On July 26 2018 at the ADA award ceremony at Gracie Mansion. Commissioner Victor Calise of the New York City Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities (MOPD) and the Mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio presented the 2018 Sapolin Accessibility Award for Communication and Technology to Yonat Burlin, CEO of GalaPro.
The ADA Awards ceremony as Mayor of NYC Bill de Blasio and Commissioner Victor Calise present award to Yonat Burlin the CEO of GalaPro, a Tel-Aviv based Technology Company.
GalaPro, an Israeli tech company, developed an app that utilizes groundbreaking vocal recognition software to create a real-time experience for musical and theatrical performances allowing live cultural experiences to become accessible and enjoyable to everyone.
GalaPro is a natural solution in providing accessibility to the performing arts and live shows for the visual and hearing impaired. Gala Pro’s vocal recognition software generates captioning for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing and an audio description of the performance for the blind or low vision individual. In addition, the Gala Pro app offers the same technology to anyone with a smartphone. GalaPro is available on Apple’s iTunes store for IOS devices and for Android on Google Play.
The app is multilingual, functioning also as a translator providing individuals with access to theaters, opera houses, cinemas, conferences and live shows all over the world.
GalaPro currently available in 12 Broadway theaters, expands accessibility services to everyone as it interprets the performance in real time. Imagine you are from Japan or Italy attending a theatre performance in New York with the GalaPro app you can now enjoy a Broadway play to the fullest translated to your native language.
We asked Gala Pro CEO Yonat Burlin for her personal statement as to why she chose to develop this app .
“Our project was inspired by our greatest passions. Theater and entertainment in general as well as an understanding that with the technologies currently available everyone should have an easy way to be included. If it is people with a disability or people who don’t speak the language. Technology has been used to overcome barriers in so many industries that we felt it was time to apply it to the most basic thing that brings everyone together, culture and entertainment. We are very lucky that the Broadway league and theaters have all adopted our technology and turned it into an industry standard and we hope the rest of the industry will follow and join our mission to include everyone and to open the doors to a wider audience.”
On July 26, 2018, we also celebrated the 28th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) signed by George H.W. Bush on July 26, 1990.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
ADA is a major civil rights law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability in the private and state and local government sectors. The ADA requires access to programs and services, transportation, the built environment, employment, and communication. Under the ADA, the Board develops and maintains accessibility guidelines for the construction and alteration of facilities covered by the law, as well as guidelines for the design of transportation vehicles. These guidelines serve as the basis of standards used by other agencies to enforce the ADA’s design requirements.