A few months ago, I noticed a placard had popped up at the remaining token booths throughout the city’s subway system. These booths trumpeted a new accessibility project that would better outfit subway stations with technology that enables the hard-of-hearing to ask for directions and receive information from the station agents. Today, NY1 explores this new initiative.
The technology is based upon a “hearing loop” that has been in use for a few decades. The MTA has adopted it for over 400 booths throughout the subway system. Kafi Drexel reports:
The technology, known as an induction loop, is already common in some European countries. The loops, placed around the perimeter of a room or window, sends out electromagnetic signals that can jump to a receiver called a telechoil or “t-coil,” which is already in most hearing aids or cochlear implants. When the t-coil is switched on, it picks up only what comes through a microphone or loudspeaker and cancels out the background noise.
The $13.5 million subway hearing loop project is the largest in the country. “Induction loops were a federal stimulus project. It was a project we were considering and had completely designed, so the project came directly from the federal government,” says Marc Bienstock of MTA NYC Transit.
Advocates say the technology is so advanced that the sound can actually come across more clearly than what New Yorkers without any hearing loss might normally hear. “It’s gaining attention now but it’s not even new. I seem to recall back 20, 25 years our hearing aids had t-coils on them. You used them for the telephone. Nobody talked about it,” says Arlene Romoff of the Hearing Loss Association. “To put this infrastructure in looping systems, where it can actually do some good aside from just hearing on a phone or sitting in a looped room, to finally literally get light shown on this, it’s enormous.”
The MTA has faced criticism for its slow response to the ADA and the glacial pace of the attempts at making the system accessible. The authority has pledged to make 100 “key” stations ADA-compliant by 2020, and disabilities advocates have accused the MTA of shirking on its ADA responsibilities during rehabs of non-key stations. This effort, a small one in the grand scheme of the MTA’s overall budget, will help improve commutes for those who are hard of hearing, and that’s a worthwhile goal indeed.
5 comments
An MTA that cannot pick up the trash cannot spend $13.5 million on this. I sympathize with the very small number of people who would benefit from this, but it cannot come at the expense of everyone else.
And, yes, I do realize it’s federal money, but it’s still the wrong use for money that would be spent on the subway.
Two things:
1. Not to excuse poor trash collecting, but it’s far easier to install a one-off piece of technology in station booths than it is to combat trash in a 24-hour system. The question is what happens when the induction loop technology needs to be serviced and/or replaced.
2. Federal stimulus dollars, as you said. It makes a world of difference in how the money can be spent.
I’m interested to hear how well these work. They’re commonly used in movie theaters, but in a subway station, where you’ve got 600-volt third-rail traction power and trains producing all kinds of electromagnetic noise, it may not work so well.
Used in some other systems apparently. BART will be using inductive loops in their next generation cars, so it’s apparently fine for subway applications.