Dinner, Discussion, and Disability Access at the San Francisco Zoo

Tonight, ZeroDivide will conduct the fourth in its ongoing series of Salon dinners.  These Salons bring together policy experts, advocates, and donors in a small group, intimate setting to discuss innovative ideas for addressing cutting edge topcis.  This evening's Salon turns the spotlight on disability and accessibility.  It will feature Kathy Martinez, President Obama's newly appointed Assistant Secretary for Disabilty Employment Policy at the US Department of Labor.  Assistant Secretary Martinez will lead the evening's discussion, which will focus on the intersections between accessibility, technological innovatiion, disablity employment opportunities, and social enterprise development in the Web 2.0 world.

A unique element of tonight's Salon is its location - in the Great Hall of the San Francisco Zoo.  Tanya Peterson, the Executive Director and President of the Zoo, is co-host and underwriter of this evening's Salon.  Tanya is a longtime Bay Area philanthropist and disability issues advocate. 

As a joint operation between the San Francisco Zoological Society and the City and County of San Francisco, the Zoo is committed to ensuring that its facilities are accessible to visitors with a wide range of disabilities.  When the Zoological Society took over management of the Zoo from the City of San Francisco in 1993, one of the first major undertakings was to create an entirely new main entrance, as the former entrance could not be renovated to incorporate adequate disabiltiy access.  Since then, walkways and pathways have been widened and re-sloped to ensure ADA compliance with wheelchair usage.  Handrails have been installed where needed to assist those with other movement disabilities. 

Newly created exhibits (which include the most popular "draws" to the zoo) such as the Lipman Lemur Forest, the Roberts Family Gorilla Preserve, and the African Savanna, were all designed from the ground up with complete disability access in mind.  Certain older exhibit areas, such as the Feline Conservation Center, have been closed because their out-dated design made ADA compliance renovations prohibitively expensive. 

While Zoos by their nature tend to be "low-technology" institutions, the Zoo does incorporate technology into its accessibilty goals. The Zoo's website has a section devoted to highlighting accessibility options for visitors.  TTY cable is located in the Education center, and provides route maps with exhibit descriptions.  The Zoo Ranger system provides a video guided tour of the Zoo and its major animal exhibits.  And emergency safety and security systems include special warning devices for those visitors with hearing disabilities.

We're looking forward to a rich discussion tonight, and are pleased that all of our participants will be able to enjoy the dinner and discussion in a unique setting that is in and of itself models the issues which will be discussed within its walls.