The New York Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) just made it easier for deaf and hard-of-hearing New Yorkers and tourists to communicate with transit staff, just by scanning a QR code.
Convo, a company that connects people with American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters on demand, recently announced a partnership with the New York Transit Authority, New Jersey Transit, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to bring its service to area airports, trains, and other major transit hubs. This includes the 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鈥檚 web app through a browser. The user will be asked to grant access to their microphone and camera, and they鈥檒l then be connected to a real-time sign language interpreter on their devices. This, of course, requires people to have mobile phones or tablets with working internet connections, which might not always be reliable. To address this issue, the MTA has been adding Wi-Fi coverage to subway stations across its network. Many of these QR codes are also being placed at customer service booths for added accessibility and convenience.
Convo鈥檚 service in the New York and New Jersey transit systems is free, and its app Convo Now provides 20 free minutes per month to all users who need sign language interpreters. For now, ASL is the default.
Convo and its partners had been conducting pilot tests at Penn Station, Times Square, and the Port Authority terminal for months. In a press release, the company stated that, in general, users reported 鈥渇eelings of empowerment, inclusion, and newfound confidence in interacting with transit staff.鈥 The company added that 44 out of 47 users were able to successfully access the service during the pilot testing phase.
鈥淎s we deploy this out to the MTA, we鈥檙e going to learn the types of behaviors, the types of requests, and the types of challenges that we鈥檙e going to face,鈥 said Jarrod Musano, Convoy鈥檚 chief executive officer.
Quemuel Arroyo, the MTA鈥檚 chief accessibility officer, said New York is the perfect location for this pilot program because of the high volume of residents and tourists. 鈥淣o other transit system in all of North America has the volume that we have, with over six million customers daily between our trains, our buses, our railroads, and we’re giving that service to everybody,” Arroyo said. “That customer base has a myriad of needs, and that’s what makes this case study so important and so impactful.鈥
Engadget (2/10/25) By Cherlynn Low