Dear Reader,
Our family consists of myself, Lakshmee, my sister Annie, our mother pearly, my husband Neil, and our children Rayan & Diya. Annie is outgoing and absolutely loves exploring and learning. She was born with dystonic cerebral palsy, which causes involuntary muscle spasms and movements. Our mom, Pearly is Annie’s primary caretaker. I am Annie’s older sister and an avid digital marketer with 20 years of experience in the tourism industry with particular sentiments for New York City. Neil also works in the industry and has been a Chief Engineer for many prominent New York City Hotels, which means he is responsible for ensuring they are accessible. Our children, Rayan & Diya are equally adventurous and enjoy discovering the wonders of the city with our entire family.
Annie, who is in her late 30s, is unable to travel long distances, and only goes away to camp once per year. That’s when mom visits her parents in Toronto. But Neil, myself and the children are able to enjoy summers abroad and reap the many benefits of vacationing. It’s proven that vacation relieves stress, increases creativity, boost satisfaction, happiness and confidence, lowers the risk of depression and improves overall health. It forges deeper family bonds and creates lasting memories together. We wanted to share these benefits and have mutual experiences with my mom and sister. Since traveling great distances with Annie is not an option, we decided to make New York City our playground. After all, it’s a melting pot of so many cultures and one of the most sought after destinations in the entire world.
We planned on spending at least one Saturday together each month, exploring a cultural institution, neighborhood or other attraction followed by a nice family meal. As our journey began, we realized that most of the Accessibility information required to plan our day was difficult to find, sometimes buried in the website footer and in some cases, not even available online, which meant we had to call for the information. I also noticed, families like ours and people like Annie were scarcely included in tourism marketing for New York City and any imagery seemed straight out of the 1990s. This really tugged at my heart, and such poor representation makes me wonder if we’re truly welcome. Considering that New York City has such huge tourist allure, ours couldn’t possibly be the only family requiring Accessibility information.
That made me extremely curious. I wanted to know what families like ours do when visiting New York City. I found that approximately 6 million annual visitors are disabled and the city itself is home to close to one million people with disabilities, plus learning there are 1 in 5 people who is disabled. That’s a lot of people who would have the same challenges we do finding Accessibility information. This sparked the creation of Accessible Travel NYC.
We believe it will inspire many families like ours by sharing Accessible Information, realistic details and photographs of our experiences so that they are empowered to plan theirs. We’ve since had many enriching and fun-filled days out; like seeing Marines from around the country on a historic ship in the Hudson River, discovering cultural artifacts from 5,000 years ago at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, beholding Hawaiian Hula dancers in the New York Botanical Garden and savoring on local, sustainable cuisine. We wish you many exciting adventures of turning an ordinary day into an extraordinary one in our amazing hometown.
Best,
The Lachhman & Lachhman-Persad Family
