[il-talk] Andy Slater on riding CTA as a blind person

Tue Apr 18 15:33:36 UTC 2017

The article is below stripped of formatting.

Kelly

Riding CTA legally blind can be ‘a huge pain in the ass’

Navigating public transit when you can’t see well isn't easy, musician
Andy Slater says.

By John Greenfield @greenfieldjohn

 Photo caption: Visually impaired musician Andy Slater recently teamed
up with Reader contributor Steve Krakow for a Chick tract-style comic
on the dos and don'ts of interacting with blind people.

Getting around Chicago via mass transit can be frustrating for any of
us, but imagine what it's like for people who are legally blind.
Visually impaired sound artist, rock musician, and recording engineer
Andy Slater offered to share his experiences navigating the city on
public transportation and floated some ideas to improve transportation
access for folks with disabilities.

A native of Milford, Connecticut, Slater moved to town in 1994 to
attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and now lives in
Portage Park with his wife, Tressa, and their 12-year-old son, whose
very rock 'n' roll name—yes, his real name—is Baron Vonn Slater. Andy
creates "organic-electric" soundtracks and sound design especially
geared toward people with visual impairments, with the goal of evoking
images and colors. He also sings and plays keyboards in the acid-funk
band  the Velcro Lewis Group and records other acts at  Frogg Mountain
studio in the West Loop.

Slater's vision has gradually declined since childhood, due to
retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary disease that involves the
deterioration of the retina's rod photoreceptor cells. Symptoms
include loss of peripheral and night vision, plus light
sensitivity—Slater must wear two pairs of sunglasses to go outside on
a sunny day. The condition can eventually lead to total blindness.

Nowadays Slater can detect light and dark, shapes, and movement, but
not much else.

"There's a layer over my vision like snow from an old TV," he says.
"It's this strange mix between a sort of neon purple and these black
dots that kind of move around."

In 2009, when his sight was somewhat better, Slater was walking from
his home in Humboldt Park to Wicker Park when he was struck in a
crosswalk at Division and Western by a turning driver who failed to
yield. (Five years earlier, a drunk driver fatally struck Slater's
acquaintance  Christopher Saathoff, bassist for Chin Up Chin Up, at
the same intersection.)

Slater suffered damage to his leg muscles and back and still has a
"nasty scar" on his right arm. It took about a year of physical
therapy for him to make a full recovery. While he'd previously been
hesitant to use a white cane because he didn't want to draw attention
to his disability, after the crash he began using one without fail,
both for navigation and to warn other road users of his condition.

Slater and his family currently live near Montrose and Milwaukee.
Although they own a car, he frequently uses CTA trains and buses to
pick up his son from elementary school near the California Blue Line
station, commute to his studio near Lake and Ogden, and go to band
practice in Humboldt Park.

While he's generally comfortable getting around on his regular el and
bus routes, accessibility issues influence his travel decisions.

"If I have to transfer to another train line where there's no direct
transfer, or if I have to leave the station, I generally don't bother
because that's a huge pain in the ass even if there's [a customer
assistant] there to help me," he says.

For example, Frogg Mountain is only a few blocks west of the Morgan
Green/Pink Line station. But Slater often travels there via the
Ashland bus, because transferring from the Blue Line subway to the
elevated tracks at the Clark/Lake station is a complex operation for a
legally blind person. "It's just too taxing for me," he says. "I get
turned around a lot in terms of where the stairs or turnstiles are,
and I hate wandering around clueless and confused."

One CTA feature that Slater says makes travel less confusing is the
350-plus bus shelters that beep to broadcast their locations to the
visually impaired, and have a button you can press to get audible
announcements about incoming buses.

"If they took that idea and put it on the stairs to elevated trains or
some of the turnstiles," he says, "that would help me a lot."

While el stations that serve multiple lines usually have announcements
about what color train is approaching, Slater says they don't always
work. "That really pisses me off," he says. "If they have a situation
where it's down, the driver should always announce it."

Slater's proud that he's done his part to make the el a little more
accessible for himself and other blind riders. During the buggy launch
of the Ventra payment system, he realized that the fare card vending
machines, which offer audible cues for payment, would state the
balance on a customer's card, but wouldn't tell you whether it was a
positive or negative sum. Roughly three months after he called Ventra
and the CTA about the problem, he noticed it had been fixed.

CTA spokesman Jeff Tolman confirmed that Slater deserves credit for
bringing the issue to the agency's attention. He added that other CTA
features to assist blind people include Braille text on the vending
machines and station, platform, and railcar signs, audible alerts from
the card readers at turnstiles, tactile platform edges, and automated
stop announcements on buses.

Aside from the aforementioned issues, Slater says he has had few
accessibility problems on the CTA, although he can't say the same for
his friends who use wheelchairs, due to the fact that 45 of the el
system's 145 stations don't have elevators or ramps. The transit
agency  recently announced plans  to make its entire rail system
accessible—over the next 20 years.

Slater notes that all people with disabilities are eligible for a
reduced-fare card that allows them to pay only $1.10 instead of the
usual $2.25 for a train ride, but they have to demonstrate economic
need to qualify for a free-fare card. "Until every station is
accessible, I don't feel it's fair to have to . . . pay [even] reduced
fare for less service than other passengers."

Slater's mixed experience using the CTA is fairly typical of the
general disability community, according Gary Arnold, spokesman for the
disability rights group Access Living of Metro Chicago. "Some things
are being done well, but there is also room for improvement, so
there's a continued need for advocacy," Arnold says. For example, he
noted that, thanks to multiple lawsuits, all CTA buses are now
wheelchair accessible. However, he added, the fact that the "Your New
Blue" rehab of O'Hare branch stations doesn't include adding elevators
to all the stations that lack them arguably represents a missed
opportunity.

Despite his severe visual impairment, Slater has become relatively
comfortable navigating the physical aspects of our city's
transportation system. "The biggest concern I have as a passenger is
other passengers," he says."

Specifically, Slater has had issues with people grabbing or pulling
him on the street or in the subway, assuming he needs help without
asking if he wants assistance. Not only is that patronizing, he says,
it's dangerous because he might assume he's being mugged and
instinctively overreact. It's especially problematic on a CTA platform
or when he's walking under el tracks, because train noise is
disorienting for people who rely on their hearing for wayfinding.

Then there are the selfish folks on crowded railcars and buses who
notice he's blind but fail to offer their seat. "Sometimes I'll
purposely stand right in front of them and maybe knock my cane against
their feet a little." He's even encountered jerks who've accused him
of faking a disability because he has some remaining vision.

Luckily, though, to date he hasn't had any problems with crimes common
on the CTA, such as cell phone snatching, which he partly attributes
to his burly frame and bushy beard. "I don't look like a vulnerable
blind person—I look like I might mess someone up," he says.

To ease his encounters with well-meaning, curious people—as well as
clueless buffoons—Slater recently wrote a Chick tract-style comic
called How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up? illustrated by cartoonist and
 Reader contributor Steve Krakow. The handout serves as a
dos-and-don'ts guide for interacting with blind people and lays out
Slater's daily public space challenges in an alternately heartbreaking
and hilarious manner.

"I'm just a dude who wants to live life without ignorant, aggressive
people interrupting me," he states in the intro.

Hopefully decision makers and the general public will take some of
Slater's suggestions to heart and help make the CTA more friendly to
folks who can't see well.   v

The Velcro Lewis Group play a release party for their album Taking
Frogg Mountain with Dark Fog and Bionic Caveman on Thursday, April 20,
8:30 PM at the Hideout.

Slater performs solo at High Concept Lab's open house on Saturday,
April 29, 7:30 PM at Mana Contemporary Gallery.

 John Greenfield edits the transportation news website Streetsblog Chicago.

On 4/18/17, Sharon Howerton via IL-Talk <il-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> Kelly, I was able to read part of the article about Andy; JAWS stopped
> reading after explaining how much vision Andy doesn't have nowadays. Maybe
> it would be possible for you to cut and paste the full article and your
> comments into a post?
> I met Andy some years ago-glad he is doing OK.
> Sharon
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: IL-Talk [mailto:il-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Pierce
> via IL-Talk
> Sent: Monday, April 17, 2017 12:47 PM
> To: NFB of Illinois Mailing List
> Cc: Kelly Pierce
> Subject: [il-talk] Andy Slater on riding CTA as a blind person
>
> Blind musician and Portage Park resident Andy Slater describes to writer
> John Greenfield about what it is like riding the Chicago Transit Authority
> as a blind person.  The article is in the current issue of the Chicago
> Reader and can be found online at:
>
> http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/blind-musician-navigates-cta/Content?oi
> d=26141365
>
> I had some comments that I placed in the comment section of the article.
>
> Kelly
>
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