- [Announcer] Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from the Golisano Foundation supporting Move to Include programming on WXXI and working with the community to lead change toward the inclusion of people with intellectual and physical disabilities.

Share your thoughts at movetoinclude.org - From WXXI News, this is "Connections."

I'm Evan Dawson.

(gentle music) Our connection this hour was made in the Los Angeles area, where wildfires continue to destroy buildings, landscapes, and take lives.

NPR reports that at least 24 people have now died.

The families of several of those people say that their loved ones had disabilities.

Anthony Mitchell's daughter told CNN that, as an amputee, Anthony used a wheelchair.

She said he had planned to evacuate, but his body was found by the bed of his son, Justin, who had cerebral palsy.

More information is not available as to the Mitchell family situation, but their deaths have renewed conversations about disaster preparedness and how, sometimes, those policies and plans do not include people with disabilities, often leading to tragic results.

So, how can we improve those plans when people like conservative talk show host Charlie Kirk recently called for ASL interpretation to be removed from televised broadcasts about emergency situations.

He said they are distracting, and that, as you might imagine, led to significant backlash.

This hour we talk with our guests about how to improve policies, plans, and training efforts so disaster preparedness can include everyone.

And I would like to welcome our guests now.

Dr. Gerry Buckley is here.

President of NTID, vice president and dean at RIT, Gerry is joined by an interpreter at this hour.

Dr. Buckley, welcome.

Thank you for being on the program today.

And welcome as well to David Scott, Chief Diversity Officer for Monroe County.

Thank you for being here.

- Thank you.

- And welcome on the line, Njoki Mwarumba.

Dr. Mwarumba is Assistant Professor of Emergency Management in the Department of Social Science and Public Affairs at Empire State University.

Dr. Mwarumba, thank you for making time for us.

- [Dr. Mwarumba] I appreciate it.

Thank you.

- And Angeline Hamele is with us as well, an accessibility consultant and designer.

Angeline, thank you for being with us.

- [Angeline] Thank you.

- Let me start just by asking all of our guests... Before we listen to the clip that I referenced, I want to start by saying a couple of things.

First of all, I should say that this conversation is part of our Dialogue on Disability Week.

This is a partnership between WXXI and the Al Sigl Community of Agencies, in conjunction with the Herman and Margaret Schwartz Community Series.

We are proud to do it.

And I should say we're going to listen to the clip that I referenced in just a couple of minutes so you can hear what some commentators have been saying about ASL interpreters at disaster briefings.

But let me just start by asking, when you see the disasters like the LA fires, where does your mind go?

What are you thinking about first?

And I'll start with Dr. Buckley.

- Well, Evan, thank you very much for the opportunity to come and share perspectives.

All of us are saddened by what's occurring in Los Angeles still.

And like many people in our community, we're very concerned about the exclusion of individuals with disabilities, the deaf community in particular, when tragedies like this happen.

So my first reaction was one of, "I hope they're planning.

I hope they've included emergency communications.

I hope they're thinking about ASL interpreters."

So when you start to see that happen and then you read a remark by the commentator, it's offensive, but it shows ignorance on the part of the person involved.

I want just use the example of many deaf people use ASL, American Sign Language, as their native language.

That's what they're comfortable in.

That's what they've grown up with.

That's what they understand.

And to assume that captioning will replace the use of ASL just shows an ignorance.

In the same way that if we were to say Spanish-speaking people in Los Angeles.

They know Spanish, it's their native language, they're most comfortable in that language.

Then not putting Spanish-speaking interpreters, making them available, wouldn't be appropriate.

So it should be the same way related to ASL interpreters and making them available.

- David, then, before we kind of get into more about the clip that Gerry is referencing, in general, we see a disaster, and obviously our attention is on LA.

But whether it's a hurricane, wildfires, where does your mind go to how communities are being served?

- Well, the first thing I thought of was what would we do if this was in Rochester?

- And, David, let me ask you pull that microphone real close to you.

- Sure.

- Yeah.

There you go.

- How's that?

- Yeah, good.

- Okay.

What would we do if this was in Rochester and Monroe County?

Because we've had our own situations of different kinds, but we know that we have missed the mark in the past as far as communication.

And that's something that we're actively working on.

So that's the first thing that I thought of, because my eyes have been opened, through working with members of the deaf community, through working with people who speak different languages, about the importance of making sure that our communication is able to be understood by all citizens.

And another thing that I thought of too is the importance of individuals having emergency evacuation plans.

As I, for example, have elderly parents, that was the first thing that I thought of.

And they're both disabled at this point.

So that's where my mind went.

How do we make sure that we, as community, rally around different groups that may need help, and make sure that information is getting across the way that it should to everyone.

- Let me follow that point, before I turn to our guests on the phone, and ask you about the responsibility of preparation.

So in your role, David, as Chief Diversity Officer for Mon Monroe County, you are thinking about what is government doing in the event that we see some kind of disaster that's going to be affecting a community.

And in looking at the LA fires, I keep hearing people say, "Well, why didn't this person get out?"

Why didn't this family get out?"

"Why didn't they do more?"

And I can understand the questions to a point, but especially when it comes to the disability community, what is the peril of simply saying, "Well, that's on them.

They have to figure it out," as opposed to governments proactively asking, "What are we doing?"?

- Right.

It's a "we" thing.

It's never just an individual, because the whole community's being affected.

So it has to be a partnership.

There needs to be more education in terms of what to do in terms of a disaster relief.

But again, how do people know when there's an issue.

And then, when there is an issue, what if the situation is worse?

And so, are we making sure we're staying connected with these communities to make sure they have everything that they need to be prepared?

So that's another piece.

So it's a "we" operation, not an individual, just an individual preparedness.

- Let me go ahead and turn to our guests on the phone.

And if we have guests in the studio who want to pick up a pair of headphones to listen in and have the opportunity to do that, you can do that.

Let me grab Dr. Mwarumba first.

So, Dr. Mwarumba, when you see what's happened in LA, what is on your mind when it comes to who's being served and who is not?

- [Dr. Mwarumba] Thank you for the question.

And what comes to mind is that, unfortunately, we will experience and hear stories and unfortunate losses, like we did with the loss of Justin Mitchell, the family that you cited at the beginning of the show.

And this is heartbreaking, but unfortunately, it really continues to show to us that we are really not interpreting the data, which exists enough to show us that, for example, people with disabilities are four times more likely to lose their lives in disasters.

Right?

So there really does seem to be an inability to take the data and understand that that kind of data points us to realities where, like you said, with preparedness, the way we prepare for disasters has to be such that we really do focus on people with disabilities.

And when you focus on people with disabilities, you are also focusing on people like Anthony Mitchell, who's a caregiver to someone with a disability.

And the question about why such a person couldn't leave is rather straightforward.

He is the caregiver.

So when you look at data from events like Hurricane Katrina as well, a lot of people ended up caught up and losing their lives as well because they could not evacuate for other reasons, right, which are directly related to the reason why people, for example, are not able to evacuate or are not able to interpret information that has been sent out, because it's not functionally understood to them.

So there's so many factors that come into it.

But unfortunately, when something like this happens, my thoughts are certainly about the people who are living with different vulnerabilities and disabilities, who are more likely and more highly disproportionately impacted by disasters.

- Let me ask Angeline Hamele.

Angeline, do you want to weigh in on that too?

- [Angeline] Yeah, absolutely.

So for this, I think about my own personal experiences.

I am someone who uses a power chair, a 400-pound power chair, on a daily basis.

I'm non-ambulatory.

And I think about myself and my peers in the community who are relying on personal care assistance, who rely on other people to get out.

I, myself, to get out of any emergency need access to wheelchair-accessible transportation.

And that's really hard to coordinate in these situations.

I need help going to the bathroom.

I need help doing different things.

As well as I think about so many different disabled people who do need complex care, who maybe are scared of leaving their house because that's where the batteries for their wheelchair are, that's where their assistive technology is, that's where it's most accessible for them, and thinking about evacuating and not having access to those crucial pieces of technology is honestly very terrifying.

Especially looking at healthcare and insurance.

My power chair is $41,000.

And lots of pieces of technology for disabled people are also this really exorbitant cost.

So for a lot of people it's choosing stay behind because it's the most accessible for them.

And that's really terrifying.

And then as well we can think about people with sensory or developmental and intellectual disabilities who may be scared or may not understand the evacuation protocol as well as the high percentage of Americans who are illiterate.

So there's a lot of different factors that aren't currently being considered in the emergency evacuation protocol.

And that's something I've had personal experience myself.

- Well, I want to hear what Charlie Kirk said.

Now, this is a clip that has gone viral in the last few days.

He is a conservative media personality.

He hosts his own podcast and talk show.

The founder of, I think it's Turning Point USA.

He is a very influential person in sort of the online political space.

And what he's talking about in this clip is the disaster briefings in Los Angeles.

So we've been hearing from the sheriff, it might be firefighters, it might be doctors, and for days they are briefing the public on what's going on with the fires, who is being evacuated and who is not.

And they are joined on stage by interpreters, who are not only doing their jobs but sometimes, rather demonstratively, for a reason, these are very urgent times.

And Charlie Kirk has decided we can't do that anymore.

I want to listen to this clip.

- [Charlie] I'm going to say this just off the cuff before I introduce our guest.

Can we please just go away with half the screen during these emergency briefings to the sign language interpreters?

I have nothing against, obviously, people that cannot hear, but there's close captioning.

I mean, this is just over the top.

We can't do this.

We got to get back to how it used to be.

It's just too much.

It's a distraction, is what it is.

The reason is they do these emergency briefings for fires or terrorist attacks, and you're looking at this and you're not listening.

I don't like it.

- Dr. Buckley.

And again, I'll ask you if you can bring that microphone close to you.

When he says that, "well, there's closed captioning.

Why do we need an interpreter?

It's just distracting for most viewers," help me understand not only your reaction but his comment about, "Isn't closed captioning enough?"

What do you think?

- My reaction is this is an individual who clearly doesn't understand that ASL, American Sign Language, is the native language of many deaf people.

And for them to understand the emergency notification, they need to have it in their native language.

Hopefully, once he understands that and is educated about that, it'll change his attitude, help him to understand why that's necessary to have that available.

- I'm hopeful that he would change his mind because I'm hopeful about everything.

But I don't know.

I can't imagine making a comment like that and thinking that there is value in voicing concern about interpretation.

But, Dr. Buckley, it seems to me that this is tied to this idea that the disability community is sometimes viewed as a distraction or an annoyance to able-bodied people who just don't want to have to deal with it.

I'm not trying to hyperbolize or jump to conclusions.

What do you think?

- No, I think there's a certain percentage of people who do have that attitude.

But I find, through education, often they change their attitude.

This is not a new issue.

We called it, the White House with the previous administration and the incoming administration previously refused to provide interpreters.

The governor of New York... - [Evan] I don't recall that.

But yeah, thank you.

- The governor of New York himself, during the pandemic, was reluctant to do it.

We had to educate them.

It took both the courts as well as the public opinion to be explaining to them why it was critical and why it was necessary.

I'm really hoping we here in Rochester can be a model for the nation.

We have about 4% of our total population with some kind of hearing loss.

We have the world's largest number of deaf people living in Monroe County.

That's part of the reason we've been partnering with Monroe County, trying to set up a model for what should happen.

I've been here in Rochester for 30 years.

This is not new.

I go back to the ice storm.

- The first ice storm, 1991.

- The first one.

The one that resulted in the baby boom.

Remember?

Nine months later.

But when you think about it, many of deaf people were out driving.

We didn't know what was going on.

There weren't emergency communications.

And here we are, 20 or 30 years later, still struggling.

But I'm really hoping that Monroe County can be a beacon of hope, a model for the nation of inclusive planning.

And that's one of the things we've started working on.

- Let me ask you more about that.

And now let me briefly say to listeners, there is a chance that we're going to hear from President Biden this hour.

There is some talk about likely related to a ceasefire in Gaza.

If that happens this hour, NPR will come in and you will hear President Biden talking about that.

So we're prepared for that if that happens.

But we're going to have this conversation, if until that point.

And, Gerry, do you want to tell us a little bit more about the work NTID is doing to make sure that, at least here in Monroe County, that the concerns we're seeing elsewhere don't happen, that this is a place of preparation for everybody?

- Yeah.

We are the home of 1,200 deaf students attending Rochester Institute of Technology from all over the country and all over the world.

They come to Rochester for an outstanding career education.

Our campus is a model of communication access.

Everything that happens there is accessible, so students, in an emergency situation, can notify public safety, they can do many things.

And so we're a model.

We'd like to see that expanded to Monroe County.

Let me (indistinct) an example of something that happened last October in Maine.

You remember there was a shooting involving 18 people were murdered terribly?

Four of those people were deaf.

The state of Maine and that community was not ready.

So, for example, when they announced the shootings, remember there was a lockdown?

There were deaf people taken to the hospital.

They didn't let the interpreters into the hospital because there was a lockdown.

The four deaf people who were murdered, they didn't notify the families.

And so the mothers, the wives, and the spouses drove around all night looking, trying to find their husbands who had been murdered.

They didn't find out until the next morning at eight in the morning, when they went to the Unification Center or the Reunification Center.

Again, they forgot to hire interpreters, so the mother of one of the men who was murdered had to interpret for his wife that he had been killed.

It's shocking that that would happen.

But in Maine, one can say it's a rural community and they weren't prepared.

Later when the governor came to explain what was going on, they told the interpreter to move off the stage because they were a distraction.

Those kind of things still happened.

So that's part of why we at NTID worked with County Supervisor Adam Bello and Congressman Joe Morelle and our friends locally in the political area, and we convened a summit last summer, in the early summer, to begin looking at how can we prepare.

Another example would be here in Monroe County we have the nuclear plant.

If something were to happen, do we even know where deaf people are so we can notify them?

We're still in the process of needing to address those gaps.

And so I'm looking forward to working with my colleagues in Monroe County.

And I salute Mr. Bello and Congressman Morelle for their strong commitment as well as Sheriff Baxter, who participated in the summit and pledged to work with us.

- Oh, do you want to add to that...

I'll ask your colleague who's sitting next to you, if you want to add, David, to some of the importance of this work and the progress, at least perhaps, that you're seeing in getting something done.

- Yes.

I actually was at that summit as well.

And I was happy to be there 'cause it really opened my eyes.

One of the things that someone said to me afterwards, to answer a previous question that you had about closed captioning, they said, "You as a hearing person try to watch closed captioning, see if it's accurate."

And they said, "Do it with a song that you know.

Even go to YouTube."

So I did that, and the song that I knew was completely misinterpreted.

There was wrong punctuation, which can change the meaning of words.

I mean, it was a disaster.

So they said, "The importance of having interpreters being visible is something that's very important."

From an administrative standpoint, we're working on some of our internal workings to make sure that people with disabilities, as well as people who are in the deaf community, are able to communicate with us effectively.

We have bought some software and technology for video conferencing.

We also work with a lot of interpreter services to make sure that we always have interpreters for our news briefs, but especially when it comes down to emergency communication.

So we are a part of that task force.

And we also are in the process of developing a deaf equity council for Monroe County.

We already have a charter that's been approved.

We have a base team.

And we're getting ready to launch a website in a few weeks about that.

And we're looking to work with NTID, RIT, and other members and organizations that work with the deaf community to make sure that we're understanding the needs.

Because as a lot of hearing people are faced with this, we don't know what we don't know.

So making sure we stay in communication is something that's crucial for us as an administration and something we're committed to.

- What we'll do here is let's take our only break of this hour.

Let's go ahead and do that now.

Because what we do expect... We are hearing from NPR national coverage they do expect President Biden to be making these remarks momentarily.

I don't suspect...

I don't know how long they will be.

It's possible they could be brief.

But there's talk of this ceasefire deal in Gaza.

So let's take this break.

We're going to come back.

And again, we're just going to be ready for the president whenever he is here.

But otherwise, we are having this very important conversation and, frankly, very enlightening conversation on disaster preparedness for everybody.

And that includes the disability community.

And we're learning a great deal from our guests this hour.

So let's take this break.

We'll come right back on "Connections."

(uplifting music) I'm Evan Dawson.

Thursday on the next Connections," we welcome V Spehar, the creator of the hugely popular TikTok account Under the Desk News.

V is a journalist, and they're joining us to talk about the future of journalism, the future of TikTok, what happens if it goes away effectively, and what it really means to be a journalist in 2025.

Talk with you then.

(uplifting music) - [Announcer] Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from the University of Rochester presenting the Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Address by Giancarlo Esposito, actor from "Breaking Bad," "The Mandalorian," and "Do the Right Thing," Thursday, January 30th at 5:00 PM.

More at events.rochester.edu.

- This is "Connections."

I'm Evan Dawson.

I want to follow up a point.

Before we turn to our guests on the line, I want to follow up with Dr. Buckley on a point that he was making about what happened in the state of Maine with a mass shooting going on.

Even there, or even in the pandemic with Governor Cuomo at the time, there was talk that, "Well, interpreters were distracting.

Why do we need interpreters on stage?"

So last week when I heard conservative commentator Charlie Kirk complaining and going viral complaining about interpreters at the LA wildfires, I was ignorant.

To me, that was a one-off, something to kind of muse about, how could someone be so callous?

But, Gerry, I think what I'm hearing from you is that, if you're a little more closely tied to the disability community, that is a consistent refrain that, unfortunately, that this is common.

Yes?

- It's more common that I would like it to be.

Many years after the Americans with Disabilities Act, which calls for the inclusion of planning, the inclusion of individuals with disabilities, we still struggle with really being an inclusive community the way we want to be.

It's part of the reason I'm excited about the partnership with Monroe County to really work on a specific plan.

And what happened in Maine could very well happen here at a bar, a restaurant, during a Buffalo Bills game, if there were many deaf people there.

If there was a shooting that occurred, would Monroe County be ready to deal with multiple deaf people being injured or killed?

And that's what we need to prepare for.

As awful as it sounds, we need to be prepared for those kinds of things.

Just wanted to make one other point regarding right now, we know that many senior citizens, some 40 to 50% over the age, and I'm one of them now, over the age of 60, 65, have a hearing loss.

So the captioning is critical.

I don't want to reduce the importance of captioning.

Many hard-of-hearing people depend on it.

But I think the captioning, along with the interpreting, are both needed to meet the needs of the deaf and hard-of-hearing community.

- And let me just affirm David Scott's comments about closed captioning.

No, I'm not criticizing the effort of closed captioning, but I can understand why it is sometimes not sufficient or not as accurate as it can be.

Hopefully in the future it gets better.

But good reminder for why it should not replace interpretation.

I appreciate that point.

I want to ask Angeline to tell us about Studio 390 and some of the work that you're doing, Angeline.

Can you do that?

- [Angeline] Yeah, absolutely.

So at the Rochester Institute of Technology, every summer there is a program called Studio 930 where RIT brings in people and clients from all over Monroe County, notably Rochester Regional Hospital, Al Sigl Community of Agencies, and a lot of other people, some individuals, and we work in conjunction with them to come up with designs, whether that's low-tech or high-tech designs, to kind of meet their needs.

And these are all about things regarding people with disabilities.

Last summer I had the privilege to work with Jeiri Flores, who works with the LEND Fellowship at U of R, as well as works with the Al Sigl Community of Agencies.

And we wanted to look at emergency evacuation for power chair users, like myself and Jeiri, and how we could kind of improve that.

So we looked at how that works at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where I'm currently a graduate student as well as a designer and a adjunct professor, and we kind of looked at how can we make things more accessible in terms of a evacuation.

So looking at signage, like, are the maps on or near exits?

Do they have information on how to leave if you're in a wheelchair or using mobility aid?

Is there information for deaf, deaf-blind, deaf-plus individuals on these posters, considering RIT is also a shared campus with the National Technical Institute of the Deaf?

We looked at what public safety and other emergency staff is trained on in terms of disabled people.

And we also looked at what technology we can leverage, because RIT has so much potential for different technologies that we can implement design to just make things more accessible.

- Angeline, just reading a little bit about your own story.

You grew up in Florida, obviously, that's a state that deals with hurricanes, spent time in Maine, which has ice storms, as we did in 1991, 2003, I think, was the second major ice storm here.

Can you describe what it's like when someone with a disability is told, "Well, in case of an emergency, just stay where you are, shelter in place" as opposed to, "Here's an active plan.

You're part of the community.

We're going to do more"?

What is that like?

- [Angeline] For me, it's honestly very terrifying.

As I said, I use a 400-pound power chair, and I've had multiple times where I might be on like the fourth floor of an academic building and the fire alarm goes off.

And when this happens, the professors and staff aren't taught how to assist their peers or their students in case of an emergency.

The automatic doors actually turn off, the doors close, and I can't open those independently.

The elevators turn off, and you're not allowed to use the elevators during fire drills or actual emergencies.

So they kind of just say like, "Oh, shelter in place."

And sometimes there's designated areas to wait, sometimes there's not.

And so you kind of just have to sit there, waiting to see if someone will come up and help you.

For myself, I can't walk, and I would need someone to help me get down four flights of stairs.

So for me, it's just immediate anxiety.

I can't go into a building without thinking about, "Okay, what's going to be my emergency evacuation plan?"

It's something that I have to constantly be cognizant of.

And it's something that we desperately need more information about and more training on from maybe students to student, teacher to teacher, and all these different relationships.

- Well, the work that Angeline is doing, obviously, from my perspective, sounds like it can have a much needed and pretty strong impact.

And David Scott with Monroe County, surely you hear this kind of story from Angeline and think, "We just can't be telling people with disabilities, 'Shelter in place, shelter in place, shelter in place.'"

- Exactly.

- That can't be sufficient in every emergency.

- There has to be a better way.

And I think, again, it takes collaboration to come up with something that would be, A, feasible and then also something sustainable.

And another thing that I find too, in working with people with disabilities for a long time, those disabilities could change.

They could get worse or they could develop another disability.

So it's important to make sure we're communicating with people and making sure we understand what their individual needs are as well.

And that's something that's very important as far as helping them be prepared in these situations.

There's no other way.

- So for people in the disability community who are accessing this conversation, if they want to know what is the plan in different scenarios, how can I be better informed, are there ways to interact with the county to find out what you want them to understand?

- I think the best way to answer that is for them to talk with people and make their needs known.

Because some of the plans that we do have through our Public Safety Department, for example, we don't know all the time if they're sufficient or not.

So it's always important for people to call us and let us know what their needs are so we may be able to assist them with anything.

I think that's the best way to answer that.

So just contact us, period.

- And let me ask Dr. Njoki Mwarumba, who is Assistant Professor of Emergency Management in the Department of Social Science and Public Affairs at Empire State University.

Dr. Mwarumba, what is going to be the indicator to you that government at all levels is taking this problem seriously?

- [Dr. Mwarumba] So I think I'd like to step back just real quick and address the statement that was made by the conservative talk show host, which I find very distressing.

Because it really is impervious to the reality that over 70 million adults in the United States, and that doesn't touch on children or adolescents, are living with a kind of disability or other.

Right?

So certainly that kind of education needs to continue to happen.

But we also need to understand that, especially given the dynamics today.

is that there's going to remain some people that are still beholden to such callous statements as that one that was made.

What we also need to understand is that statements like those have real implications for life and death for people.

Right?

So for us who are working in emergency management and are involved in comprehensive disaster cycle management, it's important to understand that it's not just about waiting until the response phase when we are looking to engage people with disabilities, but it really has to be a comprehensive and sustained effort to engage people with disabilities.

Because, like you can very adequately hear from Angeline, she would be able to tell us what she needs, right?

For example, talking with the Public Safety Department is communicating and collaborating with organizations.

larger organizations, or people with disabilities, understanding that these disabilities' dimensions sometimes change so that the people who are providing safety, people who are involved in planning resources, right, have adequate data, have adequate equipment and training so that they can prepare for the disasters that are inadvertently going to happen.

We've talked about government, and government does play a critical role in the field of disaster management, and certainly especially during response.

What we also need to incorporate and engage in, and I'm hearing that from my colleagues in this talk show too, is that we need to go beyond just government.

There has to be more.

There has to be institutions of higher education.

There has to be engagement in private industry, nonprofits.

So bringing all those people around the table is certainly going to provide a more robust capability-based approach to supporting the over 70 million people living in this country with disabilities.

- Well, let me read an email from a listener named Lisa.

And it reminds me of a conversation we had in a past dialogue on disability, where a guest said, "If you are not in the disability community today, who's to say that you won't be a member of the disability community in the future?"

Sometimes we too often talk about this as if it is one fixed community, a second fixed community, and never the two shall overlap.

And Lisa writes to say, "Evan, I'm concerned that the changing needs of our residents, as they age and lose abilities, are not sufficiently considered by planning professionals.

Planning seems to think of older adults as able-bodied or disabled but not as individuals or couples whose needs and abilities to react to situations, access information, hear, understand, or physically act to plan and protect themselves, this is treated as if during an emergency it is static.

They often are more affected by heat and cold than other adults.

This is particularly an acute deficit for older adults living in poorly insulated homes and without air conditioning during power outages and during heat and cold emergencies.

Thank you for having this show."

Dr. Mwarumba, do you want to add to the points that Lisa is making in that email?

- [Dr. Mwarumba] Oh, absolutely.

And she really does make a very pertinent point, is that, historically, people have addressed people with disabilities singularly, right?

So if it's a visible disability, then you think that that person has this one disability and might not have multiple other issues that come up at different times, so for example, as someone ages.

So when you start considering disability from that perspective, it's very myopic.

The approach really just needs to be one that considers the intersectionality of multiple issues that people with disabilities live with.

And then also understanding that it's a civil rights-based approach.

Because the ADA of 1919 was really set up so that discriminating against people with disabilities was going against the American law.

So understanding that there's no hierarchy of disabilities, that this really is a civil rights-based approach, and connecting people with disabilities and leveraging the information they have, and living with them to see how this changes over the lifespan is central.

I also like what Lisa says about it not being static, because it's not.

Just referring back to the statement that the conservative talk show host made talking about selecting one disability and kind of pitting it against the other, that's fairly myopic, to the extent that you could be in a situation where you are not experiencing or not living with a disability and, say, something happens like a pandemic, right?

And so people still living with long COVID, some of them, they are now considered as people living with a disability because of the impact of yet another disaster, which was COVID-19, and that affected a part of their sensory perception, or their mental health, or physical or mobility components.

So we really need to be clear about disability touching all of us and involving all of us, and understanding too that people with disabilities are people who have capacity and capability.

- Gerry Buckley is president of NTID and vice president and dean at RIT.

It's valuable to keep in mind that disability communities grow over time and that a person who might not spend all of their lives as part of a community, that might change.

- Yes.

Yes, definitely.

And that not only includes hearing loss, but includes other forms of physical limitations.

All of us, as we age, are facing that, and society and our community needs to prepare for an inclusive approach to planning for us.

And we need to be involved ourselves in that effort.

I suspect that what we'll see over the next few years, we'll see the courts used to, basically, apply the law, ensure that the law is enforce.

But I really hope that communities like Rochester can bring the community, government, political, private leaders together in the disabled community, and plan together looking at what we should do related to the emergencies that are likely to emerge.

- Isn't the goal to do this without ending up in court?

- I would hope, but... (group laughing) my experience in this business over many years is sometimes the courts are necessary to, basically, force the law to be enforced.

And the courts have their role in our system.

I'm an optimist that things will improve, but it requires all of us working together, coming together.

And again, I'd like to go back to Rochester being a model.

We really can be.

We're very fortunate to be in a community where, generally, people are very sensitive to issues with disabilities.

We have the Al Sigl Center.

We have many positive things going on.

We need to build on that and become a model for the state and the nation.

- While we still have some time, let me try to work in some phone calls from listeners.

Brian in Hilton on the phone.

Hi, Brian.

Go ahead.

- [Brian] Hi, can you hear me?

- I can.

- [Brian] Hi.

Yeah, I caught this program about halfway through, and I just wanted to mention about another project.

I am a professor at RIT and I'm the principal investigator on a National Science Foundation grant that is exactly looking at the issues of emergency management and the deaf and hard-of-hearing.

I am not deaf or hard-of-hearing myself, but we have a lot of partners at NTID, also Monroe County, and with local groups called the Deaf Refugee Advocacy Group.

And we've been doing a lot of different kinds of research.

Some straight traditional academic research where we've conducted studies on public safety officials to kind of develop an understanding of their awareness of deaf and hard-of-hearing culture and the issues that they face.

We've also worked... We're working with Dr. Jason Rotoli at the University of Rochester Medical Center, who's an expert on deaf emergency communication.

And he's been doing research on building a communication booklet that can be used for hearing emergency responders to communicate with deaf people.

We've also been working on trying to really give a voice to the deaf and hard-of-hearing people community to give them the ability to communicate about things in their community using open-source mapping technologies.

And we're also looking at building up the deaf and hard-of-hearing workforce.

We had two interns work at the Monroe County Office of Emergency Management last summer, and we're hoping to do more of that, as well as building education modules to train hearing public safety officials on a lot of the issues that have been talked about in the program so far.

So I just wanted to sort of make people aware of this project.

Again, it's funded by the National Science Foundation, so there has been bigger interest in these issues.

- Brian, thank you for the phone call.

I'll start with Dr. Buckley, if you want to add something there.

- Thank you very much for raising that.

Its on my notes but I hadn't got to it.

(group laughing) And I really appreciate you summarizing the targets of that grant.

We're very excited.

And again, the partnership with Monroe County to really address each of those areas is important.

- [Evan] Do you want to add to that as well, David Scott from Monroe County?

- I think, speaking of DEI, what's important is making sure that we're looking at all disabilities and making sure we're accounting for everyone and not focusing just in one area.

And one of the things that we're doing with the County is we've created a Community Diversity Advisory Council for those reasons, just so we can understand the very different issues that people with disabilities have, regardless of what disability it is, so we are able to address and help them in any way we can.

- Brian, thank you so much for taking the time to call the program and to help Gerry out and remember to get all of his notes.

Let me also read... - I owe you, Brian.

I'll send you...

I owe you a beer or something.

Okay?

- Let me briefly read some remarks from a listener named Alan in Dansville, I think, very self-aware.

Alan called to say that, in the past, he has made the kind of comments that Charlie Kirk made about interpreters.

He says he now feels embarrassed about that, but he doesn't understand how a deaf person would be able to understand closed captions when he can't understand them, as they often come out as gobbledygook or nonsense.

So let me just ask Dr. Buckley to respond to Alan.

- Sure.

Excellent question.

For people who are born deaf, they've learned the English language through a visual means.

So think yourself, if I asked you to learn a different language now, for example, Chinese, you say, "Oh," and I said, "I'll send you to China, but you have to live in a glass house and you have to learn Chinese through lip-reading."

That's the challenge deaf people are facing who are born deaf.

I'm a different type of deaf person.

I had a progressive hearing loss, so I learned to speak first, and I have an implant now.

But for many deaf people who are born deaf, raised deaf, use American Sign Language, their native language, that's what they understand, and trying to learn English through lip-reading is the same challenge.

And captioning is the wrong...

It would be very difficult for them in the same way if I asked you, "Can you read Chinese now?

"Can you speak and hear Chinese now?"

when you spent time trying to learn through lip-reading only.

- Alan, thank you for calling in.

And I'll just keep reaffirming that closed captioning has to get better, but we are all learning this hour why it is not sufficient.

So let me just give our guests some time to make some final remarks.

Angeline Hamele, accessibility consultant and designer, what do you want to leave with the audience this hour?

- [Angeline] Yeah.

I would just like to say that emergencies are so cyclical in regards to disability.

Emergencies every year cause people to be disabled, and we need resources to help people who are newly disabled kind of get used to their new life.

We need resources to help disabled people who are already disabled be able to evacuate.

And just kind of remember what it would feel like for you, or any listener, to be in that situation, kind of like the scariness of that.

I think just remembering to be kind and compassionate in all senses of emergency as well as just trying to be an advocate for yourself and others is super important.

So thank you for having me on today.

- Thank you for being with us.

We very much appreciate it.

Dr. Njoki Mwarumba, do you want to make some final thoughts for listeners?

- [Dr. Mwarumba] I do.

Thank you very much.

And I think my statement has to do with the fact that, as an emergency management professor, disasters will continue to be with us.

And in fact, the projection is that they will continue to increase in frequency and intensity.

So the matters that have to do with people with disabilities are front and central.

They should not be peripheral.

And the way that this can be interpreted or translated is through policy and practice.

- Thank you for making time for the program today.

And let me turn to David Scott, Chief Diversity Officer for Monroe County.

Final thoughts from you?

- Just that we're here to work with, the County is here to work with all of our citizens.

It's important that we hear from you and understand what your needs are.

So don't be afraid to reach out to us at any office that you may need.

- In about 45 seconds, Dr. Buckley, final thoughts.

- Thank you for having us and addressing this topic.

Let's move forward with appropriate planning together so the Monroe community can be a safe and inclusive community for all of us.

- And because I'm going to spend these last 30 seconds, you said earlier you're an optimist.

Are you an optimist that that will happen?

- All of us have to stay involved and committed.

It's very important.

As citizens of our community, we all have shared responsibility, not just leave it on government, but citizens need to be involved.

- Change doesn't happen automatically.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you to all of our guests.

That's Dr. Gerry Buckley.

Dr. Buckley, thank you for being here.

The president of NTID, vice president and dean at RIT.

A really powerful conversation this hour.

I hope we've added some context to some of the national discussions you are seeing, not just about Los Angeles but certainly that's a big one right now, but about any disaster that unfolds.

And our guests are correct to point out that, in the future, unfortunately, there will be more.

And so this story has been part of our Dialogue on Disability Week, a partnership between WXXI and the Al Sigl Community of Agencies, in conjunction with the Herman and Margaret Schwartz Community Series.

From all of us at "Connections," thank you.

Just keep in mind President Biden will be joining all of us.

I guess he's going to make some remarks any minute now.

And NPR will be carrying those remarks about the ceasefire achieved in Gaza.

So that's coming up.

Stand by for that.

From all of us, thanks for listening, thanks for watching on YouTube.

We're back with you tomorrow on member-supported public media.

(uplifting music) (uplifting music continues) (uplifting music continues) - [Announcer] This program is a production of WXXI Public Radio.

The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of this station, its staff, management, or underwriters.

The broadcast is meant for the private use of our audience.

Any rebroadcast or use in another medium without expressed written consent of WXXI is strictly prohibited.

"Connections" with Evan Dawson is available as a podcast.

Just click on the "Connections" link at wxxinews.org.