Plaza Jewish Community Chapel is one of many Jewish organizations worldwide who participate in Jewish Disability Awareness & Inclusion Month to help raise awareness and facilitate inclusion of people with disabilities so they can be more engaged in their lives.
In honoring and forwarding our mission to ensure that every member of the Jewish Community receives a dignified and respectful Jewish funeral, Plaza continues its commitment to make Jewish funeral customs and the Jewish funeral experience accessible to all, including those who are elderly or face challenges with their vision, hearing, or mobility.
Plaza is ADA Braille compliant. Towards making our chapel inclusive to all, we have made both the memorial service and information pertaining to our funerals accessible to the blind and vision impaired. We do this by offering Kaddish cards, a “Prayers and Meditations” booklet, price lists as well as Plaza brochures in braille.Plaza has large print materials available as well. It was a wonderfully rewarding experience to work with JBI International in making this project a reality.
Plaza also makes available an ASL interpreter, upon request. To make the memorial service more accessible to those with a hearing impairment we’ve equipped the chapel with state of the art assistive listening devices.
Online, we have joined the Web Accessibility Initiative in making Plaza’s web site more user friendly to people with age-related impairments, and addressing the often-overlapping accessibility needs of those with disabilities. During 2017 we will be implementing inclusion facilitating features on the website.
For the past 13 years, Plaza has streamed Webcasts of funeral services for those whose disability may not allow them to be present for the service. We also have teamed up with YouTube to make available a closed-captioned webcast.
Plaza is also delighted to continue to be a drop-off location for the Afya Foundation for gently used medical supplies, and gratefully acknowledges the community we serve for making many of these donations. These gifts include wheelchairs and walkers, that will be used to help make communities all over the world more accessible to those who need it.
To further the conversation, during the month of February Plaza partnered with the Yad HaCHAZAKAH – The Jewish Disability Empowerment Center, for a program titled “How to make Jewish final arrangements keeping disability access and accommodations in mind”.
Plaza has also just launched an interactive Accessibility page. Click here to view
If you are an organization that helps people with disabilities and want to inquire about working with Plaza, please call Stephanie Garry, Chief Administrative Officer, at 212-769-4400
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