Our Story

The Language Justice Collaborative, previously known as the Language Access Coalition, was formed in 2016 to advocate for New York City to update and expand its language access policy. Each of our organizations has a long history of advocating for language accessibility for immigrant New Yorkers.

The coalition aims to fight particularly for speakers of languages of limited diffusion (LLDs), which include African languages, many Asian languages, and indigenous Latin American languages.

Why we Started

Lack of language access is one of the most significant barriers New York’s immigrant communities face when accessing critical State services.

New York State took an important step toward expanding language access when Governor Cuomo signed Executive Order No. 26 in 2011, which orders all executive State agencies to translate vital documents into the six most common state languages (“statewide languages of translation”) and to offer interpretation services to individuals in their primary language. However, even after the implementation of the Executive Order, significant language access barriers remain.

Our Proposal

Our goal is to ensure immigrants from Africa, Asia, and Latin America receive the essential resources they need to live a productive, healthy, and fulfilling life, and a community interpreter bank in tandem with language services worker co-ops takes us one step closer to achieving that outcome.

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