During and after Tropical Storm Irene passed through the tri-state area, people with disabilities and their advocates reported lack of accessibility at some evacuation centers and insufficient disaster planning for the disability community.
The City ordered evacuations from “Zone A” neighborhoods that are considered the most vulnerable to flooding. Susan Dooha, executive director of the Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York (CIDNY) surveyed six of the shelters for those residents and found problems with accessibility.
New York City must retain emergency call boxes with fire and police buttons on streets and other locations because it has not provided an accessible alternative, a judge said in August, settling a lawsuit filed on behalf of people with hearing disabilities.
The City had sought to lift a 1996 injunction banning removal of the boxes and proposed using pay phones enhanced with a tapping mechanism as a replacement. One tap would indicate that the emergency was a fire and two taps would request the police.
The independent living movement is mourning the loss of a powerful force last month when Fred Fay passed away. Fay was 66 and lived in Concord, Mass.
Fay became an activist after being injured in a trapeze accident at 16 that damaged his spinal cord. Fay learned that he would never walk again and began using a wheelchair and then driving a car.
When he was 17, Fay co-founded a counseling and information center with his mother Janet called “Opening Doors” and the Washington Architectural Barriers Project that fought for accessibility of the D.C. transit system.
Fay developed assistive technology systems that use computers to empower people with physical disabilities. He was pivotal to the movement that achieved the passage of the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968, Sections 503 and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1975 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
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