It’s a classic New York experience. You’re riding the subway to work, and suddenly the train stops. The lights go off, and you seem to be trapped between stations in a tunnel. For many New Yorkers, hardened over years of bad weather, prevalent trash and cohabitation with rats, this is just another recurring event that’s made less nerve-wracking by experience. But for Jarrod Musano, being stuck on a southbound 6 train that had lost power, there was little relief. Musano was born deaf, and the audio-only announcements were of no help. Musano couldn’t see anything in the darkness, and had to rely on gauging the amount of panic in his surroundings.
“I knew if it were serious, people would be moving quickly,” he recalled of the incident. Musano’s experience reflects one of many ways people who have disabilities and, more specifically, who are hard of hearing, have difficulty when using public transportation. Musano is the CEO of Convo, a company that was founded in 2009 and connects people with sign language interpreters on demand. Today, the company is announcing a partnership with the New York Transit Authority, New Jersey Transit and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey that brings its service to area airports, trains and other major transit hubs. This includes the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) subway system, the Long Island Rail Road and NJTransit.
Through this partnership, QR codes will be placed at various locations across those systems, and scanning them will launch Convo’s web app through a browser. The user will be asked to grant access to their microphone and camera, and they’ll then be connected to a real-time sign language interpreter on their devices. This, of course, requires that people have mobile phones or tablets with working internet connections, which might not always be reliable. It’s worth noting, though, that the MTA has been adding Wi-Fi coverage to subway stations across its network. Plus, many of these QR codes are placed at customer service booths, which have gadgets on hand that could provide access.
Convo and its partners had been conducting pilot tests at Penn Station, Times Square and the Port Authority terminal for months, and said in a press release that in general, users reported “feelings of empowerment, inclusion and newfound confidence in interacting with transit staff.” The company added that 44 out of 47 users were able to successfully access the service during the…