Four deaf New Yorkers are suing Gov. Andrew Cuomo for not having a sign language interpreter at his daily coronavirus press briefings — a service provided by every other state and New York City, a new federal lawsuit charges.
Dennis Martinez, Douglas Nguyen, James Hallenbeck, Jill Wildberger and the nonprofit Disability Rights New York (DRNY) allege that Cuomo is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The suit says there are at least 208,000 deaf living in the city, 90,000 in Rochester and thousands more in the rest of the state, who need access to the “critical information” disclosed in the daily briefings — including directives to wear masks and updates on the health crisis.
“New York is the only state that has never provided televised in frame ASL interpretation of its COVID-19 briefings,” the suit alleges.
DRNY received a flurry of complaints from deaf New Yorkers since Cuomo began the live briefings March 1. As a result, the group sent him a letter March 24 outlining their grievance.
Three days later, Cuomo allegedly responded with a letter stating that his administration had already been providing closed-captioning for the governor’s press conferences, and starting April 3, they’d provide real-time sign language interpretation on their website.
These measures are wholly inadequate, the suit says. Closed-captioning is often inaccurate and not available on many of the channels that are broadcasting the briefing. Further, deaf New Yorkers without internet access are left without critical information, the filing says.
Due to the inaccessibility of the briefings, Wildberger, 23, of Round Lake, said in the suit she wasn’t aware of the executive order requiring New Yorkers to wear a face mask.
Hallenback, 63, of Endicott, said he doesn’t own a computer and only learned of the stay-at-home order when his brother called him. Nguyen, 56, of Albany, also doesn’t own a computer, the suit says.
Martinez, 30, of Brooklyn, who works as a deaf service advocate in Harlem, said he has to search for sign language interpretation videos of the briefings on social media platforms, “delaying timely access to information.”
The Manhattan federal court filing is asking a judge to order Cuomo to provide live televised sign language interpretation at all briefings.
DRNY said it had also filed a complaint with the US Department of Justice.
“We deployed a dedicated ALS stream that’s available on our website and all conferences have been close-captioned,” said Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi. “We’ll review the suit, but we’ve been moving heaven and Earth and working with the Albany press corps to reduce density in the room and respect social distancing standards as we fight this pandemic.”