New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday finally began providing an on-screen American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter at his daily COVID-19 press briefings, two weeks after a lawsuit from a group of deaf New Yorkers and disability rights advocates.
The Cuomo administration had pushed back against a lawsuit filed on April 29 by Disability Rights New York, an advocacy group that last month sued the Democratic governor to try to force him to share the broadcast frame with an American Sign Language interpreter during his coronavirus press briefings.
The lawsuit said Cuomo was the only U.S. governor holding daily coronavirus briefings without a visible, real-time ASL interpreter onscreen — known as “televised in frame ASL interpretation.”
In the lawsuit, the group Disability Rights New York said it had received “A large number of complaints from deaf New Yorkers who are unable to understand Governor Cuomo’s daily briefings due to the lack of in frame televised ASL interpretation.” Several of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit cited difficulties in receiving accurate and prompt information about the state’s response to the pandemic, including several major directives, like Cuomo’s stay-at-home order and the requirement to wear masks in public”
