New York’s governor’s race is underway, and one enormous constituency still has reason to ask whether either candidate is paying attention: New Yorkers with disabilities.
Approximately 2.33 million eligible New York voters have disabilities — 16.3% of the electorate, per Rutgers researchers Lisa Schur and Douglas Kruse. That includes an estimated 589,800 with hearing disabilities, 404,800 with vision disabilities, 855,600 with cognitive disabilities and 1,346,900 with mobility disabilities (categories overlap). In 2022, voters with hearing disabilities turned out at 59.4%, compared with 52.4% among nondisabled voters. We are not a small or passive slice of the electorate.
We are also not one constituency with one agenda — hearing, vision, cognitive, mobility and DeafBlind communities have distinct barriers spanning employment, health care, transportation and independent living. That’s why I sent Gov. Kathy Hochul and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman the same specific, concrete request, tied to pending legislation: A5020 (Assemblymember Stefani Zinerman) and S3743 (Senator Cordell Cleare), which would create a statewide CoNavigation program for DeafBlind New Yorkers — trained support to physically navigate, access information and communicate through tactile ASL, Braille, tactile graphics and more.
The stakes are concrete. New York City alone has an estimated 55,231 DeafBlind adults, roughly 38,878 of them 65 or older — making this fundamentally an aging-in-place issue. For working-age DeafBlind New Yorkers, the numbers show compounding barriers: a 34.5% employment rate, 32.9% poverty rate, and 51.4% rate of difficulty living independently.
This is also a voting-access issue. Political participation starts before anyone reaches a polling place — researching candidates, finding a polling location, navigating the environment. A trained CoNavigator provides access to information without making political decisions for someone. That distinction is the core of independent democratic participation.
I asked both campaigns to publicly support A5020/S3743 and commit at least $1 million annually for five years — roughly 0.0004% of the state budget — to a statewide DeafBlind CoNavigation program, with an answer by October 15 (White Cane Day), before Early Voting begins October 24. As of this writing, neither campaign has responded.
That silence doesn’t mean their records are identical. Hochul’s administration created the Office of the Chief Disability Officer and has pursued disability-employment initiatives; Blakeman, as a challenger, has no gubernatorial record but has been vocal on other priorities. Both are actively communicating with voters. Both got the same question.
They don’t have to give the same answer. They don’t have to agree. But silence is not a competing idea.
Approximately 2.33 million New Yorkers with disabilities are eligible to vote. We are not a monolith, and disability won’t be the only issue any of us weighs. But we are part of the electorate — and the question for both candidates remains simple: What are you asking us to vote for, and what are you prepared to do to earn our votes?
Marc Safman is a Disability Inclusion Strategist and founder of Safman Consulting, and co-founder of New York DeafBlind Advocates, which sent the CoNavigator funding request described here to both gubernatorial campaigns.
Opinions expressed are solely those of the writer(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Able News at The Viscardi Center and/or The Viscardi Center.