[MUSIC PLAYING] JOE ZESSKI: Hello, and welcome to this edition of Ask About the ADA Podcast. I am Joe Zesski, the program manager of the Northeast ADA center, and today, we're going to continue our conversation that we began a little while ago with the Technical Assistance Team of the Northeast ADA center, Jennifer Perry and Christopher Sweet, both are back with us again as well, as Grace Fairchild, our student worker, to lead the conversation.
This week, we're going to look more at what is technical assistance and what that means for us in terms of what we provide to the public when they reach out to us with questions about the ADA Center. Grace, why don't you continue the conversation?
GRACE FAIRCHILD: Thanks, Joe. So first of all, what is technical assistance? Joe, can you start?
JOE ZESSKI: Sure, well, technical assistance can sound a little more complicated, but how I think of it, it's about getting accurate information. A lot of times, understanding what the Americans with Disabilities Act is can be more complicated than people realize, and sometimes, people just don't know. Does the law apply to me or does it apply in this situation, or sometimes there's particular information that they need about the law, and so for me, technical assistance is our chance to educate people and help them to be better self advocates and to be more knowledgeable about their rights or responsibilities.
Chris or Jen, do either of you want to address that?
CHRIS SWEET: Yeah, I can go. So for me, providing technical assistance really can be very broad based, where we start delving into topics that can be very complicated and can be a little gray. It's not always black and white, and so it really is just making sure that we have a good base understanding of how the ADA is applicable to the stakeholders that are giving us a call. But then again, some calls can be very, very basic, and I know Jen can speak, too, I don't to steal her thunder, but Jen can speak to things like how wide is a doorway.
But then we could get into other things about state and local government issues. A lot of things, especially under employment, which just runs the gamut of everything. How about you, Jen?
JENNIFER PERRY: Yeah, I think at the end of the day, our role is to educate and to make the ADA more understandable, I guess, is a good way to phrase it. As Cris and Joe said, some questions are very complicated, and our role is to try to make it less complicated. To try to use plain language and explain as best as we can with the ADA regulations require. In some instances, as Chris said, our answers are very clear, and in other instances, they are not. So trying to make those issues more understandable for a wide array of stakeholders certainly is something that we are very proud of.
We get calls from professionals, including professions such as attorneys, architects, code officials, and we also speak to a lot-- in fact, our primary audience are individuals with disabilities who have questions or their family members of people with disabilities that have questions. We have to be able to provide technical assistance to all of these stakeholders. So we certainly speak to a diverse group, and we really pride ourselves on providing a technical assistance and tailoring it to the caller that we're speaking to.
JOE ZESSKI: Something that we also try to do-- just building on what you're saying, Jen, is that when we provide as a center technical assistance, we try to make sure that being responsive is built into our process. I think you touched on that a little bit, and for us, that means that one, generally, we answer the phone when you call, unless we are on the telephone currently, and if you have to leave a voicemail, we make every effort to return it as soon as possible. And I think being responsive and being a place that people can go to for information is part of what makes technical assistance from Northeast ADA is something that you may not find at every organization you reach out to.
CHRIS SWEET: And I think I would just add that our technical assistance really intersects with a lot of other laws or a lot of other issues, and one example just being Jennifer's knowledge of New York City building codes, which intersects with the ADA, or goes above and beyond that. And so we all need to have a good understanding, especially within our region specific of other human rights laws or other building codes and different things that go along hand-in-hand with the ADA.
JOE ZESSKI: That's true. And it's also about referring out if we don't know the answer, if it's not an ADA question or a question that we have in-house expertise on that we could really give legitimate good information on, we refer people to other places that should be able to provide the information that they need if we don't know. And that happens, because a lot of times when people call us, they might assume that the ADA applies to everything when it doesn't, actually, and so there'll be cases where we say, well, you actually need to talk to someone in a Fair Housing department, or you need to talk to someone who knows more about this specialty or that specialty. And we refer people out, so we're honest in terms of what we know and what we don't know.
GRACE FAIRCHILD: And so how do you keep track of changing interpretations via litigation or maybe even the unenforceable standards that Jen was mentioning. How do you keep track of those changes to the world of ADA knowledge?
JOE ZESSKI: It's an ongoing process, and there's a couple of things. First, in terms of litigation, they can be useful sources of information, but unless something is before the Supreme Court, you can't necessarily reference it as being fully authoritative. And as a technical assistance team, we can let people know that this court, this second court reached this decision, but a person has to understand that it only applies in that particular district and that it could be further litigated, so it's not it's not the end all and be all interpretation, necessarily.
There's certainly a lot of guidance that's available from the different federal agencies that enforce the ADA. You mentioned the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission earlier, the Department of Justice is another large one. Department of Transportation. A number of different federal agencies have enforcement powers, and they generally provide guidance in different forms.
So sometimes through manuals that are available online. Also, a lot of different resources and documents that are available, and oftentimes, you can track recent developments on ada.gov, which is a really good go to resource, but it's also a matter for us of being on top of different news sources for the latest developments or perhaps coming trends through our professional knowledge and networks and different organizations that we may belong to. And so it's a process of gathering and sorting through the information to find the wheat from the chaff, to use an old expression, to sort out what is good, reliable information that might update or change something new versus what could be just background noise.
GRACE FAIRCHILD: Interesting. So my final question today is, what do you wish that everyone knew about the ADA? We'll start with Jen.
JENNIFER PERRY: Oh, Lord. What do I wish everyone knew? Well, I'll speak from my focus area here, and one of the things that gets a lot of people into trouble in terms of physical accessibility is not realizing that there are many, as I said earlier, firm and fast requirements for accessibility. So people might pour in sidewalk and think, well, that looks flat enough and wide enough, so we're ADA compliant.
What they fail to remember is that if that sidewalk has a slope in excess of 5%, if it's not at least 36 inches wide, if the cross slope exceeds 2%, then that's not ADA compliant. So there are some very clear requirements that have to be applied that many people aren't aware. When they think of the ADA, they certainly think of things like accessible parking spaces and a bigger toilet room or a bigger toilet stall, but they don't realize that those dimensions are very technical.
You can't just build something big and say, well, this is accessible. So and that's our job here is to educate people that the ADA standards for design are there for a reason, and when people often deviate from them, it essentially the outcome is that people with disabilities might not have access to a lot of buildings and facilities. So not doing it right can very much adversely impact the lives of people with disabilities. So our goal is to educate people so that people with disabilities do have fair and equal access to the built environment.
GRACE FAIRCHILD: Chris?
CHRIS SWEET: Yeah, so one of the things that has always struck me since I started working at the ADA Center is that people really don't know about the ADA until you need the ADA, and so yeah, and so it's just and that's why I enjoy the job so much reaching out to stakeholders, going to different conferences and trainings and whatnot to give people information so that they know more. But what I would like to see is that more people do have an understanding of why the ADA was put into place, and that's so that we have an integrative society where everybody gets to participate. And there's so many layers and levels to that, but I think when I talk to individuals outside of work and they ask what I do and I find out how many people know so little about the ADA, and I realize that how little I actually know.
So I think the big thing for me is that people understand that the ADA touches every level of society, every aspect of society, like Jen said, whether it's buildings or whether it's just so you can be gainfully employed and provide for your family or have access to programs and education and whatnot. That it is a very encompassing law that is about making sure we all can participate.
GRACE FAIRCHILD: Good answer. Sorry, go ahead, Joe.
JOE ZESSKI: Sorry, Grace. And for me, I think what I would say is that I wish people understood that or understand that the answers that you might find in the ADA are not necessarily clear cut yes or no. They may be-- there are times where there are very specific yes or no things. For example, in some of the language with the code how wide must the door doorway be.
You can find clear, concrete answers there, but a lot of times, the answer to a question might be yes, but or no, but, because the ADA is a law that really has to be understood or interpreted on a case-by-case basis. And I think in terms of technical assistance, that's something that we tried to do is to help people understand how the ADA applies to them specifically in a specific situation, in a specific circumstance, and I think understanding that the law has its general broad principles of equal opportunity, equal access and integration, but understanding how those apply to a person is very individual based. Very individual basis.
So I think that's part of what we do in terms of TA.
GRACE FAIRCHILD: Well, Joe, Jen, and Chris, thank you so much for joining us.
JOE ZESSKI: 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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