May Update

Here’s what Adjacent Space has done in the month of May!

[Image Description: A white man is wearing a black shirt and brown glasses. He has a mustache. In the background there is a beige-colored wall with two paintings. The painting on the left depicts a small brown boat with green-blue seas and blue sky, white clouds, and bright yellow sun. The painting on the right shows a tan lighthouse, a red-roofed and bricked house, and a rocky trail right next to the beach.]

Transcript:

What did Adjacent Space do in the month of May?

Equity Where We Live

[Image Description: A white woman with her brown hair wrapped in a bun while wearing a black shirt is signing. The background shows a black backdrop.]

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Maybe you have noticed that we’ve started to advertise for our Deaf ASL teachers. Adjacent Space will not make any money from this—we want to support Deaf eco-system by spotlighting Deaf ASL teachers! Our Deaf ASL teachers have taught ASL in colleges, institutions, schools, private tutoring, and more!

Sometimes during Governor Kay Ivey’s press conferences relating to coronavirus—they often share serious and critical information—having an interpreter around would always be a perfect way to be accessible for the community! Sometimes they’ll release information through lists, messages, and written materials. We aim to translate these messages into ASL. For example, on May 22 we released a video translating Governor Ivey’s recent Safer At Home guidelines to carry you the best summarized information you can have so that you will know what to do under the new orders that may be carried out by Governor Ivey. We want to improve accessibility for our communities!

Have you experienced going to a doctor’s office and found that there was no interpreter available for you? Maybe you went to see a lawyer, only to be rebuffed because they’re not paying for your interpreter. Maybe you went to events and found no accessibility and no equality. We’ve decided to set up a new email address: compliance@adjacentspace.org! We want to hear from you to help us recognize a pattern of discrimination and inaccessibility so that we can advocate and support you to change the discriminatory businesses and organizations. We also aim to teach them about Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). We could teach and provide tips about ADA and empower you to get accommodations you deserve from these businesses. We have partnered with an ADA lawyer named Ed Zwilling and we are working on strategies and plans on how to improve enforcement of ADA and accessibility in our city.

Equity Where We Work

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Adjacent Space has agreed to make Regions Bank our bank for all of our financial activities. We have utilized PayPal as another avenue of donations that you may want to make towards Adjacent Space. So, if you are interested in making a donation or contribution in what we are doing so far—let us know! We would feel grateful and honored to have donations!

Adjacent Space has discussed and decided to set up a new page on our website about policies. We’ve developed and published three policies: 1) Language Policy 2) Social Media Accessibility Policy 3) Privilege Policy. We will now expand on these policies. What is in our Language Policy? It’s a statement of declaration that we will use American Sign Language (ASL) as our primary language in our communications as an organization. Bear in mind—when it comes to handling business externally with various organizations and businesses we will use ASL, written English, and spoken English on whatever calls for it in such a situation. As for our second policy—Social Media Accessibility Policy—it requires us as an organization to use image descriptions and transcripts in all content including videos, photos, and other multimedia materials that we create. This policy also covers which videos that we will be adding captions and which videos that we will not be adding captions. For more explanation on captioning part, check our policy out on website. For our last policy, Privilege Policy, it discusses how we as an organization can continue to be inclusive. This requires constant and continuous privilege check-ins. We will unpack our privileges and learn from them as we evolve as an organization. These policies can be found here: https://www.adjacentspace.org/policies

Equity Where We Play

[Image Description: A brown-haired white young woman wearing a black shirt and brown glasses. The background shows a white wall.]

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On May 16, we hosted a Think Tank session via Zoom. About 15 people attended. We discussed about how coronavirus had affected their lives, the increase of video remote interpreting (VRI), and heartwarming stories of community support during coronavirus. Disappointed that you missed the event? Worry not—we will have more events coming up! The next event is on June 5th, from 5-6pm for a virtual happy hour! Join us to play games, talk, and have fun! After that we’ll have an event on June 19 where we’ll host ASL art night at home with Fred Miller! We’ll share more information soon. We’ve noticed that there are more drive-in movie theaters now. We’re encouraging these theaters to offer open captioning. We’ve made inquiries asking them to see if they offer captions or subtitles. Now, do you know any theater that offers captioning? Email and let us know so that we can advertise their events on our page! If you’ve contacted theaters and experienced barriers and obstacles, we also would like to know about your experiences! Email us at compliance@adjacentspace.org to share your experiences! Thank you!

Image Description at the end: a white background with two hands signing “equality” with large, bolded black words that read: ADJACENT SPACE. At the center of the image there is a triangle that depicts a colorful and vivid mix and swirl of colors that include the following: teal blue, green, gold, brown, gray, black, and dark colors.