Q&A with Jill Rothstein, New York Public Library

Jill Rothstein is Chief Librarian of the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library in New York City, New York. She has presented at the National Library Service conference, Metro Libraries conference, and Harvard’s World Heritage Strategy Forum. Last year she became the first library staff to receive a Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability (LEAD®) Award for Emerging Leaders. Here, she shares about the New York Public Library’s expansive accessibility initiatives, including their newest program, Dimensions.

VSA & Accessibility: You have worked at several New York Public Library branches in different positions, how and when did you start incorporating accessibility into your roles?
Jill Rothstein: When I was a children’s librarian and then branch manager at the New York Public Library’s 67th Street branch I joined a group of staff working on serving children with  disabilities. That was my entry into the work.

VSA & Accessibility: You became Managing Librarian of the Andrew Heiskell Library in 2014 and Chief Librarian in 2015. In the past five years, technology has progressed rapidly. Can you speak to any technological updates or implementations you’ve made at the library? 
Jill Rothstein: One new initiative is buying and loaning out Refreshable Braille Displays to the community. This small, wearable piece of equipment can have huge effects in opening doors to information access, education, reading, and independence. It’s just one of several braille-related projects as we believe supporting braille literacy is essential. What was key to implementation was the leap in technology that made these devices available at around one tenth of what they used to cost. Another update, related to the Dimensions project, was increasing our holdings of software and hardware needed to create tactiles—we now have an Ultimaker, a Lulzbot Taz 6, Cura software, TactileView software, and Index Everest embosser and a Tiger graphics embosser, Openscad, and people to teach workshops in using all of them both with visual interfaces and non-visually. In terms of other software, simple things like Talking Typing Teacher are still incredibly popular.

Woman in red shirt smiles at boy in white button down reading a braille book

VSA & Accessibility: How you stay abreast of the newest technologies? 
Jill Rothstein:  It has been incredibly helpful to have an excellent staff member in the role of Coordinator of Assistive Technology (AT). Chancey Fleet is a native user of AT and has been coordinating the AT coaching program here for five years. She attends California State University, Northridge’s Assistive Technology Conference  every year. She usually presents there, is a part of many related communities of practice, and it’s her job to stay abreast of accessible tech and keep me informed not only of what’s coming out but how the community is receiving it and how well it works. I also talk with staff at other institutions and participate in meetups and communities who share information on the subject. I also participate in a bimonthly meeting of community members that we call the Community Advisory Council, who tell me directly what they’re hearing about and what they’re interested in. You can also get weekly updates and overviews from the email Top Tech Tidbits from Flying Blind. But I am grateful to work with someone in AT whose particular interest is AT and uses it personally.

VSA & Accessibility: You are a member of a system-wide accessibility group for New York Public Libraries. What is the group’s primary function? 
Jill Rothstein: The Accessibility Working Group (AWG) is a small, core group of staff members that helps coordinate and steer accessibility and inclusion projects, improvements, and training at the library.

VSA & Accessibility: What have been the successes and difficulties of implementing a group across NYPL?
Jill Rothstein: Some major successes include launching a larger group of 32 advocates—these are representatives from departments across the library system who are working together, guided by the AWG, to pursue a current situational analysis, implement accessibility goals, and keep inclusion on the radar as part of our mission in all areas of what we do. Also providing essential staff training on accessibility and inclusion and disability awareness in public service, as well as understanding and serving patrons on the autism spectrum. A colleague and I have also run in-person, multi-session trainings with a focus on accessible social media, creating accessible research materials, etc. 

A difficulty could be that the Library offers so much—exhibitions, children’s programs, film screenings, research collections, capital construction, English as a second language, and technology training. We’re always looking for avenues to collaborate with these different departments across the system. Luckily, we’ve found that, when people learn about this community, and how many possibilities there are for what we CAN do, this is a topic everyone really wants to make time for.

VSA & Accessibility: The Andrew Heiskell Library has an Early Literacy Initiative the includes tactile literacy kits for children with low vision. Can you explain how these kits were developed and what introducing them looked like?
Jill Rothstein: When NYPL invested in early literacy throughout the branches, we focused on early braille and tactile literacy. I met with Teachers of the Visually Impaired and the heads of our Braille Study group, and our Community Advisory Council, and discussed what kinds of things would be useful.

VSA & Accessibility: What are some pieces of the final toolkits?
Jill Rothstein: We have six levels of kits that cover the beginning introduction and information for parents on the importance of books and images, as well as activities to help develop pre-literacy skills specific to young children who are blind or have low vision; heavily-textured and tactile-enhanced and brailled board books; games for matching tactile paths and shapes to get fingers used to identifying patterns and dots (with high contrast black and white as well); raised line mazes for tracking lines and following directions;  tactile flashcards with the braille alphabet, raised print alphabet, and images (i.e., “‘a is for apple”), toys like the braille caravan and pop-a-cell to practice letters; the Squid tactile activities magazine, some more advanced tactile and braille books; and even tactile dice, brailled playing cards, and a tactile atlas. 

Man sits on left, his daughter sits to the right pressing a green button on a black Digital Talking Book Machine

VSA & Accessibility: Can you speak to the success of these toolkits and how you’ve seen people using them?
Jill Rothstein: We’ve had parents check them out for use with their kids (and teenagers), case workers use them with clients, and children’s librarians use them to teach sighted kids about braille and blindness.

VSA & Accessibility: You also offer a program called Dimensions that provides free and hands on training about best practices in tactile design, as well as access to hardware and software. This seems like a fairly resource-intensive initiative, was it difficult to get institutional buy-in?
Jill Rothstein: Thanks for asking! We received funding from the Library’s Innovation Project, which funds exciting new staff-led initiatives. The project allows staff on the ground to address the needs of patrons as they see them in the community, develop project management skills, and try something new. It has been supported by the Revson Foundation and has been around for five rounds of funding.

A group of people around a table working with a computer and other technical components

VSA & Accessibility: Are most of the patrons using this service individuals or are they connected with an organization that is looking to provide tactile services?
Jill Rothstein: A lot of cultural institutions and agencies use us. Art and history museums are big collaborators/patrons of the project; city agencies, journalists, and vocational rehabilitation groups. Individuals do use it, including some people working on their PhDs and creating tactile schematics for computing and robotics, which then can be used with tech programming at the library actually, so It’s a nice circle.

VSA & Accessibility: What are your thoughts on the role libraries play in the greater accessibility and inclusion movement, especially at the intersection of arts and culture?
Jill Rothstein: Equity, diversity, and inclusion (including accessibility) was actually the theme of the most recent American Libraries Association Conference.  It would be great to collaborate more, because we all are here to serve and enrich the wider community, and many cultural institutions have libraries and many libraries have exhibition, science, and performance activities going on in them. Not to mention that libraries are here to serve the staff of cultural institutions as well!

VSA & Accessibility: What one recommendation would you give to organizations who are seeking to increase accessibility?
Jill Rothstein: To talk to, work with, and if possible hire people who have disabilities in order to find out what is helpful, what is wanted, what is well-meaning, but ineffective or silly, and what is great. If I could make a second recommendation, it would be to go to the LEAD® conference, join a local access consortium, or find ways to learn from and collaborate with other organizations that are doing this. If I could give a third, it would be to make sure to address the potential fear staff may have about making a faux pas or issues of etiquette and modes of thinking about disability, and not just the practical collateral of accessibility. There are self-advocates all around these days—on YouTube, in Ted Talks, on blogs—where people can learn a lot in a low-stress environment at home.

Images courtesy of Jill Rothstein. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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