Blog
Ensuring accessibility at the Crossroads of the World for the Times Square Alliance
March 14, 2024
We were thrilled in October to be invited to partner with Victor Calise, who served for 13 years as commissioner of the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities under mayors Bloomberg and diBlasio. Victor now leads the Accessibility Center for Excellence at Walmart, and also runs his own disability inclusion consulting group, SVIR, to help clients with a variety of accessibility issues.
SVIR asked us to collaborate with them as they prepared the Times Square Alliance, the all-important NYC organization that manages the giant public space known as the Crossroads of the World, for its heavy calendar of upcoming tourist events. We combined the Accessibility Blueprint and Elements of Service programs for the Alliance alongside SVIR’s work in ensuring physical accessibility at events such as Broadway Week and of course the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop.
TSA’s team members really need to blend empathy and understanding with serious gravitas as they ride the enthusiasm and soothe the anxiety of all of those people from all corners of the world who are visiting Times Square to do just about everything they can. We found the team of longtime TSA veterans and newcomers overseeing everything from information to sanitation and security – and always customer service – to be the most eager and interactive of so many teams we have worked with recently, and that made this engagement especially rewarding.