The NYC Deaf Access Committee

A CLOSING MESSAGE AND RECAP

The NYC Deaf Access Committee (NYCDAC) operated for a little over 3 years. The committee’s primary focus was coordinating and paying for certified ASL (American Sign Language) interpreters at in-person meetings and events in NYC, as well as advocating for Deaf fellows and educating groups on how to better support the Deaf sober community.

During its time, NYCDAC improved access for the Deaf in NYC to many in-person AA meetings and events, including many meetings that had never before been accessible to the Deaf community. Some of these meetings are now providing ASL interpretation on their own, in an effort to continue making their meetings accessible, even after the committee has shut down.

The committee also established the NYC Deaf Access Fund (NYCDAF), which was a centralized fund of contributions from individuals and AA groups that allowed us to pool financial resources so we could bring ASL interpreters to meetings that wouldn’t be able to afford them on their own - this was a huge breakthrough in terms of creating more accessibility for the Deaf and giving the Deaf more agency in their recovery, since they could choose what meetings they wanted to go to.

We also created a lot of helpful resources (available on our Resources page), including:

•What to Expect When You’re Expecting an ASL Interpreter For The First Time - a guide to help groups make sure they were set up for an optimal accessible experience

•How Our Accessibility Work Is Supported by The 12 Steps and 12 Traditions - a resource used by Deaf Access Committees around the country, this page references AA literature to prove that all of this work is fully within the scope of doing AA service and supported by AA literature, and that it is not any sort of outside enterprise

• And an on-boarding guide to help ASL interpreters prepare for the very specific experience of interpreting an AA meeting, which was new to many of the interpreters we worked with. This guide included a rundown of how meetings were structured, copies of the common AA prayers/readings, and a lengthy list of AA vocabulary/jargon/slogans (since many of them are hard to understand if you don’t have any context). All of this was done to help the interpreters be as prepared as possible, so that Deaf fellows could have a great and accessible experience of AA meetings

The primary reason the committee shut down is because there was no one to do service - and with no one to do service, there is no committee. It had been VERY challenging to find people to do service since the committee’s inception in August 2022. We regularly did outreach and made announcements at meetings we attended throughout our 3+ years and always struggled to find people to get involved. For much of the time the committee was operating, there was a very small handful of people all rotating around the same service positions, which became unsustainable - and is also not very in line with Tradition 7 and being self-supporting.

We’re grateful for the opportunity to have done such meaningful service and to have created something new in NYC AA. We’d also like to extend our gratitude to all those who did service with the committee over the last 3+ years; all the trusted servants who helped us along the way in coordinating with their groups and events; the interpreters who worked with us at an extremely discounted rate; the interpreting agencies that helped us source interpreters; and the groups and individuals whose financial contributions kept the Fund going and allowed us to greatly expand accessibility to NYC AA meetings and events. A very special final thanks to the Portland Deaf Access Committee and Central Texas Deaf Intergroup whose experience, strength, hope, and guidance was invaluable throughout this entire process.

We are hopeful that other AAs in the future will resume this work and continue making AA more accessible to the Deaf.

In gratitude and service,

The NYC Deaf Access Committee of AA