How to Request for Reasonable Accommodations
For State Employees
- Know your rights - ADA
- Section 504 Rehab Act
- Office of Employee Relations
- Department of Civil Services
- OGS approved ASL Interpreter Vendors
- OGS approved Assistive Technology for Persons with Disabilities (Statewide)
For Non State Employees
- List of Office of General Services approved vendors
- Office of General Services approved Assistive Technology for Persons with Disabilities (Statewide)
- How to become a New York State approved vendor
- NYS Courts for Court Users
Elections
New York City
Voters can request accommodations by emailing [email protected]
The New York City Board of Elections staff will strive to find the best interpreter based on the voters' needs. All requests must be submitted at least 48 business hours in advance of services.
Please include the following information:
- Your full name
- Your email address
- Your phone number
- Date and time frame you plan to vote (interpreters will be available for a two-hour window)
- Your assigned poll site
For more information about accessibility, visit the Board of Elections in the City of New York.
New York State
Voters with a print disability, which means any disability that interferes with the effective reading, writing, or use of printed material, and require a ballot with accessible features may apply using the online Accessible Ballot Application portal.
In-person voting using an accessible Ballot Marking Device (“BMD”) during early voting or on Election Day is still available to voters with a disability who do not want to vote using the accessible ballot system.
For questions regarding accessible ballots please contact Jennifer Wilson in the Board of Elections Public Information Office at 518-474-1953 or [email protected]
For more information, visit the New York State Board of Elections.
Definitions of Accommodations
American Sign Language (ASL) — The primary language of the Deaf community in the United States and most of English speaking Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expressed by using hands, facial expression and the body positions.
American Sign Language Interpreting — The real-time translation between American Sign Language (ASL) and another language (typically English) to allow communication between a hearing and a Deaf person. Interpreting environments could include medical/mental health, legal, educational/vocational training, worship, recreational, community and business settings. Interpretation may be consecutively, simultaneously or a combination of the two, by an individual or team of interpreters who use various interpreting strategies. ASL Interpretation could happen in person or remotely.
Tactile ASL — Tactile signing is a common means of communication used by people who are DeafBlind. It is based on a sign language. Hand-over-hand (or 'hands-on signing'): The receiver's hand(s) are placed lightly upon the back of the hands of the signer to read the signs through touch and movement. The sign language used in hand-over-hand signing is usually a slightly modified version of sign language; this is especially the case when used by people who have learned to read sign visually before losing their vision.
Protactile — Sharing some qualities with hand-over-hand signing, protactile involves the use of signs on the hands, wrist, elbow, arm, upper back, and when in a seated position, knees and the top of the thigh. Protactile was created by DeafBlind people. Protactile communicates words, concepts, and information about emotions and/or the environment.
CoNavigator or Support Service Provider (SSP) — A specially trained individual who provides access to community life for people who are DeafBlind. These people empower the DeafBlind person to make decisions for themselves by relaying the visual, environmental and social information they observe.
Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) — CART is a word-for-word, near–verbatim, speech- to-text interpreting service for people who have hearing loss and may miss what has been said verbally. CART provides a complete translation of all spoken words and environmental sounds, empowering consumers to decide for themselves what information is important to them. CART is used primarily for live events like educational classes, conferences, business meetings, doctor’s appointments, legal proceedings, religious gatherings, and social situations. Depending on the situation, a CART captioner may be present on site or may be in a different location, using the Internet to send the text to the consumer. When the CART captioner is off site, the service is referred to as remote CART. CART in these settings requires a skilled machine stenographer or voicewriter with a 98% accuracy rate or higher. CART may be performed at speeds up to and exceeding 225 words per minute.
Closed captioning — A term describing several systems used to show text on a television or video screen to provide additional or interpretive information to viewers who wish to access it. Closed captions typically show a transcription of the audio portion of a program as it occurs (either verbatim or in edited form), sometimes including non-speech elements. Closed captions are embedded in vertical line 21 of the broadcast video signal but are hidden from the viewer until the captioning is activated or decoded on the TV or Internet video.
Open captioning — Open-captioned text is permanently encoded into the film to integrate it with the image. Open captions do not need to be decoded and are always viewable. Open captions are also embedded in vertical line 21 of the broadcast video signal and are always visible.
Assistive Listening Devices (ALDs) — Part of a system used to improve hearing ability for people in a variety of situations where they are unable to distinguish speech in noisy environments. There are five general types of assistive listening devices: audio induction (also called a hearing) loop, FM system, infrared system, personal amplified system and Bluetooth systems.
Contact
To add additional resources, contact the Office for Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing by email at [email protected].