you want to make sure that that's not just listserv or listservice or placating you and that there's real commitment and to doing these things so that message has to continually be brought forward that message by you but you also need your covarts to help you bring that message to other people in your organization not just the person who's responsible for all kinds of different terminology, special populations and other kinds of things some of those terminology driving crazy but there's not just that resting this one place in this one office that there's everybody there's the clinicals that go out in your organization that you've got buy in from all of the different parties that they understand what their role in this is and that they are engaged and they are as excited about the potential or the possibilities as you might be and so it starts from the top down is that you need to get your board and those that are engaged in making funding decisions things that need to understand the importance of these issues as you come to them with budgetary requests but all the way down to your maintenance staff who need to understand the importance of these issues as they help maintain things as accessible or that they're asked to make adjustments or changes and so they understand the value of ensuring that these things are acceptable and the importance of these issues is not that something can be fixed tomorrow when you have a show tonight that now means someone is not going to have access because it's not been fixed that you need that level at the very bottom as well as the top and everywhere in between your community need to engage your community and what I mean by your community is your community as a whole it's your disability community but it's also your general community many of you know that sometimes you do get complaints from your patrons because they don't like some of the accessibility issues or they don't understand some of the accessibility issues so when you have a captioned version of something going on people don't understand some people will say I don't want to come to the performance on a night that's captioned because it bothers me but they need to understand why you have a captioned performance and the importance of the captioned performance because on those nights that they prefer to come without any captioning means that somebody else might need captioning can't come on that night because they don't have access so we need to help everybody it's our whole community it's our disability community but it's our general community as to why we do these things why do you see things that are different sometimes than what you might normally be used to or traditionally be used to see you have to have some method of assessment and evaluation you need to be looking at how we're going to do this and what's the process and again we're going to talk more about that but notice that your community commitment comes before your assessment evaluation if you don't have a buy-in of your community of these things it wasted your time with everything else if you're not going to get people at this place coming to your community to your performances or to your facilities and things of that nature if you don't have and understand what they need and they want then everything else becomes somewhat of a new point looking at your policies, procedures and practices to make sure that they are accessible follows into play then train your staff all those things before you do no good if your staff is not then trained on what to do you can have the best policies, practices and procedures in the world that are known by one person you and you'll fail even though you can fall out and say have a policy on that you forgot to tell the person answering the phone how to take the question what to do with those and then that person says well we don't do this we don't have a process for that yes we do well nobody told me about it I'm the one answering the phone so if I don't know about it I can't tell anybody about it so it's really critically important to include that staff training and then we have to communicate our accessibility issues our access, etc to our audience to our visitors to the community if we don't tell the community about our accessibility and we have not been accessible for 55 years that we've been in existence we cannot expect that we're going to overnight change the culture of our organization by having more people with disabilities attending, coming and participating in our programs because we've been inaccessible for 55 years they gave up trying to come to our facilities and guiding to engage to our facilities and things that each a word of mouth in the disability community is huge it's how we find out about a lot of things so if you're not telling me and you're not promoting that you now have accessible entrance you now have accessible seating you now have real-time captioning on such and such performances you now have assistive listening devices and things of that nature you now have a touch tour you now have a whatever to your community then you have wasted all of your time because your community's not going to come to you because you've been inaccessible make sure that you go through a process of evaluating what you've done reassessment of it and update as needed the ADA accessibility guidelines changed in 2010 so if I did something back in 2004 and 2005 I needed to re-examine and re-look at those things in accordance with the 2010 ADA accessibility standards to look to see if I need to make any changes or updates technology is changing at whirlwind speed so technologies that we thought five years ago were providing great access are outdated, outmoded now and our patrons are expecting something different and there's probably a better mousetrap we better know about it consider it a spy or two it if possible to stay relevant and stay current so that re-evaluation is really important and in the meantime we probably have added things that we didn't think about or done other things that we need to make sure we included in our planning process so looking at from our resurrection commitment again, making a commitment adopt a written accessibility statement one of the most powerful things you can do is to have a statement within your organization that articulates your commitment to accessibility this is what the public sees this is what your employees see a potential employee coming on board somebody who's newly considering they move to your community and is looking at buying a subscription to your plates for the next year or whatever or buying an annual pass or something of a nature to your museum whatever else it might be designate a staff person to be the accessibility coordinator somebody needs to have it as their job it should not be other duties as assigned it should be somebody's responsibility to do this there should be a point person that doesn't mean that should be the only person and some of you are probably sitting in this room saying I am the only person but there needs to be somebody who's that point go-to person who understands who's looking above and knows when to reach out to the different parties that are involved or the different aspects of your organization to touch base with on things to help coordinate those things and be that voice saying do you consider this did you do that did you do whatever at the appropriate times and make sure you devote your resources to accessibility both at staff time and dollars many of us are often frustrated because we have to title it we have no dollars to do anything with so there needs to be dollars available in the budgeting process to allow me to respond to accessibility issues so that's where your commitment if you can get these things from the top you're more than halfway there she's provided some accessibility statements so just an example from the Ohio Arts Council they're committed to making arts accessible to all Ohioans agency believes that accessible buildings or spaces programs and creative opportunities can reach the artistic experiences of all and enhance the community's cultural climate to that end organizations that receive funding from the OAC must be fully accessible inclusive to every individual including people with disabilities and older adults so this is a comment that they made and this follows along with their funding when they make grants and things of that nature this follows along with their statement of accessibility and such look at it and there's other ones here as well for those of you I'm more than happy to share with you the power point if you was like it I can send it to you like trying to play whatever so you don't have to try to read my very small print now all the way down to where the Kennedy Center is a very simple statement it says it all right there Kennedy Center welcomes patrons and visitors with disabilities it says it all right there so it really depends again organizationally what do you do what is the statement but having a statement of some type is really important community engagement who are your members of disability community do you know who the organizations are are you doing outreach to those organizations are you engaging or do you know if you want feedback or need feedback what the groups are and I'm talking about cross disability I'm not just talking about going to the independent living center that might be in your community that independent living center may serve a certain cross sector of the population but doesn't necessarily represent the entire disability population so we have to be broader we have to do a broader outreach than that so we have to look at are there specific disability groups that we're trying to make outreach to are we connecting with the organizations that represent the community of individuals with autism or individuals with mental illness who have brain injury or who have Alzheimer's who have different deaf or hard of hearing or blind or low vision community not just the wheelchair users not just that group and sometimes we tend to look to who we see in the community and that will often mean that we're missing out on a huge population of individuals who are also in our community who are not seen as visible or not visible so it does take some outreach it does take getting to know and understand that disability community and being part of or participating in their programs and activities to get to know some of them so that you can create relationships whether you bring them on as an advisory committee whether you bring on certain individuals look at who your patrons are who might be regularly attending and coming they might be good feedback groups for you but often they may also already be the choir and sometimes the hardest groups to meet reach are those that are not part of the choir who are not yet coming to facilities you know why because they still don't know about you they don't know what you offer and they don't understand how they can interact with you so you need to get out there and engage with them so connect know who the community is participate in their activities and invite them in to your activities a well-placed invite sometimes is amazing and also that they see you out there interested in what they're doing and what's going on in the disability community so if you have a pride you have a disability pride parade in Chicago and our arts community is part of the disability pride parade so we have floats from some of our theater groups and things of that nature who have engaged in a part of that process who come and they participate in that pride day the disability community looks at them they have tables, they have exhibits and tables after the parade there's people from the arts community that are part of that exhibit and table that are there about their programs and their facilities and their activities and things that's how you get them to know you and you get to know them do you have people with disabilities on your staff they may not be visible disabilities they may be invisible disabilities welcome those individuals to share and be part of that process listen to them look at who you're knowledgeable and specialists are in that community who specializes in architecture accessibility who specializes in serving certain populations and professionals that you can also pull in to the part and what role do you want them to play are they going to be an advisor group are they going to be a task force are they going to be a consultant what role do you but identify those things and have that list and have that ongoing outreach and engagement when you're doing your assessment and your evaluation you want to again as I said identify your assets and your deficits survey your existing facilities get a good handle on what you already have and then you prioritize what needs to be fixed or what needs to be changed so what directly affects the purpose of your organization what amount of effort is it going to take to do it and what's the cost sometimes it's easiest to do low hand fruit but that might not be the most important stuff and then you've got big barriers taking place here so sometimes it's easy to go after the easy stuff to try to pick it away and sometimes strategically that might be the way to go to get some things done but don't be afraid to tackle the harder stuff because oftentimes the hardest stuff is where your bigger barriers exist how you balance that again keep in mind behind the scenes backstage offices and other areas where your employees where your artists or your performers are as well not just your traditional public space but the other areas that have access as well do you do tours behind the scenes things of that nature then those are critical as well there are some tools and check us out there in the community to assist you in this process again if you get my PowerPoint you'll be able to get these or direct hyperlinks to them but the U.S. Department of Justice has a toolkit available that is specifically about that about how to, if you're a Title XXT but it can also be adapted to Title III covers everything from physical access to communication access to emergency planning we often don't think about this issue of emergency planning we think about evacuation but do we consider people with disabilities in that evacuation process and have we done that is that part of it this should be inclusive of your planning this is a program or an activity that you have it's never a problem until it's a problem and you have one fire or one situation that occurs during a performance or while you're open for business and then you find the problems that's a little bit too late loss of life and other things can happen in the meantime advanced planning has had enough examples of things in this country to know what we should be thinking about and planning for oftentimes we don't include people with disabilities in that Chicago Metropolitan Planning Association has a good transition plan also and resources as well if you should do your survey of your facilities and such there's a good checklist of existing facilities done by the ADA National Network it's an online tool that goes through all your facilities this is great I use this on my iPad and I go along and I can input everything as I'm walking around and doing kinds of things around my iPad it then stores it you can print it and use it so it's an online tool you also can download it and use a paper and pencil but I don't find paper and pencil to be as efficient anymore as far as trying to record things it's nice because it has drop down menus and things of that nature that you can select and choose to produce the online version of it so that's really available just ADAchecklist.org National Network for the Arts has a good checklist for our arts and humanities checklist is what it's called accessibility checklist Regional Arts Council also has a good one the New Jersey Theta Alliance has a nice guide there's also for a good public guide a planning guide for temporary events to be accessible sometimes all of our events are not in our facility they might be out in the community might have festivals and things of that nature they're out in fields or in parking lots and things of that nature so sometimes our events are temporary not always in our structure we need to think about those as well that's available from the ADA National Network again when you get my PowerPoint all of these are active links you'll be able to get and hook to all of them in the PowerPoint should note though that some of these resources were created prior to the changes in the ADA standards in 2010 so it's important to understand you should look at these things that you may need to double check to make sure measurements and things of that nature are current in regards to they now have not all been updated like the temporary event guide is current the ADA checklist is current but some of the few other resources have not been updated yet the structure is still there the context is still there it's just that if you start to go to inches and things of that nature you want to check to make sure that you're using the correct measurements and such that you're using the correct versions of those all of these entities are in the process of updating but you know how things can go probably taking 10 years to create the first one so it might take them 10 years to update the second one you know that's reality right unfortunately also there's some examples internationally of things I've done remember we don't have a lock in the corner on all of this but there are other parts of the world who are also actively engaged in some of the things so making Ontario accessible up in Canada has very good accessibility guide around policies of procedures and things of that nature you have the discrimination act in the UK it has a good accessibility planning process again these would be relative to their laws and things but it does still give you another framework to look at to see what others might be doing internationally and then Access Arts Austria is known as being more progressive in this area as well and it has some good advice and tip sheets that you might want to consider that might be applicable to what you're doing where you could adapt from them so as you start your your survey or if you are starting the consideration for doing your survey again you want to start with what is currently accessible and what needs improvement what actually need to be taken what order of priority what would be your estimate of the actual cost to take the action which department or who is responsible so you might have stage manager and then the name after it but you're still going to include the stage manager as the position that's responsible and for right now it might be Bobby but you want to maintain it with the stage manager also because when Bobby changes it's still stage manager what are your anticipated completion dates include both long and short term goals so you may have a steps process that for the next six months we're going to do this and then the long term goal is in four years after we've done our capital campaign we're going to get to this but we have steps in between so right now we have temporary parking over on this side we have a temporary entrance or whatever while this entrance is being undertaken construction or our seating is here for accessibility for right now while we construct the other seating areas over here so you've got a short term and you have a long term goal and what are your time frames even if you don't meet your time frames it's really important to put time frames on there and keeps things moving if you leave it open ended you have nothing to be accountable or nothing to be able to go forward to so it may be that you end up adjusting your time frames because you weren't able to meet them as such and it doesn't include them because it does help us give us guidance and keeps us moving here's just an example of a worksheet for access planning so this would be looking at your access barriers first you're going to identify where is the location that I'm going to do my access with what are the issues that I'm actually looking at in this case it's horizontal up and down circulation so what is our barrier that we have there's a mobile that does not allow a minimum headroom of 80 inches that is interfering with people mobilizing in a certain space so what are we going to do to reach our solutions and identify what resources everybody used to do that we're going to have a meeting to do it we're going to get some outside estimates of costs to change or raise that we're going to do a follow up meeting and then we're going to take action so we've got a plan in place of what we're going to do who is responsible what are our budgetary considerations for that what's our start date and what's our end date very simple but it gives us a way to track what we're doing and document what so you don't have to have any fancy anything this is just very simply created type of thing in the guides that you're going to see if you follow some of my links you'll see some of these worksheets available that can be downloaded and customized or adapted for your use this is another type of a worksheet again here's what my area my facilities access my priority steps or measurable objectives target completion who's responsible just another form of the same thing notice it's got dates it identifies who did it when they did it that's important so you can track so you have to go back and ask questions maybe photos are very important in this process take a picture of what you're dealing with so that you don't have to constantly go back to the site or whatever and look at it and you can pinpoint it not with digital cameras who cares how many pictures you take just active storage but photos can be really important also they're great they tell a great before and after story when you want to show what you've done you now have that here's what it looked like before here's what it looks like after so record and think about that as well when you're looking at your policy procedures and practices again review and update your existing policies and practices whatever you already have in place doesn't need to be enhanced doesn't need to be changed maybe you have an old policy on sign language interpreters that said two weeks notice is needed things have changed two weeks two weeks may no longer be applicable maybe you can do a 72 hour because you have more resources in your community and such of that nature you need to update those things and make sure that they're current maybe you're using different vendors to process in place so determine if a new one needs to be addressed maybe something's missing and then you can add it and make sure that your practices are consistent with your policies and procedures oftentimes we see things written that actual practice is different policies and procedures should reflect our actual practices this is where you become vulnerable from a complaints and a litigation perspective that's when you're doing a practice that's not consistent with your policies and procedures that are written and documented you can always go above careful not to go below make sure you're consistent because that's a game one person saying one thing another person saying something different you gotta be consistent policies are big pictures if you don't know the differences in what we're talking about policy lays forth the big picture issue it's a policy that we shall include all people with disabilities that's our policy it's a policy that we shall provide sign language interpreters for our performances that we will provide effective communication for our performances would be a broader policy then your procedure is what is the process that you go through in order to get to that how do you implement so what's our procedures for requesting for schedule for paying practices are how we routinely carry out those policies so when you think about writing the policy policies global shouldn't have specificity in your policy your policy should state what you're going to do what your outcome is then your procedure should give your details who, what, when and where and then your practices should reflect your procedures again keep in mind that it's an ADA obligation of section 5 before depending if you're federally funded as well to make reasonable accommodation modifications to your policies practices and procedures so you may have a no pets policy but you would be modifying that for a service animal because a service animal is not a pet so it's okay for you to have a no pets policy but you need to be able to make modifications of that policy when necessary so that would be something you would address like in your procedures and such so there's seven steps recommended to craft or eight steps guess my numbers are wrong two craft policies and procedures one clearly identify the issue do your homework to make sure that you will address no one understand the legal implications for that issue create a draft of your policies then vet them get feedback on them have somebody else read them if appropriate include some of your stakeholders in reviewing them those people that would be responsible for implementing review them is this really what, is this realistic is this not realistic should we do something differently should we add a step, take out a step rewrite as needed incorporate the feedback that you get for all staff don't pick and choose some staff may need to have more intense or more detail but all staff should be aware of your general policies, practices and procedures even that custodial staff even those volunteers those interns they are still you when they're functioning in their positions which means that they need to own and understand what you do and how you do it they will be your lowest denominator for getting you in trouble post for the public as applicable on your website brochures etc so if you have policies for inclusion if you have practices and procedures for requesting accommodations or requesting or initiating or using or doing certain things or areas you can access or not access etc let the public know that hiding that information does you know good if I can't come and find out I'm going to not necessarily choose to participate in your program or activity because I don't have enough information and I'm not going to want to have to ferret it out by calling everybody and stuff to try to get that information I want a commitment I want to see there's a commitment from you with your organization to do these things I'm going to look into that information if I'm a visitor, if I'm a regular and whatever I want to establish a review process to ensure that you remain current and relevant whether they've been reviewed on yearly basis reviewed every two years whatever works in your organization make sure that you have a process because I don't want to see a policy when I come into your organization that was written in 1999 that has never been updated so even if you don't change it date it as to when it was last reviewed because you may be gone and the next person coming in so even if you didn't make the change still date review such and such a date and that helps you keep track of what you've done and where you're going what may or may not have changed or needed to change staff training I've talked a lot about again all staff volunteers with a public should receive training they are your public base of your institution and they can make a break you of your experiences make sure that they can communicate clear and articulate information and empower them to take action as needed don't handcuff them they're not powered to help somebody do something or respond to a question if nothing else empower them to know where to go to get additional information and assistance they may not actually be the one who does it but they are empowered to know where they can go to get it versus I was never taught that I'm too low on the totem pole for that as I said push information on about accessibility some entities will actually in their playbill or whatever have a whole little piece on accessibility they'll have an area of their website of accessibility they'll have a whole brochure about accessibility and the options that are available it's really up to you and what works best in your organization but make sure that again you're not out by people use your existing and your traditional marketing tools for promotions such as use social media but make sure it's accessible when you use it so if you're going to put out something in your social media that's a video make sure it's a captioned video don't put out a video that's not captioned if your website makes sure your website's accessible if it's through word about mouth make sure it's accurate use the traditional ways that you do things but just incorporate make sure that you're doing it accessible there are some sessions being held here at conference about social media and accessibility these are really critical because you're using more and more of the snapchats and the whatever's who knows what Pokemon go now where people are going to be showing up at your facilities chasing you might just get more business because there's a pokey something sitting in your museum or on your stage somewhere but if you're going to use those engage with those kinds of things activities and programs that take it into consideration people with disabilities again, cross a sensory issue whether it's hearing, whether it's visual impairment whether it's somebody who has high anxiety issues or somebody who has cognitive disability or whatever else maybe think about multiple ways that we reach out and ensure that they're accessible and as I said, evaluate and make sure that you update it so value your accessibility periodically if it's accessible and you didn't realize for the last six months somebody on staff has been stacking up a bunch of boxes in the back area that you don't go on a regular basis which has narrowed the hallway from 36 inches to 24 inches and nobody's complained but that doesn't mean that it should stay that way so sometimes you just need to go through and to walk throughs and things that natured the to see and look and make sure and evaluate that your accessibility still as you would know it or understand it is accessible but what we thought it was is accessible and this is across seasons for some of us that live in seasonable areas where we have snow and we have wind and we have rain and we have other things that happen things that are accessible in the summer may not be accessible in the winter or during certain kinds of weather check those things out and evaluate those things the same way and again don't let your plan become static it needs to be living and reflect your current practices if you're somebody who likes to do steps versus cycles of doing things there's also some additional resources that are providing you that the Association of Science and Technology Centers has a five step access plan process that you can go through the National Down for the Arts has a ten step process that you can go through and Texas Commission on Arts and Arts Miss West both have twelve steps so it depends on whether you're a part of a twelve step program, a ten step program or a five step program just like steps instead of processes so there's other ways to look at your planning process these are just some additional resources for you again there are live links on the PowerPoint that as soon as you get it or receive it you'll be able to follow those but there are some good tools that you can look at or reflect upon or use as a way to address your process some could be adopted as they stand or in the face value other of them maybe just need to be tweaked again pick and choose what works best for you out of all of those things you don't have to reinvent the wheel there's a lot of work that's already been done that you can adapt so part of that overwhelming freak out process is know that others have done it before you they've lived they're still here, some of them probably at this conference and it is not the worst thing in the world it will be and if you haven't done it your organization has done it for a period of time but once you've done it, once you have it in place, once you've laid all of that out then it's just about maintenance like anything else but it does give you that plan and it should give you the leverage with your management to be able to document and show them it's one thing to talk about areas of barrier or that we're not as inclusive it's another the able to actually show them where those barriers exist to get that buy and of course they like and they understand dollars and money so the more that you can document what it's going to cost and then also what the benefit is you know as you're in your valuation process if you can show, I was at a session earlier today where somebody was talking about when they instituted sign language tours, initially they started out with ten people or whatever now it's paying for itself and it's bringing more people in to the facility who would never have come before who are now buying passes and becoming regular patrons in the facility so it's a new market base so even though there's a cost associated with that they've brought in a whole new marketplace that talks to your board in such the nature that you're extending your memberships or your participation things of nature across the first area so again having plans, having these things in place go a long way to helping you making some of those arguments because you have the ability to send benchmarks and then document against those. Alright we're at that period or that time in the whole process here which we're ready to take some questions from people so hopefully you have questions for me. Anyone have some questions or anything that you've done in your organization that you would like to share as part of this process don't be shy, absolutely none yes go ahead. I'm going to run over with the microphone. Hi so earlier you had mentioned something I run into quite a bit which is how to get patrons in the general population to buy into your accessibility and what kind of tips do you have for those patrons that feel like you're now excluding them because yeah. Yeah I think it's an issue of education and making sure that there's a clear understanding one that you're not excluding them, you are offering a different experience and so that they don't like that particular experience they have other options for when they can come and go in such that nature and what you are trying to do is make sure that you can offer an array of experiences to meet the needs of a variety of different people in the community. Sometimes I mean the ones that we see a lot of times right here about a lot of times especially some of times your older population who is used to something being done a certain way at a certain time and such that they often are resistive to the new technologies being used because it changes the experience they find like the caption distracting you know for them or whatever else it might be. I think that sometimes you just have to go through the explanation to them that why that benefits for some people and that you know this is the performances that we have here at Caption and there are non-caption performances for you and yes you have like to come the third Friday of every month but right now the third Friday of every month this is the month that you know the date that we're doing our captions our program and we'll switch that around you know in such but for right now that's the way it is. I think we just have to be upfront with people and tell them that they'll have our nice voice you know about that but I think that the more that we can educate and tell them why we're doing it who benefits from it. Also I think go beyond the traditional population that you might think of the people who are deaf and hard of hearing that use it but there are a lot of people with learning disabilities who have auditory processing disorders who benefit from real-time captioning individuals who English is not their second language also benefit from the captioning because they may actually read English better than they understand or comprehend written. I know that I can Spanish better than I can speak Spanish so there's different you know things of that interest so I think you just have to take it outside of as broad an audience as you possibly can and say that this is you know what we're doing to be more inclusive to ensure that all of our patrons wish to participate in our programs and to have an opportunity to do so and that you know maybe you need to look at another night and we will be shifting these around so that your Friday night will be back again in April or whatever. I just think the more that you can do to educate in a nice way and demonstrate who uses it et cetera and of course now there's different technologies being used too so maybe this is also a cue for you as an organization to look at maybe using the traditional LED display for your real-time captioning is something that you might move away from to start to explore the other options and other technologies that are available that are more individualized and not used by everybody so you don't have that same experience like the LED display at my seat or the window captioning or other kinds of things that are out there available that's moving technologies to use in other ways that don't have the same distraction We have another question over here in this part of the room so I'm going to pass off a very quick question so you talked under the make a commitment section of your presentation about designating a staff person to be the accessibility coordinator many of our organizations are all volunteer run or very part-time executive director, manager would you recommend in a working board environment that you would designate a single volunteer form a board committee an accessibility committee or does this live with the executive committee or what kind of structure there for the working board? So I think it really depends again about your organization I think that even if you're using all volunteers if you still need that point person somewhere that one person if you diffuse it too much then everybody doesn't know what the other hand is doing and what's happening or going on so even if you could get a volunteer who would agree that they will be the point person they may not be the one doing everything but they are the point person who takes the responsibility for the coordination of those things other people volunteers might be responsible certain aspects other aspects because it can't rest on all one person because they are volunteer but that one person is the one who would need to go to to be able to find out what's happening going on or for help with you know assigning it to other people I think having an advisory group external to you know is a great another way especially in a volunteer organization type of a structure is that if you know it's another way to get another group fans of people to give you input into that nature whether that works in your existing advisory by including somebody with a disability into your advisory your overall general audience advisory or whatever your groups are called ensuring that there's somebody with a disability you know there their big pitfall or potential with only one person or whatever in that kind of context is no one person who represents all disability issues you know and I I have somebody on my staff who does architectural accessibility and he's somebody in wheelchair and I constantly have to remind him about looking at sensory issues because he's really strong on those physical disability issues because they're his own issues right and he sometimes forgets or is not as strong as some of his other issues and I'm always having to dog him and now he knows even before I say it that he does it because he's learned that he has to do that but you do have to think about the fact that people are oftentimes only representative of their own lens not always who they represent everybody so that's a catch on me too but you know sometimes we also it may not be because your organization is small enough we can't manage yours to come to some to do the advisory board thing having listening sessions where you a couple of times a year invite people from the community might be part of your audience participation or might be groups that you invite having listening sessions where they come in they may not be a formal structure but you're offering an open time to come in and do that type of a thing another way to also manage that kind of a thing to make sure that you are still getting that voice but may not structurally be able to handle having you thank you for so far for everything you've said extraordinarily helpful small board question regarding service animals therapy dogs and such in my first encounter with that I had a security guard who had said no this isn't a service animal and I said just if they say it's a service animal it's a service animal now I'm wondering about on the other end the liability end has there been an expanded definition of service animal thinking of an occasion where somebody came in with what was toy poodle and the dog was a little vicious so it was a a warning belting that maybe this person is gaming the system and not really bringing the service dog so any any information would be extraordinary any any law or any regulation has the potential for abuse you know and this is no different than anything else there has not been the last most recent change in relationship to service animals and such came with the 2010 amendments to the Title II and Title III regulations by the U.S. Department of Justice whereby they restricted a service animal to a dog domestic dog and all with the exception of a miniature horse in certain circumstances and scenarios so that's clear but there are other state laws in our states across the country which recognize in some of those laws things beyond a domestic dog so one that's key you have to know what your state laws are or your local laws are as a relationship to this particular issue it also makes a distinction between an emotional support animal and a service animal a service animal is an animal that provides an actual service an emotional support animal that provides me emotional support that's not a service that makes them feel better etc services that actually perform a service so for example somebody might have because of PTSD might have an emotional support dog that makes them feel more comfortable or more secure they also might have a psychiatric service dog that's been trained to actually do something as it relates to their PTSD such as alert them to when there's triggers that set off their PSTD that dog may be trained to actually put a paw on the person to redirect them to pull them away from an area to distract them etc so there's a difference between a service dog and an emotional support dog so that's a key issue dogs come in all sizes and shapes they can be a pit bull they can be a miniature poodle they provide different types of services so for example dogs are also used for alerting individuals to medical conditions so for example somebody might have one because of diabetes they're trained to sense the change in my chemical structure of my body I admit a odor that is not as textable to you and I but it would be trained to be a technical for that dog that miniature poodle who you and I might think should not be is not a service animal could actually be providing that kind of service it's not going to open a door it's not going to do a lot of other things you're not going to pull my wheelchair but it could be doing that kind of service the fact that service animal comes in different issues look at your policies, practices, procedures as it relates to things like behavior so a dog that is trained as a service animal should not growl, should not bark should not be running around doing zooms or anything of that nature that is not a trained service animal so your staff should be trained to look at those kinds of things you want to be careful that your staff are not making judgments based on personal biases and things of that nature as well you want to have some checking balances in relationship to those things in such that nature but I'm not required to tolerate a dog that is growling or that is snapping at people or to think of that nature my denial in that situation would be of the access to the dog not the patron so that you know say that you're perfectly welcome here but the dog cannot because of the venue or such that nature this is a constant ongoing issue you need as an organization through your policies, practices the only permissible questions that you can ask under the ADA is that animal trained to provide a service you cannot ask what the service is and ask about the disability okay so you're very limited in your what you can ask about that can't ask what the disability itself is so you cannot require me this kind of was it you can ask about what the task is you can't ask about the disability you also cannot ask me to demonstrate it so you can't ask me show me that that dog picks things up or show me that that dog alerts you to a seizure or whatever it is I have a seizure so I can see it you can't ask that as well there is no certification program so you can't ask me to show you a card that shows that the dog is certified you can't ask me to show any documentation the fact that the dog has been trained to have a specific harness on it that says it's a service animal or anything of that nature the dog should be contained or tethered in some way but it could be different depending on the person's disability the dog could actually be untethered because the person with the disability can't manage each other but it has to be under control of that individual so as long as that dog is under my control voice control et cetera I just can't allow it you should be training your staff about these issues they should understand you should have these conversations bring the case studies in what if this happens how are you going to respond and what are you going to do and who are you going to talk to or who are you going to go to this goes into that planning process that you have having a policy that just says service animals would be allowed now what's our procedures our learning procedures our learning practices that we have in place related to those kinds of things and how we can train our staffs to do those and manage that and don't be surprised that you're going to have abuse you have abuse of a lot of other take disability out of you you have people who try to sneak food in drinks in other kinds of things all the time so you have abuse on a regular basis of your policies and practices any other questions if you ever want to reach me I just stepped in late and I just wanted to know how to access this PowerPoint okay so I've said that before I would make it available to anybody the Kennedy Center collects it but if anybody wants to leave me a business card or anything up here today or whatever I'm more than happy to send it to you it has a lot of active links on it as I said that would be very helpful to people to have the actual PowerPoint versus just a copy of it because the PowerPoint has a lot of active links any other questions I think for one minute I think or whatever five minutes we're giving you a workout with this large room that's good this may be kind of a rookie question or too specific but I'm curious about accessible ticketing in the interest of being inclusive and offering the same experience and being respectful I know that many many organizations do offer accessible prices for captioned performances or just a broad blanket accessible ticketing price I'm curious about the legality of that or the appropriateness of that yeah so this is a very good question there's a lot of debate and discussion in the community about this particular issue there's nothing legally that requires you to provide any kind of discounts or any special specific pricing as it would relate to people with disabilities the issue in the ticketing arena is depending on whether you are an existing facility trying to incorporate accessibility and you cannot incorporate accessibility at all your price levels you may have to adopt your policies practices and procedures to modify ticketing prices in areas where you do have access proportion and there's going to be a session I don't think it's today it's tomorrow that is on accessible ticketing which I would really strongly advise that a seagull will be doing that session she's also done a number of webinars particularly for the national ADA network that are available online on this particular issue as well that you can access through ADATA.org which is the national ADA website as well but it is a very good session to talk about that issue when you talk about so let's talk about in the context of just saying we're going to give discounted ticketing for people with disabilities but that is something that would be totally nothing about the law would prohibit you from being able to do that if you want to provide specialized ticketing for seniors you want to buy specialized ticketing for children or agents or whatever or people with disabilities or whatever that would be your choice to do that that is something that you as an organization from policy practicing and ticketing policies there's nothing that says you have to provide people with disabilities to do that some argue against models they feel that's a charity model that gives the wrong message in regards to people with disabilities in the community others feel that if they already have an income program that maybe that's what your program should be is the low income program for people who meet a certain income because there are people with disabilities who make hundreds of thousands of dollars so there's not necessarily the cheaper being the best way to do that but there's not a legal there would be potential to go in the ticketing arena depending on your seating issues if you cannot provide me the $25 seat that's accessible or the $10 seat that's accessible because you don't have access to those areas you may just need to sell me a ticket in the $100 section or $10 but that's to create my access and equal access to the performance versus a program that does come to people with disabilities totally separate issue but again something you should be addressing in your policies, practices and procedures how do we implement those maybe we want to reevaluate whether we have those or not or how we couch those not being just disability but maybe a low income program versus because there's a lot of people who don't have money we likely have time for one more quick question does anybody have a yeah here we go I realize I should have asked this two questions ago but this is regarding service to animals so how would you how would you reject someone who clearly has a therapeutic dog or does not respond does not necessarily have a service animal how would you say no do that so again you have to decide what's in the culture of your organization who's the appropriate person to do that in your organization and how to handle that first thing would be what's our objective reasons why we would be deciding that that animal is not appropriate to be in our venue so for example it could be that the animal is barking and we have a policy against disruptive behavior and so that's the policy that we're implementing and so we approach the person on the fact that your animal you're perfectly welcome to be here however your animal is disruptive in the circumstance and we're going to ask that your animal would be removed but you're welcome to come back you know and see so you know it's never comfortable those are never comfortable you know scenarios to do but be objective about what the behavior is or the circumstance or the situation for why we're removing it don't be, I think, don't use those kinds of terminologies be it based on observable behaviors and such that are not consistent with the operations of the organization okay so there was a case in the courts whereby a person brought a bull mastiff everybody knows a bull mastiff it's a very large dog it's about 200 pounds anyway she used it for mobility she bought it into a movie theater it was on a Sunday afternoon during a matinee time with zillions of kids and crowds and things of that nature that theater entity made the decision that that dog was not appropriate in that venue because of the crowds it was fearful and scary kids they had size and stuff of that nature they offered the woman a couple of options one that she could come back at other times they gave her identified times when they were less crowded than they were having a problem she could leave the bull mastiff the animal in the manager's office while she was at the performance and then we treat the dog afterwards etc she disagreed with all of those she sued the movie theater the movie theater was in court movie theater won they had offered reasonable options the size of the dog, the venue how proud it was, they had documentation of their venues of that nature so they were successfully able to argue that so you have to just use a real objective information and be consistent in your practices I think we're at time I want to say a tremendous thank you for leading the session and thank you all for coming if you want to give me business cards do you want to bring up here I'm more happy to take them