How do we give us a hug Okay, good evening.

Uh we'll call to order the um regular meeting for the Commission on Persons with Disabilities.

It is January fourteenth, twenty twenty six, and we'll start with roll call.

Uh, Chair Mullings.

Vice Chair Bondsmith here.

Commissioner Bieler.

Here.

Thank you.

Joining us remotely.

Commissioner Canadler.

Here.

Commissioner Lipp is absent.

Commissioner Lyons.

And Commissioner Schmidt is also absent.

Okay.

Um, this goes into non-agenda public comments.

Um, so we'll go straight into the minutes to um review and uh vote to approve the minutes submitted for November nineteenth, twenty twenty-five.

If there aren't any errors or anything, um, if someone wants to make a motion and a second to um vote to approve.

I move to approve.

Second.

Okay.

All right.

Um, and so everyone, if you would just find at the count of three, say aye or nay.

Uh so the for the minutes to approve them.

One, two, three.

Okay.

All right.

So those are approved and we'll be entered in.

Um and now moving forward to um the main point of this evening is to uh our main regular agenda item is a 2026 planning session um for commissioners to propose and discuss areas of focus, networking opportunities, possible presentations, and future agenda items again for the year 2026.

Um so this will be a little bit of an open discussion just amongst the commission.

Um, and feel free to speak out of turn, that sort of thing won't necessarily go in order.

Um, and then Chair Mullines, however, you'd like to lead the discussion or kick it off if there's a particular way that you'd like to handle it.

Um, we'll go ahead and get started.

I'm open to having a more informal approach to it.

You know, I'm happy to go through in order of how we how you have it laid out here in the agenda, like areas of focus, networking opportunities, presentations because those are kind of different areas to discuss.

That might be a good, like just managing our time effectively.

So if that works, um and then do you want to start?

Because you told me about uh having some ideas coming in, or if somebody has yeah, ideas off the bat, and not to put you on the hot feed.

No, I'm happy to, so well, I'm still pretty new, but I did want to share an idea that I'm interested in learning more about um and supporting this year.

So building on last year's emergency operations plan.

Um I'm particularly interested in how emergency and city communications are actually experienced by residents with different access and processing needs, um, especially around digital accessibility accessibility and neurodiversity.

Um, so has the commission ever looked at communication accessibility, or would that be new territory for us?

I'm trying to think like I think we've talked about like outreach, we've talked about like making sure we're casting a wide enough net and in a way that people engage with it.

I haven't, I'm not sure about in the notification aspect specifically.

What do you think?

I don't think we've talked a lot about notifications.

I know um digital accessibility has been a focus of the city, and there's either a project they've just concluded or is currently underway to focus on that, but we haven't I think interacted with that very directly, except for it coming up in previous meeting.

Um, but as far as the emergency operations plan, and especially the the um, I forget the name of the list that we discussed at a previous meeting where there's like a special on the list.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that um we haven't really focused on a lot previously, but that was kind of included in your they came up with the fire department representatives presentation about like you can opt in.

Yeah, and that one is scheduled um to return to us once it's in more of a draft phase.

Right now it's like very early uh rudimentary stage of for the EOP, but um, but I look forward to that one.

Um Commissioner Bieler has her hand raised.

Oh, great.

Oh, thank you.

Um I do believe we've talked about the accessibility and digital accessibility specifically of certain materials or handouts or projects as they've come before us before where they're very specific about community outreach.

So maybe not in a global way, but we've addressed them individually.

And I do remember we um have also discussed whether we are appropriately or sufficiently engaging with specific communities or known, maybe like areas where people with disabilities um live or uh commune.

So in that sense, we have for the digital accessibility, we've also talked about different like formatting and testing, and um, I'm sorry I can't see all the commissioners from my my eagle eye view here, but whoever was saying that um that the it's been a focus of the city, it's come up a couple times, but I just wanted to mention that it's more about project by project or talking about community outreach specifically that we've addressed the digital accessibility of those methods.

I think a couple things um I think well, one of the reasons I think it's interesting to think about this is because information can be really hard to process when people are anxious or overwhelmed, so even something um like dense or unclear instructions can become barriers in those those moments.