A Deaf Revolution: City Design for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing

Nerds in NoMa // February 12, 2019Onsite CART Captioning by Home Team Captions. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility. CART captioning and this realtime file may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. This text has also been lightly edited for clarity.

Kimberly Ford: All right, everyone. If you could come grab a seat. We are ready to get started. We’d like to invite our panel to take a seat, since we’re pretty packed in here. I am Kimberly Ford. I am the director of events for the NoMa BID. We’re so excited to have you here tonight. We’ve been really looking forward to this event as we hope you guys have too.

We have some special guests here. The MPD Deaf and Hard of Hearing Unit wanted to say a few words. I want to welcome officer Myra Jordan.

Myra Jordan: If you can voice for me, I will sign. Good afternoon. I’m officer Myra Jordan. I’m with the D.C. Police Department for 30 years now. I will be soon stepping down from that and letting the younger officers take over. We are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We also have text to 911, where you can use your phone and actually text 911 and it is in real time as well, for giving lookouts, give out information. I also have left a stack of business cards in the back. If you ever have any questions or need to reach out to us, we’re available. We have VRI, VRS, we have interpreters, wonderful interpreters! And so thank you again. I took 45 seconds. [Laughter]

Kimberly Ford: All right, we’re ready to kick off this discussion. We’re going to let the discussion run through 8:00. Then we will have a Q&A with the audience. Feel free to hold off your questions until the end. I would like to introduce Sam Swiller, our moderator tonight. He is the founder of Holbrook Capital and also is very involved with Gallaudet University, and is an advisor on some of their real estate investment, and I believe very involved in their deaf space design program. So I’m going to hand it over to him, then each of our panelists will introduce themselves as well.

Sam Swiller: Is this on? Yes? Great. First, thank you so much for being here with us, especially on not the most pleasant day of the year with this rain. It’s cold. We appreciate you making the effort. 1

So, this is going to be an interesting discussion, because deaf space design and also just thinking about design and making it accessible to everyone is a thought process that has so many ramifications to the quality of living, not just of the deaf, not just of the disabled, but I believe of all individuals. Because, when you design a space to make it accessible and comfortable for a certain audience, you tend to make that space comfortable and accessible and warm and inviting for everyone. So, I’d like to turn over to the panelists and ask each one of you to introduce yourself. Starting with Robb.

Robb Dooling: Good evening, everyone, my name is Robb Dooling, originally from Nebraska. I went to RIT, Rochester Institute for the Deaf where I studied computer science. I have lived in NoMa since 2015. I ran for the Advisory Neighborhood Council — I’m sorry, the neighborhood Commissioner position, the ANC position in D.C., a member of the D.C. Government. They approve or reject driver’s licenses — I’m sorry, liquor licenses, transportation, and urban planning too. So, the commission meets every month. That’s where I will be tomorrow. It’s usually Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. at 214 Massachusetts Avenue NE.

Sam Swiller: Thank you.

Jon Cetrano: Hello, everyone. My name is Jon Cetrano, I am the owner and founder an operation called Streetcar 82 Brewing in Hyattsville, Maryland, not too far from here. Happy to be here tonight.

Hansel Bauman: Hi, everyone. My name is Hansel Bauman. And I am the architect of Gallaudet University. I’m proud to say that I have been working at Gallaudet for 15 years now, working on developing deaf space programs and projects there. I’m thrilled to be here tonight sitting on the panel, and I’m interested in the problems we see here behind us tonight, the light. We’re already seeing something that’s not deaf space. [Laughter]I hope we all learned something from that tonight. Something to remember. Oh, and one last thing, I’m hearing. I can hear. So later on I’ll be saying more complicated things, and I’ll change to use my voice instead at that time. I’ll let the interpreters know that too. [Applause]

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Ayisha Swann: My name is Ayisha Swann, here today representing JBG Smith. We are the development partner with Gallaudet University to redevelop the 6th Street Corridor in Union Market to help sort of foster this connection between the university and the larger Union Market neighborhood. I oversee two of the larger mixed use development projects in northeast D.C. with the heavy emphasis on place making and master planning. I’m definitely excited to speak to the lessons we’ve learned from our work with Gallaudet University.

Sam Swiller: Great. Thank you for that. Before we go any further, I do want to do some quick shout outs. I saw Robin-Eve earlier. I don’t know if she’s still here, but as the CEO of NoMa BID, she’s been incredibly a great ally, supporter of Gallaudet University, but also just so in tune with making sure that all of her constituents feel like their needs are being served. A quick shout out to her, as well as to Kim Ford for putting tonight’s event together. Thank you so much. [Applause]Another thing I want to do before we start, I want to ask a question of you guys. First question is how many of you are currently practicing design, especially design of spaces? If you could raise your hand and let us know how many of you specialize in designing spaces. We have a few people in the back. OK. Thank you. Let’s try another question. How many of you are in entrepreneurial environments? Are you in a startup? Are you working to support new businesses? A few more people. How many of you are interested in just design, but not actively involved in it? OK, a few more people. I guess the rest of you are like me, just nerds. [Laughter]Nobody? Oh. OK. Thank you for being here again. The first question, we’re talking about deaf space design. What is that? That’s a strange sounding collection of words. What does it mean? I would like each panelist to give their take on what they think deaf space design is, starting with Robb.

Robb Dooling: Sure. Deaf space to me means a place where the deaf community is able to contribute ideas to urban design, where we’ve seen this in other places where other people with disabilities have contributed such ideas. For example, curb cuts. You see curb cuts where the curb cuts so people in wheelchairs can use the curbs and the streets, can move between the two. But everyone benefits from that, not just wheelchair users. I think deaf space applies in the same way. Something we do for deaf people will benefit all people, like curb cuts are universal now. I’m confident that the

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deaf community has wonderful ideas in urban design that can become universal as well. [Applause]

Jon Cetrano: So, deaf space design principle I think is a design that works for everyone, similar to what Robb just mentioned. The design principle allows for visibility to take priority. So for example, this evening we’re putting a lot of energy to make sure that all the people in the audience have an ability to have the sight lines and see the presenters. So I think that’s the point of deaf space is being able to accommodate all users of the space.

Hansel Bauman: So just to build on that, I think that’s a really excellent point about just the effort of putting this can down here, then people standing on that can. To me, what’s incredible about that as an architect is what we just witnessed really was an act of community taking place. In many ways for me, it seems deaf space teaches us all how to insert the idea of empathy into design, which we as architects are never trained to do. We’re more interested this kind of designing a beautiful building, not necessarily one that cares for the people in it. So I think what we just witnessed tonight is probably one of the most beautiful examples. Somebody couldn’t see, so somebody else brought this up. There’s all that dialogue, that community building in the act of building to me is really a profound thing in deaf space.

Ayisha Swann: I would just like to build off of everything that everyone else has said and reiterate, especially something that Hansel just said, as we as developers and urban planners move towards larger scaled mixed use master planned developments, deaf space, especially for JBG Smith, has really informed the way we think about, we take the emphasis and focus off the building as a unit and look at the larger space around it. Some things of notes to me that deaf space has really informed practically speaking in the way we approach the larger scale developments is an emphasis and focus on lighting, for example, and not only within the building, but in the public realm we are looking at creating intimate spaces while also maximizing visibility in the surrounding area.

So I think that deaf space design really lends itself incredibly well to just best practices in urban planning and in architecture generally. I think that we really do need to, as a people, deaf and hearing communities, just as a human race, we really need to start focusing on the larger community and how different subcultures interact with each other and with the space around them.

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Sam Swiller: So let’s chat a little bit about a design exercise. If we took this space right here and were to say it’s a beautiful space, but what can we do to make it more accessible and improve upon it? Let’s try to throw out some ideas and people can appreciate them a little more, about what deaf space means.

Jon Cetrano: So for me and my two other partners, our particular building, I think your question is really relevant, because once we walked into this space we felt like we hit the jackpot. We felt like we found the perfect building. The reason why is because when we walked in during the day, the morning sunrise — first, I should ask, who’s been to Streetcar 82? Wonderful. We have garage doors, which is perfect for the indoor/outdoor experience, and the morning sunlight shines directly into that garage window space. But by the time we open at 11:00 we have the ambiance of natural light. At night, it’s a little darker. So we installed dimmable lights. So when we need a brighter space, we can adjust the light accordingly.

I think another example, which is I think a beautiful example, is that we have a deaf/blind patron. So they actually were a close vision signer, so they preferred the lights to be dim. My first instinct was to make the light a little bit brighter. I asked. They asked us to accommodate. We were able to do that. We selected this particular lighting because of what we as deaf people needed. But it ended up making it more accessible for other users of the space as well.

Sam Swiller: Any of you want to add to that?

Hansel Bauman: Your challenge was for this room?

Sam Swiller: No, actually, it’s not. Design any space, improve any space. Think about things people don’t think about naturally or go to. It’s a huge oversight on all of our parts.

Hansel Bauman: I think one of the things we wrestle a lot with at the university has to do with I think lighting clearly is one of the, by far, one of the most important ones. I think that’s pretty clear why that is. One of the things that to me is interesting that I certainly would have never thought of before meeting the deaf community was the shape of the room, the very kind of aspect ratio. If you think of this room for a minute, what makes it

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really difficult, it’s a very long rectangular space. So it’s very difficult for the people in the back to have the kind of visual access to the front.

What’s interesting is that is traditionally the aspect ratio of classrooms, long, deep rooms with straight rows. So there’s also no visual connection between the people within the space. So, what we might see as this is a kind of typical hearing space, in a deaf space we might see this room much more of the shape of a square. You hear people talk a lot about the shape, almost the cultural icon of the circle, of being in the circle. But actually, how you set up those rooms and how functional they are, we’ve had some challenges. Reshaping it slightly more square rather than rectilinear, it brings people closer. That’s one of many different ways to do it, but I think a profound one.

Ayisha Swann: One of the interesting things I learned through working with deaf space design and the Gallaudet project particularly was the emphasis on wider sidewalks. So the space required between two deaf people signing with each other is different than the space required with two hearing people speaking and communicating. So, what that lends itself to is wider, more pedestrian friendly sidewalks, which actually benefits everyone, similar to — I can’t remember who mentioned it, but somebody mentioned earlier tonight how the way that we’ve incorporated wheelchair accessibility in the city has also had profound benefits for mothers with strollers, for example. Many other people that we weren’t intending to benefit, it does have a benefit to the larger population.

Sam Swiller: Absolutely. I think Robb mentioned that.

Robb Dooling: Yes, yes.

Sam Swiller: If you want to add anything.

Robb Dooling: I do, yeah. Designing a space where we can all see each other makes a big difference. Gallaudet classrooms are a testament to this. Same with apartments and family spaces where a dining table would be. The Supreme Court in the United States is designed that way. The bench where people speak, where they testify or argue in front of the judge, is wider. Those changes they make made the justices sit more in a circular pattern. That shows the number of times that they interrupt each other reduces, because they can see each other better, and they can communicate better.

I think it’s more efficient, because people can just see each other.

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Sam Swiller: I was thinking of Florida Avenue, which over time has a very un-pedestrian-friendly sidewalk situation. When I first arrived at Gallaudet, one of the first nightmares I had was my students in a class maybe overstepping the sidewalk into the street, because it’s literally 3.5 feet wide. Absolutely, sidewalks are a big part of it.

I want to play this exercise stuff further, because we have such an interesting panel. We have here somebody involved in government and pushing policies to make things better. We have somebody who is an entrepreneur, who is dealing with the day-to-day realities of growing their business and making sure their customers feel like they have access. We have a designer who, among many other things, is trying to design solutions to these problems. Then we have somebody on the business side who needs to make an economic case for these designs. This is going to be a very interesting discussion.

To take this exercise one step further, John, your business is on the bottom line, you need to generate revenue. You need to get customers in your door. You need to create a welcoming experience. How do you do that in a way that is economical? How do you do that in a way that makes sense for you?

Jon Cetrano: That’s a great question. And it’s a big question. I would say as a business owner, it’s rooted in continuously improving what we offer, and that could be the equipment that we use to make the beer, the customer experience, the beer itself, or maybe the environment.

So, for example, we have lights that are lining our outside patio, and we’re a new business, we’re a young business, so we’re working with what we can. But we know that it’s not ideal, because, just like we’ve seen tonight, you have the back light and it’s hard to communicate. So we want to have a string of light that will come from the ceiling or from the top overhead.

Lights make a big difference. So if we can see along this wall, this white light is really, really bright, so if I look at this wall, then I look at you, I will see spots. But if this light were a softer color, maybe a light yellow, a little dimmer, it would be much easier for me to have a conversation with multiple people in the room.

Another example of continues improvement, I mentioned earlier about the garage doors that we have in our building. Sometimes during dusk the light sometimes gets in your eyes. So for us working behind the bar, it makes it really difficult to read our consumers’ lips. So we had to install shades. If I

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owned this building, after seeing tonight’s event, I may think about installing shades on these windows.

Union Market also has garage doors, but if anybody has noticed they have installed shades. Shades that weren’t there last year. So that’s great. So when the sun is bearing down on us and it’s hard to see, we can use these shades to make some relief happen. So as a business owner, we have to continuously make improvements to improve the customer experience. [Applause]

Sam Swiller: Also it helps to have a really good products in your beer, right? [Applause]

Sam Swiller: Let’s continue on with sort of a tangent on that. Robb, when you think about public policies that you think could be implemented to get businesses to think about making spaces for accessible, what are some of the ways you think you can make that happen? What are some of the ideas that come to you?

Robb Dooling: He asked me about policy, and that’s a really good question. I should emphasize that some businesses already have policies in place and are better aware of the laws that already exist currently, like visual fire alarms, for example. Some apartments in the D.C. area actually have tried to force deaf people to pay to install those visual fire alarms in their own apartments, but according to the Federal Housing Act landlords are required to pay for fire alarms to be installed in houses. Many people don’t know that. But yeah, this is a set of policies that could be more deaf friendly, set up lighting that is more deaf friendly, to allow you to see each other. But we talked about that already. You asked about other government policies?

Sam Swiller: Sure. I’m asking on two levels. One is on a very philosophical level what can we do policywise as a country, as a city? But also maybe more germane to you in your role as an ANC, what could you do in your position to implement policies?

Robb Dooling: I see. OK. I kind of got off topic. In the ANC, everybody, not just elected officials, but anybody can participate. You can do walks in front of Gallaudet on Florida Avenue. Those are deaf friendly, and we can make most those spaces accessible for people to walk in and talk. It’s not only deaf people, but hearing people are also welcome. I pushed the D.C. Department of Transportation to improve Florida Avenue transportation. We also have

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plans in place to get that going, to widen the sidewalks in the front of Gallaudet. So they’ll have bike lots in the south side, so people can access it better. It’s going to be more friendly, but that’s been worked on since 2008. So it’s a long process.

We worked with the Department of Transportation to please fix Florida Avenue. I was just meeting with them yesterday. I think the more people that speak up, the better the results we’ll see. Hopefully, I will have more news on that soon.

Sam Swiller: Thank you. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that it’s been very inspiring to see you run and win and now serve in your role. They always say there’s a lot of energy around getting more and more people involved in the electorate process. It’s great to see it happen. [Applause]

Robb Dooling: Thank you.

Sam Swiller: I hope you inspire other people to run too.

Robb Dooling: Yes, please do! Please do run. We need you!

Sam Swiller: Yes. Absolutely. To continue down this thought process, I want to skip Hansel for a second and to ask Ayisha a question. When you’re making decisions that come down to — I’m going to pick a hypothetical — but you need to design your units and there are certain elements that are a surcharge above the standard, but you know that it’s going to create a more accessible environment, it’s also going to create a more universally warm and comfortable environment. How do you make that case to your investors, if you will?

Ayisha Swann: That is a great question, and something that we’re constantly — these are challenges that we’re constantly up against every day. So I think part of it is communicating the greater good, which is something that we have sort of incorporated into our narrative of why we are baking in these cost premiums for certain things we believe really are beneficial to the public good, not just deaf — certainly, lessons we learned from our work with Gallaudet University and understanding deaf space design, but it’s really about making the case that you can enhance a place and ultimately you’ll see the implications in rent increases in the neighborhood because you are designing to this higher standard, to a higher

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level. When you talk about, especially lighting, that’s sort of the topic of the night right now, when you have balanced lighting inside and outside, for our safety and security people here tonight, you create a safer feeling environment, because the bright lights and the contrast between the bright lights and very dark spaces when you look at a loading dock, for example, that it might be really bright in that space, but it makes the space everywhere else feel darker.

There are lessons learned. This is the case we make every day. We argue if you incorporate these, bake in these cost premiums for certain elements we think are important to enhancing the public realm or unit spaces, we would argue that you can charge a rent premium, for example.

Sam Swiller: That’s a great point. Jon, please.

Jon Cetrano: I’m sorry to interrupt. I wanted to add something. Again, I apologize that I’m harping on the windows here. [Laughter]

I’ve been talking about windows I feel like all day and night tonight. One thing that accessibility doesn’t mean is cost increases. So going back to the example of the windows. Adding shades, darkening the lights also has the benefit of reducing cost in heating and cooling. It should be built into the cost anyway. So accessibility and how we determine what accessibility looks like already has the cost benefit built in. I don’t think we should look at it as increasing costs for doing the greater good of it’s more about increasing costs but looking at where the benefits are. [Applause]

Sam Swiller: That’s another good point. It makes we think that a lot of these premiums end up actually not being as much of a premium, especially as we learn to do them more efficiently and actually design them from the start, which is going to be asking I’ll ask Hansel in a minute.

I also think it’s not necessarily we’re going for rent premiums, we’re going for units. Once somebody comes to a comfortable space, we feel like they’re really comfortable there, it’s a space that has a very natural setting for community gatherings, it becomes kind of a place you don’t want to leave. So I think that’s where the real value add is as we — for us around premiums.

Ayisha Swann: I’m sorry to interject, that is a really great point. I think part of this is, part of what we’re communicating to our investors is something

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that we have to speak in a language that they understand, and this is a business that has been doing the same thing for centuries, in this country particularly. We’re challenging the status quo as a company, and especially in this project, I think. So this is just sort of the language that we have to use to help people understand. We, especially our project team specifically, we believe this is a truly triple-bottom-line benefit. So obviously, that’s not the only focus, but it is something that we have to keep in mind.

Sam Swiller: I apologize for calling you out. I will say, though, this language divide is the same that happens whether we’re talking about sustainability or talking about improving our education or infrastructure. You have one group that says you need to justify the cost. The other group is saying the benefit is the justification. Somewhere in between is where the answer comes. Finding that answer is a struggle every day, and for all of these different industries.

So to Hansel, I think it’s safe to say that you probably had as much experience as anybody, probably in this country, as far as concerns, figuring out how to design a space so that it’s effectively and efficiently a deaf space. Maybe you could talk a little about where you struggled to find those efficiencies. What have you learned from that process?

Hansel Bauman: That is a tough question, but a good one. First, I want to go back to the story about the sun coming up in the morning and how that sunlight plays in your shop. Because to me, I think what you’re looking at there is the particularity of a place, and the beauty of a place and how sunlight, just the world we live in, can be slightly adjusted to function and to be a beautiful place. Again, this can the interpreter is standing on is another beautiful example of the simplicity with which you can adapt the environment.

One of the things that I am always struck by in our world today, one of the big buzzwords right now, is universal design. I think in some ways deaf space actually is a critique or criticism in some ways of the idea of universal design, that everything fits all. What really is beautiful, deaf space asks us to take a moment and understand a place and all the specific things that are great about a place. So it’s as much an aesthetic and about beauty as it is really about function. So I think that’s maybe the fourth bottom line, if you’ve got three other bottom lines, the other, maybe this is to the stickiness issues, when it’s really genuinely beautiful.

For me, the question is, how do you achieve that? How do you get to the point where you built a building that really belongs somewhere, that really you can feel the beauty of it fitting in a place? So much of the

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buildings we have these days all look the same. They’re all abstract expressions of some architect’s idea. If you go back to the sunrise in the morning, you fell in love with that place. To me there were functional reasons that had to do with light, how the retina takes in light or reject light, and that’s a kind of neurological condition almost. But it really ends up in that you took the time to connect with that place.

That story could reconfigure how architects, contractors and developers think about building environment, so that we are building a much more humane environment. It’s really about going back to empathy, how we care for one another in the place we live. I think I see in the future deaf space really stepping into its own, where it could potentially change how architects design the world. As we’re looking at climate change, cities getting more dense and sustainability being a bigger issue, I can’t imagine a better time for it than right now.

Sam Swiller: You know what’s fascinating to me about the deaf space design story, if you will? It’s really nothing new. It’s really kind of — we’re kind of relearning lessons from many years ago. Can you speak to that?

Hansel Bauman: We often get the question, when did deaf space start? Well, when was there a deaf person first on planet earth? It’s a way, at least as I’ve learned as an architect, there is — it’s a way of connecting with the world. So from that moment on there’s been a particular wisdom around how to change that world so that it fits your way of being.

Before the group came together, four or five of us kind of sat in a circle, sort of not so comfortably I sat on the floor, almost couldn’t get up. But making that circle is making community. There again, we see how our bodies are starting to connect with one another and really build community. Literally, it’s a new way of thinking about what architecture is. I think it’s as old as human existence is.

Sam Swiller: Working every day on Gallaudet’s campus, it’s kind of like walking through a museum of deaf space design. I was made very aware of that fact a couple years ago, when you and I were walking up the steps of college haul. College Hall is one of the earliest buildings on campus, dates backs to 1870. It has in the middle a stairwell that is double wide and open. So when you walk up the stairs, you can have a visual conversation with someone on almost any point in the stairwell.

I realized at that moment that the guy who designed the building was a brilliant, brilliant designer. So to that point, deaf space has been around. I

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guess that’s the human lesson, you forget everything, so you have to learn it all over again. So I want to keep playing on these themes. I wanted to ask Robb, in terms of good policy that’s happening in other cities that you wish D.C. did, is there anything that comes to mind?

Robb Dooling: Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any policies in other cities yet. But I do see little inklings of ideas coming together that do integrate deaf space ideas. I should have said this, before I got elected, hearing people in my ANC encouraged the NoMa area to start including deaf space in their development. For example, N Street NE. You can see in this area, we have benches that were set up to face each other so people could talk, not next to each other, but so they can see each other, sitting across from each other, instead of next to each other. That encourages people to sit on the benches and communicate face-to-face. That’s kind of a small example of deaf space popping up in our community. But I don’t know of any other cities that have any policies in place.

Hansel Bauman: One policy —

[Translator: Someone in the back is saying what about deaf schools?]

Sam Swiller: Can you stand up? Come to the front, if you don’t mind. I know we said hold questions to the end, but Keith is special.

Keith: So what I said was there are other spaces that might not be policies per se, but there are places where the deaf community do go frequently and they have spaces that you would consider a deaf space. Deaf residential schools, for example, state schools for the deaf. Lots of schools all over the U.S. have these types of deaf spaces, where the design is specifically for deaf children and deaf teachers to educate in classrooms that are predominantly of deaf people. It’s not only in D.C. We have obviously an inclination for that here, but deaf space is a concept that is popping up and has been around in other areas throughout history.

Hansel Bauman: I wanted to add on the policy point of view, one of the really interesting developments we see coming in the next revision of the International Building Code will change elevators. One of the things we know about is two-way visual communication in elevators is a really, really big issue around just the ability to be able to have in emergency situations to visually communicate in two ways. The code has been written so far that the

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code kind of tells a lie in some ways. It says yes, we have two-way communication, but it’s nothing but a red button saying help is on the way. If you had a problem inside the cab and you can’t communicate out, the emergency responders have no idea what’s going on in the elevator.

We know this is one of the big stressors in the built environment. So through the really good work of a number of deaf individuals working with the International Code Committee this year, they’ve managed to overcome the huge massive industry of elevator builders. You look forward to that as a really amazing — it’s a detail, but an amazing advancement that deaf people have brought to a whole building industry.

Sam Swiller: Jon?

Jon Cetrano: In regard to what Hansel was saying, deaf space design I think incorporates genuine openness to communication. Not just with the building itself, but how you interact inside and around the spaces. For example, many hearing people will come to the brewery because they see us on Yelp and don’t realize it’s a deaf brewery. They don’t realize that all of the employees are deaf. So they enter the space, oftentimes they’ll speak into their phone, they’re looking down to their phone and talking. I have to start gesturing to communicate with them.

It takes them a second when they realize they have to actually make eye contact. I’m trying to accommodate to the customer. I’m opening up to think about different ways to communicate so they can do that as well. I think that’s the heart of deaf space, and communication access is being able to meet people where they are and not forcing them to accommodate to you.

Sam Swiller: Jon, I want to ask you a question that is slightly different, not design related but more general. You have now successfully started and established a business. What are some of the lessons learned that you think other deaf business owners should be aware of? What are some of the things that you wish — starting a business anywhere is very difficult. In D.C. it can be even more difficult. Especially when you go to DCRA or go through the simple process of getting your permits and license. Can you speak about that and maybe share some of your lessons?

Jon Cetrano: Just one clarification, I’m in Maryland, so I didn’t have to deal with DCRA. But I had my own challenges in Maryland. I would say the lessons that I have learned is that it doesn’t matter if it’s a deaf or hearing business,

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paperwork is paperwork. You have to make sure you’re finishing all of your paperwork, doing it in order, then you’re fine. I think that would be the biggest lesson for me.

When we started to work on this business, my partners and I, we had an expectation of barriers because we were deaf. We thought it would be more difficult. But that wasn’t the case. It really was around the paperwork. We did encounter some barriers in terms of one-on-one interactions with customers. I hope that answers your question.

Sam Swiller: It does. It’s a tough question, because deaf space design I think is an easier, more tangible challenge to wrestle with when we’re really talking about how do we make our society more equitable and fair, and you start to get into things about, well, what are the challenges that we all face that maybe aren’t necessary? So I appreciate your answer. Everyone has challenges and everyone is trying to get through the day in their own way, and we all do our part. I wanted to do a quick shout out to Eric Norloff who has been spearheading the effort to get more open-captioned movies in town. Eric is a movie buff, and he said, I hate that I can’t see more of these movies. And he did something about that. That’s another great example how we can be better stewards of our environment.

I want to keep playing with that. Even though it’s not so much about deaf space, but about making the world a little bit better. So maybe I can ask JBG, what are you doing to make the world better? [Laughter]

But also what are you taking from your experience with working with Gallaudet to make JBG projects better, to make JBG a better company?

Ayisha Swann: That’s been one of the hidden gems of this project. Really, we got this added benefit of understanding how to build public spaces in a way that fosters more positive human interaction, that lends itself really well to place making and enhancing the quality of an area, a neighborhood, a public space and a building itself.

Some tangible things we’ve taken away from our work with Gallaudet is, for example, we in our work at National Landing brought on a lighting designer to do a lighting master plan for the public space to help us identify how to create a more-balanced streetscape environment at nighttime.

We have used some of the principles we’ve learned in terms of sloping versus stairways and maximizing visibility and visual connections throughout the areas that we control, in our landscape design, but also when we are — we have really moved away from building buildings in a vacuum and have

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really started to understand how they fit together and work together and how they interact with one another and with the larger environment. That’s really something that was spearheaded in — the genesis of that mindset was really, I believe, from what I know started with our work several years ago with Gallaudet. That’s really become the future of how we look at development.

Sam Swiller: Thank you. I’m writing a note for later. [Laughter]

I think we can all admit that D.C. has a very unique place in our country in that we’re a very diverse city, not just across ethnicity but across handicaps and capabilities. What do you think is our opportunity here? Do you think that having a strong deaf community here could be the opportunity to make D.C. a better city, one of the best cities? If so, Robb, maybe you could start with how we can achieve that.

Robb Dooling: Well, D.C. is very unique and does have a lot of potential as a city. The District and the county are all one thing. So it’s easy to pass laws here that impact the entirety of D.C. Especially like the open-captioning bill. Again, I want to thank Eric for his work, who fought and led that effort to make the open-captioning bill a reality. I know other states have tried to pass open-captioning bills as well. So it’s not always easy to contact other places, but the D.C. Council and the D.C. Chamber live close to us. They’re in our neighborhood. I host a coffee hour where people can just Google their D.C. Council and go meet them, their Councilmembers, in their office. Your elected officials are available for you. That makes the city better. Things we’re already doing make the city better. We can do more with their ideas, like open captioning. That benefits us obviously in the deaf community, but it will benefit more too.

So, bills create statewide and D.C.-wide offices, we’re hoping to have a bill to create a D.C.-wide office for deaf and hard of hearing. I’m hoping to pass that through Council like the open-captioning bill. With the hope that the open-captioning bill is successful, possibly we’ll have an office for deaf and hard of hearing people in D.C. as well, to have better standards for interpreting here in the city, and more deaf education, for example, in pre-K efforts, which has helped deaf children that experience language deprivation at a young age, where deaf youth are not getting opportunities in educational systems that they ought to for language access. So we’re hoping to use D.C. offices, the D.C. office for deaf and hard of hearing to establish

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more ASL availability in public schools. That hopefully will make D.C. a national leader in many ways for the deaf community.

Sam Swiller: That’s fantastic. I want to continue on that. Jon, maybe you could talk about what we in the D.C./Maryland/Virginia region can do to support deaf business more. Also to that point, make it a better city.

Jon Cetrano: I have lived here in the D.C. area, in this neighborhood particularly, on and off since 2002. This neighborhood has changed a lot. If you told me in 2002 that I would be standing here and there’s a Harris Teeter across the street, I would laugh. There was nothing here in 2002.

I think that one thing that D.C. can do better is to incorporate the community that’s already in place here. So the black community that’s here in D.C., the deaf community, the gay and lesbian community, all of the communities that make D.C. such an amazing city.

I remember in Dupont Circle what it used to look like and what it looks like now. It’s not the same Dupont Circle it used to be. I’m not saying that we should prevent change, but I think thoughtful implementations of new growth into a community, working with the community that’s already present. And I don’t have any litmus test for this, but to create a new neighborhood like the one we’re in, I would love for JBG to think about how we can keep our present community while adding new community members and having both communities coexist. I think they’ve done a great job with deaf space and Gallaudet, but I’d like to see more of that. Not just JBG, but other companies also.

We need to look at how we develop, create, grow, and give opportunities to new community members and old community members, and create a space where they can work together. We want to make sure that soul still resides in the community. And I think that’s critical for D.C.

Sam Swiller: I want to interject really quick. I realize I’m completely remiss about one of the great things about our city is actually the MPD does go above and beyond. Nowhere else in the community are you going to find officers, an officer, who can sign, available 24 hours a day. I know that through my personal experience working with Gallaudet’s campus safety. We have a very strong relationship. So we do thank you for that. [Applause]

Hansel, maybe you could talk about what can the city do —

Robb Dooling: If I can chime in?

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Sam Swiller: Sorry, yes, Robb?

Robb Dooling: Sorry to interrupt, but I did forget to add the point that you asked about MPD, the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Liaison they have, that is the only unit of its kind in the U.S. No other police department in the U.S. has anything like that. D.C. is the only one. We are unique this that regard. D.C. is a leader in that area. Thank you. [Applause]

Sam Swiller: Let me continue on with Hansel. What are some of the things you think this city could do, whether it’s to change zoning requirements, to have the office of planning be more focused on this deaf space design, what are some of the things we can do from a design perspective to make the city better?

Hansel Bauman: Other than hire JBG more often? I think you guys are doing great work in a lot of the things you’re talking about.

We recently did partner with the Department of Transportation to create new streetscape standards for the Union Market area. I think it’s a bureaucratic process certainly to get those kinds of ideas built into sidewalks, lighting, all of that kind of stuff, but he they were very open in seeing how these principles can apply to a whole district of the city. I really commend the Office of Planning as well as Department of Transportation.

They were all very willing to work with us. More of that kind of collaboration and the more that we have these kinds of events, D.C. is really open to this happening. I applaud them in that, in how they’re pushing forward, but we can certainly expedite that work through permitting and funding of more public works projects that are more about universal accessibility, certainly for deaf and blind as well as people with mobility issues and the like.

I think in terms of incentivizing the making of communities, that’s a really interesting area for cities to get into. It goes back to the earlier discussion around respecting and preserving citizens who are in place. I think that is a spirit overall that I think certainly the deaf community and kind of the enclave we start seeing growing up around Gallaudet right now can begin to benefit from that kind of respect of diversity and the richness that we bring.

You know, one kind of tangent is deaf space always, what’s fascinating about it to me, it’s like it has a basic building block, which is eye-to-eye

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communication, two people communicating or communicating to a group. Imagine if you could scale that up to how you think about a room, how you think about designing a community, to a city, and have that be a point of view of policy-making. I think the city could begin to have a different state of mind around how they look at diversity overall.

Sam Swiller: Do you want to take it from the development?

Ayisha Swann: This is obviously a loaded question. I will say that one of the most valuable things a city has to offer is this intangible intermixing of diversity communities. But that inherently means keeping — affording these communes to stay in place and continue to grow within the sphere of influence. So that’s been a challenge in this country forever. If you look at great cities, New York is one example, you have boroughs that are known for certain cultural identities, right? I am a D.C. native, so I don’t want to use New York as an example all the time, but I will say that that is something that I think D.C. has struggled with is an inability to make the space great and also retain the culture that was there.

Anyway, it’s a little long-winded, but I do think that things are starting to change, and we are realizing the value inherent in keeping these communities in place and fostering this sort of collaboration with and communication with and basically interaction. I think a lot of these things — Hansel talks about how deaf space design encourages and enhances our empathy — if we use that as a building block for how we see larger-scale development and just starting businesses and policy, change comes from the inside out and starts at a grassroots level. It’s what we can do as a company, start to hire people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives, and this isn’t something that happens tomorrow, but something that I think JBG Smith is working toward. Nobody is perfect, but I think that’s something that everyone needs to do. The more you can maximize collaboration between diversity groups of people, the more that you’re going to understand the challenges that are unique to these different cultures and understand ways that you can help promote these cultures to be able to stay in place.

Sam Swiller: All right. You thought that was a loaded question? I got a follow-up now. You just raised a really, really great point, which is that having diversity in your company, we can all easily agree, leads to better ideas, leads to more diverse ideas, which ultimately if you have an open discussion should lead to better ideas. What can we do, I’m asking not just JBG, but companies in general, what can we do to get them to appreciate

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diversity so that it includes the deaf and hard of hearing and so that it includes more deaf and hard of hearing employees? That’s a loaded question, I’m sorry.

Ayisha Swann: This is something that I think people who get PhDs in H.R. probably are working towards. There’s a difference between getting people in the door and getting people to stay, because I think that’s a Band Aid, getting people in the door, having someone join at an entry level position or internship. It’s really about this constant communication. Part of that unfortunately is advocating for yourself and making sure that your unique point of view is heard. I wouldn’t know, I’m not equipped to answer that question.

Sam Swiller: No, no. That’s not a fair question. It’s a loaded question. It is one of the more difficult things, at least in my role as trying to get more and more of our colleagues in the workforce. Jon, did you want to add to that?

Jon Cetrano: I think we’re starting on a sensitive topic here for deaf people, and that’s no intent to insult anybody here, but you mentioned that people work their way up and then they don’t stay. The reason why that is, is because we hit a glass ceiling. I know many deaf people who start working with a particular company and they watch their hearing colleagues get promoted time and time again, when deaf employees don’t have that same advantage. They don’t have that same accessibility and don’t have the opportunities to move up the corporate ladder, so they leave.

I think that, while deaf space design principles are really important, I think you’re absolutely right that employment principles are a key component of that. One thing that I am realizing as a business owner is that people don’t expect deaf people to do things. We absolutely can! We absolutely have that ability.

All of the owners and employees at the brewery are deaf. We work with hearing customers just fine. If we go into another service industry, there aren’t as many deaf people in those places of business.

It’s that unconscious bias against deaf people and assuming that they cannot do many things. That’s the bias that has to be recognized. We have a lot of ability and having faith in the fact that we can do these things is really important.

Sam Swiller: Jon, thank you. That is actually you summed up in a few words what I’ve been struggling to sum up for years. There’s this mindset. We’re at

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the point where there’s enough technology that most languages, if not all, can be overcome, the barriers. We’re really pushing against a psychological barrier, and it’s hard. So we need to keep fighting that one, keep breaking through.

Ayisha Swann: One quick thing to add, this is where it’s really important to foster this dialogue, because a lot of these things, I hope I wasn’t lost in translation when I say that part of the problem is understanding what those roadblocks are that prevents companies from retaining people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives. That is where this constant communication and dialogue and working together and figuring out ways to promote that is really important.

Sam Swiller: JBG, in my opinion, has done a terrific job. But like everybody else, you could do better.

Ayisha Swann: Exactly.

Sam Swiller: We’re going to keep pushing you to do that. Speaking of that, Hansel, one of the things, I’ve been very impressed with your work and that constantly every time you have an opening or internship you seek out deaf students and you make sure they’ve got good experience working with you. What do you think you’re doing that other people should be doing? What do you think you’re doing that maybe you could do better on?

Hansel Bauman: Well, we could ask two of the interns here tonight who are working in our office.

Sam Swiller: My office. [Laughter]

Hansel Bauman: Yeah. But we try to attract — actually, we don’t put much effort into it really. We find we get interest in the work we’re doing, literally from around the world. Our two interns are international students right now who are graduate-level architecture students. I think there is an interest there, and we see this interest really growing rapidly. We probably get a request either to work with us or to help develop some of the materials we’re working on, probably once a week, couple of times a week from around the world.

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I think what we’re doing there is just making this idea the empowerment of building a place for yourself, of being able to be empowered to have a place that expresses who you are. It’s such a powerful idea, and I think that’s very attractive, especially for younger people where democracy kind of almost means something more in some ways. But what we can do better frankly is be very intentional around creating a program, be it in sensory design or architecture, which goes back to community development and the making of these kinds of places where the kind of exchanges you talked about would take place on a natural basis.

Sam Swiller: It goes back to the spirit of deaf space, a place where everyone feels like they can be themselves?

Hansel Bauman: Exactly.

Sam Swiller: I’m going to ask one last question, then stop talking and let the audience ask questions. I’d like to end on an upward note. Maybe each of you, if you could talk about one thing that you have seen in the world now that is inspiring you as potential for the future, whether it’s great design, whether it’s great policy, whether it’s just great people doing great things. Robb, maybe you can start.

Robb Dooling: One thing I have seen in the world that has really inspired me actually was in Turkey. So their subway system has tiles on it that are designed for blind people to be more accessible to use the Metro system. So every subway station has one of these. When I saw that, I was really amazed. That’s not something you think of, especially in Turkey, being beyond what we’ve done in the U.S. But I was really impressed and inspired by that, to see accessibility in such a simple way. Tiles. Sorry. If you didn’t see what I said, I said tiles. Gallaudet doesn’t have that, you’re right. They did in Turkey. That really inspired me to see that. The system has other benefits too. They’re textual tiles, you can feel them when you walk. It helps people navigate the subway system.

Jon Cetrano: For me, one thing that’s inspiring is the growth of GIEI, the Gallaudet innovation and entrepreneurship program. I think what I’ve seen it start as a small incubator program to what it looks like four years later really does give us that sense of as a deaf person being able to start and operate a business. I want to make sure that I recognize that program as well.

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Hansel Bauman: Let’s see, 10 years ago when I came to Gallaudet all but its main fence was locked shut and, in fact, our West Virginia Avenue gate had barbed wire on it. We got that open by virtue of a day where we spent a day where we paired deaf students with neighbors who live in Trinidad. They didn’t know each other, but they all reported being afraid of each other for some reason. They spent a day taking pictures together.

In the middle of that afternoon there was an incredibly emotional moment where the citizens of Trinidad were literally in tears talking about how offensive that fence was, and the deaf community was like, we’re so afraid of you. Everyone in Trinidad said, that’s funny, we’re so afraid of you. Through that one day of taking pictures together, it transformed. Literally, the next Monday that gate was opened and is still open today.

That kind of exchange that happened there I see every day I go get a cup of coffee at Peregrine Coffee, where there’s a mix of deaf and hearing employees and people. It’s something to watch people, this is like the experience Jon talked about, where a hearing person will come in, head down, not quite understanding how to connect. Then there’s this awkward moment of, I’ve got to connect here, how am I going to do this? All of a sudden, they’ve learned from a deaf expert witness, like OK, how to communicate. It’s really a beautiful thing to see happen. That makes me just incredibly optimistic about where things are going.

Ayisha Swann: Oh, man. I wish you had gone last. Something that has really inspired me recently is something that they’re doing in Norway, which of course Norway is always the example of good urban planning and they’re like the kings and queens of progress, right?

One thing Oslo as a city is doing is trying to go car-free by 2020, I believe. I was speaking with a young woman who works for the planning department. Yeah, so that’s inspiring to me because it’s one of those things that does challenge the status quo. It is one of the things there are a million reasons this is insane, challenging and it’s never going to work, but they’re doing it. They’ll be an example for the rest of the world. That’s really inspiring.

Sam Swiller: All right, well, you’ve been patient with us of we’ve been talking this whole time. It’s your turn. The best way is to raise your hand and we’ll bring the microphone over. If you want to sign, we’ll have somebody signing for you.

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Q1: My understanding is that this session was billed as design for the deaf and hard of hearing. I’ve heard a good deal about design for the deaf. I’ve heard very little, if anything, about design for the hard of hearing. I’m curious about why that is the case. Those of us who are hard of hearing — I appreciate the fact that there are certain design features that are very useful and very supportive of design for the deaf, but it’s also I think important to note that those of us who are hard of hearing far outnumber those who are audiologically deaf. Some of the things that make life a little easier are not the same.

Hansel Bauman: Yeah, great question. I think certainly in the work we’ve done, the design guide we’ve put together does address a certain amount of designing for hard of hearing, and I think you’re right in that we probably haven’t paid full attention that we should. But I think a lot of areas we’re looking at have to do with acoustics, an important consideration that might relate to assistive hearing devices. We have guidelines related to issues of EMI interference; vibration of mechanical similarities that create background noises; a whole host of building support systems that come in when assistive hearing devices are used. That is an area that I think is an overlay or extension to kind of the overall intent of what deaf space is about.

I will say that we have done a lot of work in the area of the overlap of deaf and blind. I know when we first got into it, there was a lot of discussion around how these must be conflicting design ideas or conflicting design standards. In fact, what we began to find is there are ways we begin to inspire a designer to begin to think about how a full range of abilities can be met.

So I do think that deaf space has a kind of cultural brand to it that may not — in the way that we’re talking about it — may not extend to everyone, but in fact I think it actually a lot of the actual technical part of the work that’s done does begin to incorporate it. But fair enough. You make a really good point that it doesn’t fully include it.

Sam Swiller: I’d like to add real quickly that as someone who is hard of hearing and has observed deaf space design closely, a lot of elements of deaf space design is about the shape of the room and the lighting in the room, which allows for easier lipreading, at least in my personal experience, which has been a great boon to me, especially now that we have meetings and everyone is trying to sit in a circle, so there are no corners where I can’t lip read somebody. I think there’s a lot of overlap. Next person, please?

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Q2: Your comment made me think of the ADA standards, which essentially is rules with buildings around fire alarms and door access. I wonder if you have given thought to amending that, where you have deaf space, blind space, mobility impairment space, and then it’s not necessarily required codes for a building, but proposing the idea for designers and engineers to consider doing or borrowing this standard instead of the typical standard.

Whenever you do any type of construction, you have to know where the rain goes. That’s the first plan before you even break ground. So if you could do something similar with building codes. So you’re not making these accessible design modifications after the fact. They’re not retrofitting it. It’s baked into the initial design. I wonder if D.C. could require that as part of their building plans.

Hansel Bauman: That’s an awesome idea. [Applause]

Actually, the European Union requires that all-inclusive design standards are met as part of an initial permitting for buildings. So you actually have to have a plan before you can get a permit that will talk about design process and design features that make the environment accessible to everyone. So there are excellent models out there. It could be maybe that’s where we can get back to that policy conversation. It’s not that difficult to implement, because we see successful examples all over the world of that.

Sam Swiller: I would bet that’s where you can get at that premium cost, the cost premium, if you start early enough.

Hansel Bauman: Yeah.

Q3: If you’ve noticed, we’ve talked a lot about costs tonight. We haven’t talked about the benefit. What we don’t realize is that the deaf are a huge overlooked benefit. For example, better lighting in a space means reduced crime. That’s a cost benefit. I understand that we’re talking about costs in terms of deaf space, but that’s food for thought how we can bring an element to the space as well.

Sam Swiller: That’s the language divide we were talking about earlier, the struggle to make the case for improving and making everything accessible. Let’s talk about the healthcare debate. Should we spend money on preventive care, or should we just get rid of insurance and send everyone to

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the emergency room? It’s a great point. We had a bunch of hands. Robb, please.

Robb Dooling: I want to add to that comment you made. Thank you for the comment you made. Reinforcing the value of deaf space design. If we do continue to showcase the value of the deaf space principle, then it can be incorporated into law, not only at the local level, because we have some in NoMa, but it could become D.C. law, hopefully eventually federal law, like the Metro system we see here. The design is a federal law that requires it to be wheelchair accessible, and all D.C. Metro stations have elevators as a result. That has a cost, but it’s worth it, and the law requires it. We need to continue to set laws like those because they’re required and will have eventual benefit.

Sam Swiller: Shawn? Do you want to come up?

Q4: Hi, everyone. My name is Shawn. I used to work with most of you here on the panel. I have a question really more for the politician and the business owner and JBG. My question is about displacement and affordable housing. Obviously, this is a little bit of a derailment of what we’re talking about tonight, which is focusing about deaf space, but the same principles apply if you’re talking about including the community and making sure they have a space of their own. So how would you address affordable housing concerns to make sure that the community can feel that this is a space of our own? I’d like to hear your thoughts on that kind of conversation.

Robb Dooling: That’s an important question. One of the most important questions in politics today. D.C. has already lost a lot of the deaf talent that we have here. We’ve lost a lot of the diversity because of the lack of affordable housing. I already know a lot of people, you probably do too, who moved out of the city, who don’t come here as much to work because they can’t afford to live here. We lost their talent. We lost opportunity with them. What we need to do in politics is start connecting with our elected officials to do what I do in the NoMa area, to start negotiating with developers to make sure that every apartment building and every new development includes a percentage of what they call rate-discounted housing. So that it’s less than what people are paying to be able to afford it if you’re learning less than average income.

So if you go on 2 Patterson Street NE there’s a big apartment building coming there. I negotiated with the developers to tell them they need to

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increase the number of affordable units in that housing. The rent will be decreased so they can afford it, so it’s at their level. So it’s nice because 2 Patterson requires that, that they have 30% discounted units available to people. So there will be affordable housing for families that make 30%–80% of the average income, will be able to take advantage of those. That’s a big win.

We’re also looking to negotiate with developers to get more housing opportunities to increase the percentage of what is affordable — 40%, for example, more than 30%. The D.C. government is giving subsidies as well. So the work continues, and we’ll continue to be reaching out to our elected officials, telling them to negotiate with developers in their areas to add more affordable housing into their projects.

Sam Swiller: I want to also add to that that just from personal experience involved in the JBG Gallaudet project and my own development, is the cost of getting projects done in this city has increased dramatically. Yes, the cost of land has gone up. But I think that’s something that is just the element of the market dynamics. What’s also been a problem is, the process of getting projects approved has been hijacked by special interests, and so we have a challenge now where projects all across the city are being held up because of various issues. What it’s doing is that while they may be addressing an issue specific to that problem, in the aggregate it’s actually creating a huge shortage in housing, which in turns is creating a huge problem for housing affordability.

So a very real solution we could do is the idea of creating a higher bar for more inclusionary zoning. You’ve got to streamline the process, so when you develop housing you don’t have any uncertainty about when your project is going to be approved, how long it will be held up, or whether or not it’s approved. If we can remove some of those elements, there may be an opportunity to generate more affordable housing.

Jon Cetrano: Shawn, you mentioned affordable housing, affordability in general. In my research for opening up our brewery, we came across an interesting fact. One of the few indicators of projected gentrification is the numbers of breweries in one area. So one opens and a year later another one opens, and that’s happening in our neighborhood. In Hyattsville, the property value is starting to increase.

We also talked about incorporating the community, and I think you mentioned that in your question. One way that we as a brewery are trying to

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incorporate our local community is to create and host events that make them feel welcome.

We had a great event during Christmas where we hosted a trilingual Santa. So our Santa was an English/Spanish/ASL user. So that was a really neat for our local community — to include our local community who are Spanish speakers. We had hearing members and signing members come to enjoy this day. Having the mindset of bringing the community to our place of business is really important. It touches on what I was talking about a little earlier about working with the old and the new communities.

Shawn, you said something else that made me want to respond to it, and I can’t remember what it is. OK, yes, thank you. The other thing is that we are making a product. When we have the idea of creating a brewery, we already thought about the idea of what kind of beer we would make. We thought about making Belgian beer. So that’s what we did when we first opened. We then realized that the Latino community in Hyattsville are not a fan of Belgian beer. They like pilsner or lager-type beers. So we included that into our brewmaking capacity.

We also have to think about that as business owners. It’s not to me to decide what the community wants, what my customers want. I have to consider what they’re interested in buying.

Sam Swiller: Thank you for your patience.

Q5: So you saw the promotion about deaf yoga. I’m the teacher who teaches that here. I have to plug that before I ask my question.

I have a question. The building we’re in now already is up to code, especially in regard to lighting. I actually asked the owner of the building to add more lighting for the studio, the yoga studio. They said that they couldn’t. They said if they put more lighting in, it would take out lighting from other areas. It would short the circuits.

So the studio needed to be more deaf friendly, but how do we do such a thing?

Robb Dooling: That is one thing that politicians don’t want to talk about: maintenance, infrastructure changes, roads, energy. They don’t want to talk about that. It’s not sexy and doesn’t get you elected. But we need to push for it, and citizens want us to push for it. We do need better electrical power infrastructure in D.C. to allow for this, for our system to have the capacity for people to live here, more people to live here. We’ll push for that. [Applause]

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Sam Swiller: I’m going to take a try. A smart landlord would want to see you succeed as a tenant, and if you can go to your landlord and make your case based on that the more lighting you have, the more business you’ll generate, the more foot traffic in the building, the more rent they can charge eventually, the more valuable their building. If you can make that economic case, then you have a chance. I will say not all landlords are smart landlords and may not think that way. It’s a hard one. You got to be willing to say, I’m going somewhere where there is a smart landlord, or maybe get more creative in negotiating a higher tenant improvement, so they front the cost, but you amortize it over time. If you’re assuming that you will get more business, then maybe that’s a financial bet you’re willing to make.

Q6: I wanted to ask about restaurants, because I’ve had two kinds of experiences signing with people and speaking with other deaf people. I’m wondering if there are any deaf space principles that have been used at Union Market or H Street restaurants and bars that can be applied citywide.

Hansel Bauman: Oh, definitely. There are standards. We’ve produced a book of the guidelines, so we have guidelines I can share with you that are a little different than standards. They’re a set of books that basically will help guide architects in addressing specific issues in the design. I know a lot of those have been used in various places around the District now. I’m happy to share those with you of what we’ve produced. They’re written really for the understanding both of architects and of users as well. So you might find of that some value.

More and more, we’re seeing architects paying attention to those and value what those ideas have to offer. Again, I think it comes in the end to how the architect or whoever is designing for you, their ability or their sensitivity to interpreting those ideas actually into the built environment.

Sam Swiller: I want to add to that. You raise a very important point, which is that retail is a huge opportunity for deaf space design. It’s one of the reasons why we selected JBG Smith, because they really try to put an emphasis on placemaking and deaf space, in the intersection of that. So absolutely, Union Market, I think they were very lucky, but when they built out that space they hit on a lot of the right concepts: Open space, natural lighting, colors that are not too busy. So that even while it’s maybe not the most contrasting colors to skin tones, which is an element of deaf space

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design, you want a color palette that you can easily see fingers off of. They did a lot of things, I think, luckily right.

Jon Cetrano: If I could add a little bit to that. I wanted to really emphasize the heart of retail, the experience is the communication. So if the customer can’t communicate with you, then you’re sunk. You’re not going to get the business. We want to think about ways that the customer can easily communicate. So we had a menu board behind the bar, and we changed it probably 50 times. I’m not kidding. We picked one color, didn’t work. We picked another color, that didn’t work.

We figured out the best way to create our menu is to have a high contrast color. The background is green because when there’s light on it, it doesn’t reflect like it did when it was black. So if you’re thinking about communication, can the customer easily order what they want? We have a paper menu, and we realized that the font has to be easily accessed. We can easily point to it so I can communicate with the customer.

I’m not talking about the deaf customer. I’m talking about any customer. If they had a hard time communicating and ordering, that’s the customer experience. Customer experience means better customer relations.

Sam Swiller: Thank you. Great point.

Q7: OK, so I guess what I have to say kind of ties into some of what this community has talked about. For a while, I can’t remember when, but maybe 2004, a deaf person named Marvin Miller, you probably know who he is if you’re in the community, he decided to take the lead on a nationwide effort to implement deaf space or deaf city. It’s far from here, in South Dakota. I’m from Minnesota, and it was only 4–5 hours from where I grew up. It’s very rural, empty, not much there.

He decided to set up a deaf city. The concept was interesting, pretty great. Deaf people have always said they want that after they graduate from deaf schools, they want a home to be with their community after they graduate. They’re sent to the far reaches of the earth and may never have a chance to congregate again. It was called Laurant, the city. It didn’t work. Before they broke ground, it didn’t come to fruition. That tied to Gallaudet, and de facto Gallaudet is our home. A lot of deaf employees work there. The students are deaf, obviously. So it’s our town in this sense.

The environment in Gallaudet, plus in D.C. in general, is very deaf friendly. So deaf people feel like we own deaf businesses, and we’re part of

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the 6th Street development project, the 6th Street that runs alongside Gallaudet. Perhaps this is a heavy question for right now, but the community wants to know what’s going on with who owns the businesses, and are they going to incorporate any potential for business agreements or deaf owners, deaf employees to work there, to have deaf community members be part of that development.

Sam Swiller: Good opportunity for a public service announcement. Because within our agreement with JBG, we had 5,000 square feet of retail set aside so that I believe for six months JBG must market it to deaf-owned businesses, and that space rolls over.

The best way to explain it is this: JBG is developing in three different parcels and so if only a portion of the 5,000 square feet is taken or none is taken, it rolls to the next parcel, then to the next parcel.

The sucky part is that Gallaudet is retaining some land for itself, which is still in the process of designing and determining what to do. There may be retail in there as well.

Lastly is that JBG is not dumb. They know that Gallaudet is a strong community, and like you said, it’s the heart of the deaf community. If somebody has a proven business and it so happened to be deaf owned, they’re going to be recruiting that business to relocate or open up a branch in the Union Market area.

Q8: Hello. My name is Denise. The guy that was just standing up here, who didn’t introduce himself, his name is Eric. He works with TDI. I think it stands for telecommunications services for the deaf. He made a proposal about developers, and I’m wondering if we here in D.C. can force new developers to build at least five apartments that are accommodating for people with mobility impairment. I would like to propose that.

Sam Swiller: Yes. [Laughter]

We can, and we should try. It’s a great question. It’s not one that’s easy to answer. Is there — I saw some hands up earlier. Oh, yes. OK. Gray sweater. Yes, Robb?

Robb Dooling: I wanted to add something. You who just asked the question, the answer is yes. In politics, you can do anything. But I do want to say we don’t have the answer yes, because we’ve seen some wheelchair accessibility in apartments and developments. I don’t know if we already

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have a requirement. We may already have a small requirement for that. Anybody know? OK, yes? Hotels?

Sam Swiller: Buildings are — there are ADA guidelines. Well, not guidelines, but regulatory for hotels. Apartment buildings above a certain size are required to have at least one unit that is ADA compliant. I’m not sure what the building size threshold is.

Ayisha Swann: I’m not sure what the building size threshold is either. I know all new buildings have this requirement, especially if there are multiple floors, but there are definitely ADA requirements for accessibility for people who are mobility impaired.

Q9: My name is Emily. I had a question about restaurants as well. I have two cochlear implants, so I communicate mostly orally and I always struggle in restaurants because the way they’re currently designed they seem to maximize noise to create that ambiance. That really is difficult, even for somebody who might use more sign than oral.

My question is: I’ve gone to a restaurant, for example, that I love their food, I love the decoration, the ambiance, but they have an open kitchen. They always seem to sit me right by the open kitchen. I asked them about this, can you seat me somewhere else a little quieter? They never seem to be very accommodating. Of course, I can always take my business somewhere else, and there’s always someone to replace me. They’re not lacking customers. So my question is, how do you appeal to these business owners that while, yes, their business is doing fine and well, how can we include everybody? How can we encourage them to make things a little more inclusive even when they’re doing just fine in their business, they’re not losing any business?

Sam Swiller: You know, that’s a great question. One very real example happens to be sitting right behind you, Eric was very frustrated with the fact that he couldn’t often see the movies with the accessibility he wanted. So he made his voice heard. And he got a lot of people, rallied them up, made sure all of their voices were heard.

What I think that means maybe to apply to your situation is that you’re not unique in that situation. I have experienced that too. I’m certain that if you were to ask around, get a bunch of your friends to write a letter or a Yelp post, which apparently every restaurant is terrified of a negative review on Yelp. Start that way. Businesses, it’s like a landlord. A smart landlord is going

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to be responsive. If they can’t pay attention to economics, they’re not going to be in business for very long. I encourage you to make your voice heard.

Jon Cetrano: I don’t have an answer for your question, but I do have a short story. When we first started our business and opened our doors, we planned to have music, because we have hearing and deaf patrons, and hearing people love music, so that makes sense. In the building design, we started to run out of money. So a system became secondary, speakers became secondary. We decided to hold off on that part of the improvement, but still having the concern that hearing people need music. Then I got feedback from the hearing people that talked about how much they appreciated being able to have a conversation with their friends, not being deterred by music. It wasn’t just one comment, it was many. People want to sit and talk with a beer and a quiet place, which is great for me. I don’t have to buy a speaker system. And people are enjoying it as well.

But I think that should be shared. It’s not an answer, but I think at the end it is important. I also don’t have TVs in the brewery. I think it forces people to interact with one another.

Hansel Bauman: Let me just respond to that. I’m not sure this is helpful to you, but I just want to acknowledge your story because it’s very powerful as an almost human rights kind of issue it feels like. I just feel like if like Sam is talking about, the idea that this could come forward in any social media, all the more power to you, because it just really — I think there’s almost an invisibility to the experience of being deaf sometimes or hard of hearing or, and clearly I’m getting older and more decrepit, so they see that, but the appreciation for that is lacking in our society. If it can be acknowledged for what it is, it’s a really powerful story. More power to you.

Sam Swiller: I want to add one other thing is that when you do contact these businesses, come up with specifics. You say, the kitchen is open, that’s a problem for me. That’s hard for them to really respond to. But you could say, could you have a booth that is to the very far end, or with some kind of soundproofing or other things?

Q10: Wow. I have learned a lot this evening. I think a lot of what you shared from JBG, I think it’s really, really important what you said, having diversity a part of innovation is so important, and research tells us this is true. And deaf people are one part of having diversity. In New York, it’s far more diverse than we are here in D.C. They have many, many minority communities and

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different populations, and they’ve been wildly successful. They overcome barriers like language and culture. So I think about here, and I think about deaf space, and this is a tremendous opportunity. And with housing programs that New York City has, and I think it’s a city program, not a federal program, but reduced housing for different immigrant populations provides the opportunity for them to establish their own business. And then they’re able to service their own population using their preferred community, or their preferred language to communicate. Reshifting that to the benefit will help people like JBG to help with their vision and their design in the future.

Q10: Hi. One issue or problem that I haven’t heard addressed tonight is the issue of echoing in public spaces, which is something I’ve dealt with my whole life as a hard of hearing person. It is a huge problem. Recently, I had to step down from a volunteer position at a Smithsonian museum. I brought it up that I could not communicate with visitors, and they said, we won’t do anything to fix it, so I quit.

What would you say I should do in that situation? I feel like I did everything right and so I walked away from it, and my desk partner, who was also had a hearing loss, she walked away as well. No one seems to care, and they haven’t lost any visitors. And it’s still crazy loud.

Hansel Bauman: I’ll just take that. There’s really kind of two sides to that. One of which is it goes back to what we said before, there’s a human rights issue here. Some of the issues around acoustics are measurable enough, and I think for sound levels too, that are measurable enough to where I might be out and a limb here a little bit, but I know that there are standards for accessibility around both reverberation and noise levels. Those are different standards than what ADA legislates, but I’m certain that one could make a case for really forcing a change in the design of that built environment because it’s not serving hard of hearing conditions. There are definitely measurable standards for that now. It’s called ANSI, American National Standards Institute. They have an accessibility standard of A117.1. You might want to see what those say about acoustics, because they just updated that. I think you’re onto something that is a hidden problem throughout the built environment. It goes back to the gentleman’s question earlier around the whole hard of hearing issue.

We’ve made mistakes in our own buildings at Gallaudet trying to get the best natural light in a space, so we do big, tall spaces, but the architects

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are using hard materials. Well, now all of a sudden you have this very tinny and echoey space. Half the people can’t sit and listen to a lecture in them.

So there are many layers to that. I do think there’s probably a measurable case you could begin to act on.

Sam Swiller: Can I ask you, the volunteer position you were working in, what was the position?

Q10: It was an information desk volunteer.

Sam Swiller: Yeah, I can imagine you’re in the atrium, there’s so much noise.

Q10: Exactly.

Sam Swiller: I don’t know, as much as there are challenges to design, there are also challenges to organizations and job functions, and the Smithsonian is not going to rip down the atrium and spend millions and millions. Maybe you can go to them and say, look, I love the Smithsonian, I want to give my time and my interest to your institution, but it can’t be in this desk. Is there somewhere else in the organization where I can be a better contributor to your organization?

Ayisha Swann: I would add: suggest a place. If there’s a place you’ve seen. My first reaction is, what would be your solution to it? Because I can’t understand what that experience is like. So it’s really important that you do advocate in that situation, and I think not being heard when you are advocating is a whole other issue, but I would encourage you to.

Sam Swiller: I want to clarify that. It shouldn’t be this way. But this is the best, this is the closest we’ve got to the wave-my-hand kind of attitude.

Q10: I had one more piece of the story. So the atrium was recently redesigned and it was a foreign designer who isn’t well versed in ADA, and they recently added a coffee bar, and the coffee grinders added the noise. So my thought was to add panels that would absorb sound, that would be the same color and blend in. But they didn’t want to touch anything visually about the space because it was designed by this world-famous artist.

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Robb Dooling: Acoustics and the quality of the sound that travels throughout the space is an expensive issue, but it’s a cultural issue and it’s going to take a long time to change. It’s going to be a slow change.

I do see some promise happening. The Washington Post food critic, for example, Tom Sietsema, critiques the noise level, because a few years ago they started to bring in sound-level measurement tools that they could measure the amount of decibels occurring in a restaurant, and the reviewer made comments on the level of the noise in the restaurant. So they are changing acoustics now. The culture is shifting a little bit. I think we need more people like you to speak up, like you did tonight. So thank you for that. That’s a design we need to see people push for. For example, the app on your phone, called SoundPrint, where you can review restaurants by the noise level that you experience in them. So more and more apps like that, and cultural changes like that we see are promoting people to value the acoustics they experience over the design. It’s going to take some time and design changes, but it’s coming.

Sam Swiller: Please. This is going to be our last question.

Q11: So a deaf-friendly space sounds like a great idea. I will warn you, acoustics are an issue. On Gallaudet’s campus in their communications center, the speech, language, and communications center, I heard that the acoustics there are very loud, it echoes a lot and interpreters have a hard time there. I understand it’s the same thing at the D.C. Convention Center. It’s very deaf friendly in terms of visual space, but very loud. I want to ask the panel how you resolve an issue like that, with an open deaf space being positive for a deaf visual communication, but not for the acoustics.

Robb Dooling: We have to continue to design and work together to have a space that suits both deaf and hearing people, that is large and open, but that still has sound at an appropriate level, and sound-absorbing material like carpeting that is not present in a lot of restaurants now. A lot of restaurants use that industrial-style look with hard steel and metal that reverberates easily, especially in the floor and ceilings. We encourage people to use sound-absorbing materials, like carpet or panels on the wall.

Hansel Bauman: In addition to those really great solutions, there are now acoustics systems which will in real time emit the exact opposite sound into space. So it actually kills sound. Bose makes noise-canceling headphones. There’s definitely a technological solution. It’s all technical solution, really, to

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solve these problems. The material is one. The shape of a room is another way to address it. There are just so many ways to solve this problem. I don’t think the technical part is not the issue. It’s — honestly, I don’t know that it’s really a cost issue. It’s the original designers and getting architects to be aware that this is really an issue. It’s really a shame on architects, I hate to say.

Kimberly Ford: All right, you guys, that was a wonderful, wonderful conversation. We want to thank you all so much for being here tonight. [Applause]

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