Angel Ponce: Building a Houston Where Everyone Can Move Freely

Okay, so it goes both ways.

You want to keep everybody in check, but then when they need your help, they want to lean on you, right? So when the mayor comes to you and he says, Angel, you're in charge, I want to keep you in charge, what are some of those priorities that the mayor's asked of you with this office? I hope that he

wants to keep me in charge for a very long time.

So one of our priorities is that not just what I mentioned, our ADA plan, but ensuring that our directors, our leaders in the city have a plan for accessibility.

Our mayor has ran on a platform of public safety and transparency.

And so one of the things that we're doing to ensure that we're meeting that is providing educational workshops, and as well with our communication strategy, our accessible communication strategy, is to let our community members know what is MOPD up to? What are we doing in the community? not just live in a silo, but like show it on social media, send out newsletters, letting our community members not just know what resources are available to them, but what we are doing transparency-wise so that they know that we're working for them.

And to that end, the kind of work I think people think of someone with disabilities, it's a handrail somewhere or it's a ramp.

But to your earlier point, there's so many other aspects of life with disability that maybe the average person doesn't think about.

Can you talk about that?

So oftentimes when we think about a disability barrier, we think about a ramp or a sidewalk that's inaccessible, or maybe there isn't a ramp available to a building.

And that's thinking about in a more physical way, right? But we oftentimes miss what we call the non-apparent or the invisible disabilities.

So we've been tasked to ensuring that when we are holding a press conference, that we have an American Sign Language interpreter available to ensure that everybody, including people that are deaf or hard of hearing, get the same information, right? ensuring that our public meetings have captioning for those folks that need it, or ensuring that an event that is hosted by the city has a sensory-friendly space for those folks that need to get away from the large crowds or the loud noises or the intense lighting so that so that they can also enjoy those city events.

Right.

And I think another one that people often, maybe they don't know, digital, right? I mean, websites and people maybe with sight problems or vision problems,

right? Is that another one? Oh, yes.

So I'm glad that you brought that up, Owen.

Recently, the Department of Justice has put out a new rule for digital accessibility.

But I like to say that the city of Houston, we started a long time ago, even before this rule became policy.

This rule says that entities, local government entities with 50,000 or more residents must meet a digital accessibility deadline by April 26th of 2027.

Like I said, we started a long time ago.

We actually are bringing in a consultant that worked with us on our right of way to provide recommendations and a path of digital accessibility to not just our hits department, but to our procurement process.

And when we think about, OK, well, what does that mean? That's ensuring that not just we have ramps available, but that our websites are accessible, meaning that our images have alt text so that folks that are using screen readers know what the image is, that the website itself is produced in a way that a person that is using a keyboard to maneuver through the screen through the website can follow along accordingly.

And as well as PDF forms or Word documents that have any information for the public that it's screen reader friendly.

That's to say that it's not just about a facility or ramp or sidewalk being accessible, but access to information is equally important.

And so having a digital platform that is accessible to the community ensures and tells our constituents that we are doing what we need to do to ensure that they have the information that everybody else has as well.

Okay, so it goes both ways.

You want to keep everybody in check, but then when they need your help, they want to lean on you, right? So when the mayor comes to you and he says, Angel, you're in charge, I want to keep you in charge, what are some of those priorities that the mayor's asked of you with this office? I hope that he

wants to keep me in charge for a very long time.

So one of our priorities is that not just what I mentioned, our ADA plan, but ensuring that our directors, our leaders in the city have a plan for accessibility.

Our mayor has ran on a platform of public safety and transparency.

And so one of the things that we're doing to ensure that we're meeting that is providing educational workshops, and as well with our communication strategy, our accessible communication strategy, is to let our community members know what is MOPD up to? What are we doing in the community? not just live in a silo, but like show it on social media, send out newsletters, letting our community members not just know what resources are available to them, but what we are doing transparency-wise so that they know that we're working for them.

And to that end, the kind of work I think people think of someone with disabilities, it's a handrail somewhere or it's a ramp.

But to your earlier point, there's so many other aspects of life with disability that maybe the average person doesn't think about.

Can you talk about that?

So oftentimes when we think about a disability barrier, we think about a ramp or a sidewalk that's inaccessible, or maybe there isn't a ramp available to a building.

And that's thinking about in a more physical way, right? But we oftentimes miss what we call the non-apparent or the invisible disabilities.

So we've been tasked to ensuring that when we are holding a press conference, that we have an American Sign Language interpreter available to ensure that everybody, including people that are deaf or hard of hearing, get the same information, right? ensuring that our public meetings have captioning for those folks that need it, or ensuring that an event that is hosted by the city has a sensory-friendly space for those folks that need to get away from the large crowds or the loud noises or the intense lighting so that so that they can also enjoy those city events.

Right.

And I think another one that people often, maybe they don't know, digital, right? I mean, websites and people maybe with sight problems or vision problems,

right? Is that another one? Oh, yes.

So I'm glad that you brought that up, Owen.

Recently, the Department of Justice has put out a new rule for digital accessibility.

But I like to say that the city of Houston, we started a long time ago, even before this rule became policy.

This rule says that entities, local government entities with 50,000 or more residents must meet a digital accessibility deadline by April 26th of 2027.

Like I said, we started a long time ago.

We actually are bringing in a consultant that worked with us on our right of way to provide recommendations and a path of digital accessibility to not just our hits department, but to our procurement process.

And when we think about, OK, well, what does that mean? That's ensuring that not just we have ramps available, but that our websites are accessible, meaning that our images have alt text so that folks that are using screen readers know what the image is, that the website itself is produced in a way that a person that is using a keyboard to maneuver through the screen through the website can follow along accordingly.

And as well as PDF forms or Word documents that have any information for the public that it's screen reader friendly.

That's to say that it's not just about a facility or ramp or sidewalk being accessible, but access to information is equally important.

And so having a digital platform that is accessible to the community ensures and tells our constituents that we are doing what we need to do to ensure that they have the information that everybody else has as well.