Page 14 - NY Cooperator April 2020

14 THE COOPERATOR — APRIL 2020 COOPERATOR.COM Providing a Full Range of Architectural & Engineering Services In-house professional expertise in: Exterior Restoration & Historic Preservation Construction Inspection Alteration Review Architectural Design Engineering: n Mechanica l n Electrical n Plumbing n Structural Energy Audits Forensic Investigation Façade Safety Inspection Program Reporting Green Design – LEED Professionals Client satisfaction assured by the active daily involvement of the firm’s principals www.lawlessmangione.com info@lawlessmangione.com 914.423.8844 100+ Years / 380+ Buildings / 1000s of Satisfied Owners, Residents and Boards l State-of-the-Art Financial Reporting l Responsiveness & Communication are Our Top Priorities l Leader in Technology & Compliance Tracking l Energy Auctions & Volume Purchasing to Reduce Building Costs l Long-Term Continuity of Managers & Systems l Greening NYC One Building at a Time Management for the Ages 675 Third Ave. New York, NY 10017 212-370-9200 ellimanpm.com info@ellimanpm.com RANKED #1 RESIDENTIAL MANAGEMENT COMPANY IN NYC EllimanRethink_NEW_DEPM ad_V1.indd 1 4/18/19 11:46 AM electrical blackout, when power goes off for 24 hours or more? First, let’s examine who the “vulnerable residents” really are. According to Allan B. Fraser, senior building code special- ist at the National Fire Protection Asso- ciation, generally speaking, there are fi ve also those with partial hearing. Th e lat- categories of disability: lack of mobility, ter oft en use a combination of lip-reading impaired vision, deafness or impaired and hearing aids to understand spoken hearing, speech disorders or inabilities, communication; both of these are oft en and cognitive disabilities. Each of these disrupted during emergencies. categories represents a diff erent challenge when it comes to managing emergency you’ve got sirens going off , it can seriously situations. Mobility “Folks with mobility disabilities use one or more devices — things like canes, crutches, manually-operated wheelchairs, scooters — whatever they need to maneu- ver through their environment,” Fraser explains. Anyone who has diffi culty walk- ing — or indeed, is even extremely unco- ordinated — is considered disabled in this way for our purposes. “A mobility disabil- ity can be an issue with any part of a body. Maybe you can’t open doors, or you can’t go down stairs, you can’t press keypads, whatever that might be.” An important consideration here is that not all mobility issues are obvious to the eye. Fraser himself mentions this when he gives lectures on the subject. “I played hockey in high school and college and have had operations on both knees,” he says. “So if I had to run down 10 or 12 fl ights of stairs in a hotel, I couldn’t run. It might take me too long — and you can’t see that. I also happen to be Type II diabetic as I’ve gotten older, and what else you can’t see is I had heart surgery in 2007 and I’ve got two stents in my heart.” In his not hamper a person’s ability to shimmy case — and there are many, many more out a fi re escape, or quickly descend ten like him — someone who looks perfectly fl ights of stairs. But a speech impairment able to walk down 70 fl ights of stairs may is still relevant to this discussion. have extreme diffi culty doing so. Vision “When you get into blindness or low vision, that includes people with partial or total vision loss,” Fraser says. “Some people with this disability can distinguish light and dark, sharply contrasting colors, and very large print, but can’t read small print and have trouble negotiating dimly lit spaces, or tolerating hard glare.” “Many people who are blind depend on their sense of touch and their sense of hearing to perceive their environment, what’s around them,” Fraser continuess. “Th ere’s a risk that a person with a visual impairment could miss a visual cue such as a new obstruction that occurred dur- ing the event that could aff ect egress, so if something falls off a wall of a building or gets moved because of an earthquake, they’re not going to see it.” Less dramatically, there’s also the pos- sibility that a visually challenged resident building—regardless of age or physical will not be able to read certain handouts. “If you’re handing out information, it needs to be in multiple formats. So you can’t hand someone an 8 ½” x 11” piece of paper with 12-point font on it and say, ‘Well, now, I gave this to all the residents.’ It needs to be available in large print, and probably in Braille.” Hearing Th is category includes the deaf, and “If you’ve got fi re alarms going off , aff ect whatever hearing they have,” Fraser says. “People who are deaf or hard of hear- ing must rely on reading for information, and must be able to clearly see the face of the person who’s speaking if they’re lip- reading. Th ose who use sign language— and, by the way, American Sign Language is the third most common language in this country, behind English and Span- ish!—so people who are hard of hearing or deaf may have diffi culty understanding oral communication or receiving notifi ca- tions by equipment that is exclusively au- ditory, such as telephones, fi re alarms, or public distress systems.” Let’s say the building is being evacu- ated because of an earthquake. If the su- per gestures to his left and says, “Don’t go that way,” how will this be interpreted by a deaf person? “People who are more vi- sual than they are auditory, that’s the way they’re likely going to go, even though I said don’t go that way,” Fraser says. Th e messages have to be phrased to avoid negatives. Speech and Cognitive Impairments Obviously, a speech disability would “One example that’s very clear is tele- phones in an elevator,” Fraser says. “Say the elevator gets jammed, the person gets stuck, they pick up that phone and can’t tell anybody what’s going on. So that can be an issue.” Cognitive impairments, Fraser ex- plains, can be caused by a wide range of conditions, including but not limited to: developmental disabilities, multiple scle- rosis, depression, alcoholism, Alzheim- er’s, Parkinson’s, traumatic brain injury, chronic fatigue, stroke, and some psychi- atric conditions. “All result in the decrease in ability to process and understand infor- mation,” he says. “Th ey impair a person from accessing building features due to the inability to process and understand the information necessary to use those features.” Helping Out So how to plan for everyone in your VULNERABLE... continued from page 1