Welcome to Accessible New York – the hot new social networking site for accessibility ratings and reviews of NYC’s dining, shopping, and cultural destinations. Accessible New York has a mission to create communities that are welcoming towards people with disabilities.

We hope you join us in that mission and start using our new site today, on the web at Accessible New York, or by copying this address into you browser window: ” http://ive.cuny.edu/any “.

At our website, you can:

* Find accessibility ratings and reviews for tons of NYC restaurants, bars, stores, museums, and even parks and hotels.
* Contribute your own ratings and reviews for these hot destinations, or add your favorite places to our growing list.
* Read blogs by our staff, learn about our history, and join in the conversation.
* Contribute to the growing number of people in New York City who are doing something to make our communities more accessible!

To contribute to the conversation, you can sign up for a user account here: Accessible New York User Account Sign Up. Signing up is free and only takes a minute!

So join in the fun, and start making New York City more Accessible today at Accessible New York!!!

You are receiving this email because you met a member of the Accessible New York Team at a recent event and signed our mailing list. If you do not want to receive further emails from us, just reply to this email with the text ‘unsubscribe’ in the message. Please keep in mind that our website is still growing and developing, so we welcome your feedback.

Contact:
Jesse Lore
City University of NY
Phone: 718-213-1776
http://ive.cuny.edu/any
accessibleny@gmail.com
CUNY and IVE Launch New Cutting-Edge Social Networking Website to Promote Universal Access

Twenty years ago this month, the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed, guaranteeing for the first time equal rights to people with disabilities in America. In the ensuing decades, many strides have been made to make our society more accessible to the more than 60 million Americans with disabilities. But still so many restaurants, bars, stores, hotels, museums, and other destinations where people dine, stay, and play are inaccessible to people with disabilities, leaving one in five Americans, and one in seven New Yorkers, out of one of the most vibrant marketplaces in the world.

Now, an innovative group of students aims to change that with the website they are launching this month: Accessible New York.

The City University of New York and the Institute of Virtual Enterprise have empowered a group of student leaders to develop this website that provides a platform for people with disabilities to find information on the accessibility of destinations and to provide ratings of these destinations themselves. Combining approaches like Zagat’s Restaurant Guide with social networking and crowd sourcing guides like Yelp and Menupages, these students have built a database of nearly two hundred venues, rating them on everything from their accessible entrances and restrooms to their braille menus and customer service.

You can check out the website yourself at http://ive.cuny.edu/any, where you can search and find these destinations, read the ratings, provide your own, and even peruse staff blogs. For more information, email accessiblenewyork@gmail.com