Arts, Culture, Dining and Tourism

Back to the Accessible NYC 2025 Report

This section provides an overview of how New York City agencies and partners are expanding access to cultural institutions, recreational spaces, and dining environments. It highlights initiatives that promote inclusive participation, improve physical and communication access, and ensure that cultural and social experiences are available to people with disabilities.

Department of Cultural Affairs

The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) is dedicated to supporting and strengthening New York City’s vibrant cultural life based on the conviction that arts and culture is for everyone. The agency uses its planning, funding, advocacy, technical assistance, and practices to help make participation in NYC’s cultural life—as artists, cultural workers, or audience members— increasingly accessible, inclusive, and equitable.

Ensuring there is public funding for nonprofit cultural organizations of all sizes and throughout the five boroughs is one of DCLA’s core goals. DCLA is the largest municipal funder of arts and culture in the country. The agency provides support to over 1,000 non-profit cultural organizations. In addition, DCLA provides general operating support for the Cultural Institutions Group, 39 cultural institutions located on City property, as well as energy expenses for a larger group of sites under DCLA’s jurisdiction. DCLA administers funds for hundreds of capital projects at arts and culture organizations, addressing a range of structural and equipment needs, including improvements to increase venue accessibility. Other initiatives administered by Cultural Affairs include Materials for the Arts, which annually redistributes materials to more than 2,000 non-profit organizations, public schools, and agencies throughout the five boroughs; and Percent for Art, which brings permanent art installations to public spaces around the city.

DCLA focuses on collaborating with the city’s cultural sector to foster a more accessible and inclusive cultural sector in a number of significant ways, including the Disability Forward Fund and capital access projects, both described below.

The Disability Forward Fund

The Disability Forward Fund, administered as part of DCLA’s annual Cultural Development Fund (CDF) program, the DFF provides funding to non-profit arts organizations to support programs that deepen engagement of people with disabilities, including artists, cultural workers, and audience members; to support new work created by people with disabilities; to help connect people with disabilities to jobs in the cultural sector; and to promote successful models for engaging the disability community through cultural programming . In FY25, 42 organizations received $10,000 each as part of the DFF.

Capital Access Projects

Each year, DCLA distributes hundreds of millions of dollars in city support for construction, equipment, and renovation projects at dozens of organizations across the city. This helps maintain world-class cultural facilities that serve communities in all five boroughs, and makes the city a partner in creating more accessible cultural spaces for all New Yorkers, especially people with disabilities.

Three recently completed DCLA capital projects with a strong focus on access are described below.

Pioneer Works

In February 2025, DCLA joined with partners to announce the completion of a major renovation project at Brooklyn’s renowned Pioneer Works cultural center. Supported with $3.4 million in city funding from the Office of the Mayor, Brooklyn Borough President, and City Council, the project includes a new elevator, a new wheelchair-accessible pathway in the garden, and an HVAC upgrade, transforming the 150-year-old, former ironworks factory and its adjoining 20,000-square-foot garden a fully accessible, year round destination for artists and audiences.

New York Botanical Garden

In May, DCLA joined the New York Botanical Garden to celebrate the reopening of the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden. The $8.5 million renovation project—which included $4 million in city support—is the first update to the beloved 12-acre space since it was created in 1998.

Started in 2023, the project upgraded both the indoor and outdoor areas to align with current science education practices, particularly in STEM and environmental education. With these enhancements, the project ensures the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden can continue to accommodate large audiences—over 175,000 children and adults who visit each year—including 18,000 Pre-K through 5th grade students who participate in school field trips.

The upgrade project includes a new feature enabling children with disabilities to use the garden’s popular Tree Canopy Walk; two, fully accessible non-gendered bathrooms; and fully accessible outdoor pathways through the 12-acre site.

The Public Theater

In July 2025, DCLA helped cut the ribbon on the revitalized Delacorte Theater in Central Park, the home of The Public Theater’s beloved Free Shakespeare in the Park.

The City of New York was proud to invest over $42 million for this much-needed revitalization project, the first meaningful capital upgrade to The Delacorte since 1999. The project ensures the longevity of the theater, ensuring that it will continue to be a home for audiences and artists for generations to come. The upgrade project included façade renovation, replaced and restructured audience seating, waterproofing of interior spaces, new HVAC and electrical systems, new lighting towers, structural audio systems support, as well as major accessibility improvements. These improvements included new ramps for audiences, as well as accessible box office and concessions booths. The number of ADA-compliant seats has more than doubled, and expanded hallways and new ramps, lifts, and an elevator to the control booth make the revamped theater accessible for artists and crews with disabilities.

These are just a few recently-completed examples of DCLA’s ongoing commitment to working with cultural institutions to create a more accessible, welcoming, and inclusive cultural sector that is open to all New Yorkers.

Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME)

The mission of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) is to support and strengthen New York City’s creative economy and make it accessible to all. MOME comprises four divisions: the Film Office, which coordinates film and television production throughout the five boroughs; NYC Media, the largest municipal television and radio broadcasting entity in the country with a reach of 18 million viewers within a 50-mile radius; Creative Sector Programs, which supports economic and workforce development in film, television, theatre, music, publishing, advertising and digital content; and the Press Credentials Office, which issues press cards.

Some examples of recent MOME initiatives:

MOME sponsored the Reelabilities Industry Summit on April 7 and 8, 2025 where industry professionals discussed “topics of accessibility, inclusion and representation in all aspects of the film and performing arts industries.” MOME provided funding, and covered a portion of the costs of ASL/CART and advertising. MOME sponsored The Wavy Awards (a music industry awards show) on September 14, 2024, including covering the cost of ASL/CART. The Wavys, founded in 2021, celebrates historically excluded and marginalized talent including women, non-binary individuals, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and artists with disabilities.
At the NY Music Month Conference on June 5, 2024, MOME included a speaker (Lachi Music) on “Neurodivergence, Disability and Mental Health” and a speaker on mental health in the music community (Jennifer Leff, MusiCares).
MOME hied a contractor to revamp its NY Music Month website, with accessibility as a central goal. This new website was unveiled in spring 2025.
MOME helped organize the Seats on the Spectrum pilot with a goal to “welcome even more audience members on the autism spectrum to Broadway and Off-Broadway performances” by providing accommodations, training and education measures, and advocacy. (The link in the previous sentence is to the press release with good details.)
MOME has produced shows for NYCTV that address people with disabilities. For example, The NYC Field Guide: New York Apartment Living (9:14-10:41), included tips for people with disabilities and finding (or keeping) an apartment. Inform NYC: Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities “NYC At Work” initiative (2022).
MOME, in consultation with MOPD, created a graphic for use by theaters to explain that people with disabilities may use cellphones in the theater for accessibility.
On September 22, 2023, MOME co-hosted a screening of Jade Bryan’s The Shattered Mind with MOPD and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.
On June 9, 2022, as part of NY Music Month, MOME sponsored a panel called, “Celebrating and Elevating Creators with Disabilities” presented by RAMPD. The webinar’s goal was to “educate D/deaf and Disabled musicians and music professionals on how to become more established and competitive in the music industry.”

Open Captions at the Movies

Since May 2022, as a result of Local Law 37 of 2021, movie theaters in NYC have been required to provide open captioned screenings.

Open captioning is a service for moviegoers who are D/deaf and hard of hearing. In addition to moviegoers who are D/deaf and hard of hearing, captions benefit almost everyone, especially people watching movies in their non-native language, and children and adults learning to read.

Following passage of the law, MOME, in consultation with MOPD and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP), which enforces the open captions law, developed a campaign to educate the public about the requirement, including a plain language guide and a public service announcement. Materials and more information are available at nyc.gov/captions.

If a movie theater is not providing the required open-captioned showings, you can file a complaint by calling 311 and saying, "open captions," or going to nyc.gov/311 and searching for “Movie Theater Complaint.” In 2025, DCWP issued summonses to four movie theaters for violating the Open Captions Law. All four movie theaters entered into settlement agreements with DCWP and agreed to pay a fine and bring its theatre into compliance. DCWP also sent a Cease-and-Desist letter to a fifth theater and, as of October 2025, is reviewing the theater’s compliance with the law.

Dining

There are more than 15,000 restaurants in New York City, popular with busy New Yorkers and tourists alike. The Dining Out NYC Program is described in The Built Environment and Public Realm section of this report. Some other dining-related items of particular interest to the disability community include the following:

Wheelchair-Friendly Restaurant Finder
The NYC Health Department features restaurants that self-report they are wheelchair friendly on a digital map. During the permitting process, restaurants are asked three accessibility-related questions. If they respond “Yes” to all three questions, the Health Department mails a decal for restaurants to display to indicate that they are wheelchair friendly. The criteria for receiving this designation are that the main entrance is flush with the sidewalk or that there is a ramp, lift, or other wheelchair-usable entrance; the entrance has an opening of 32 inches or larger; and there is space for wheelchairs distributed and level throughout the seating area. The tool does not currently include information about the accessibility of the restaurants’ restrooms or other accessibility features, but is still a useful tool for New Yorkers.
Exceptions to Plastic Straw Ban
Local Law 64 of 2021 restricts food service establishments from providing single-use plastic straws, stirrers and splash sticks to customers. However, thanks to input from the disability community, the law requires food service establishments to make plastic straws available if a customer requests one for any reason and must post signage to that effect. For more information, visit nyc. gov/straws.

Tourism

New York City Tourism + Conventions, the official destination marketing organization for the five boroughs, maintains Accessible NYC, a digital hub to help visitors and New Yorkers enjoy exploring the City. Resources include original editorial content created by members of the community as well as an interactive filter to help visitors find hotels, attractions and restaurants that provide the accessibility amenities they need.