[NFB-Talk] New York City to be the most walkible city for blind pedestrians

[Jack Heim]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/27/nyregion/nyc-crosswalk-blind-people.html

Why New York City May Soon Be More Walkable for Blind People

A federal judge ordered New York City to install more than 9,000 
accessible pedestrian signals at city crosswalks.

Dec. 27, 2021Updated 7:51 p.m. ET



Accessible Pedestrian Signals help blind and visually impaired 
pedestrians cross city streets.



Accessible Pedestrian Signals help blind and visually impaired 
pedestrians cross city streets.Sarah Blesener for The New York Times



A federal judge on Monday ordered New York City officials to install 
more than 9,000 signal devices at intersections to make it easier for 
pedestrians who are visually impaired to safely cross the streets.

In an opinion released Monday morning, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer 
criticized city officials for failing to make the vast majority of New 
York’s more than 13,000 intersections safe for thousands of blind and 
visually impaired residents. He ordered the appointment of a federal 
monitor to oversee the installation of the signal devices, which use 
sounds and vibrations to inform people when it is safe to cross a roadway.



The ruling will change the face of New York City’s street corners, the 
vast majority of which are only governed by visible cues like flashing 
countdowns, red hands and walking figures. It also marks a significant 
advancement for disability rights in major urban centers, many of which 
have not fully embraced accessible crossings for blind residents.



“There has never been a case like this. We can finally look forward to a 
day, not long from now, when all pedestrians will have safe access to 
city streets,” said Torie Atkinson, a lawyer for the American Council of 
the Blind and two visually impaired New Yorkers, who filed the suit. “We 
hope this decision is a wake-up call not just to New York City, but for 
every other transit agency in the country that’s been ignoring the needs 
of people with vision disabilities.”



Nick Paolucci, a spokesman for the city’s Law Department, said that the 
ruling acknowledged the “operational challenges” the city has faced in 
its attempts to install the systems over the years.



“We are carefully evaluating the court’s plan to further the city’s 
progress in increasing accessibility to people who are blind and 
visually impaired,” Mr. Paolucci said in

a statement.



The case, which was filed in 2018, accused the Department of 
Transportation and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration of violating 
the Americans with Disabilities Act, making roadways treacherous for 
those who cannot see. Last October, Judge Engelmayer ruled in the 
plaintiffs’ favors, saying the city had violated the law hundreds of 
times by failing to install accessible signals.



While the city ramped up installation after the lawsuit was filed, it 
still lagged far behind the pace needed to make its infrastructure 
widely accessible for blind residents, the judge said, adding the city’s 
decision was not rooted in financial concerns or logistical hurdles but 
in political will and budgetary priorities.

The failure to install the technology more widely, the judge wrote, 
impedes the independence of people who need them, by making it difficult 
to cross streets safely in a timely fashion.



Accessible pedestrian signals, or A.P.S., are present at less than 4 
percent of city intersections. They communicate when it is safe to cross 
through voice recordings, beeps and other sounds. They also vibrate to 
communicate to deaf and hearing-impaired residents.



Despite being seen as critical safety measures, the devices have not 
been embraced on a large scale in New York, the country’s densest city, 
where around 2.4 percent of residents are visually impaired.



The first accessible pedestrian device was installed at a city 
intersection in 1957, but the rollout in the decades since has been halting.

Current estimates say that nearly 65 years later, the city has installed 
fewer than 1,000 of the devices.

“On a daily basis I have to deal with trying not to get hit by cars 
because there is no A.P.S. telling me when it is safe to cross,” 
Christina Curry, who is deafblind, a term used to describe someone with 
combined hearing and sight loss, and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in 
a statement. “Installing so many A.P.S. over the next 10 years means 
that I and tens of thousands of deafblind New Yorkers will have access 
to street crossing information and be able to travel safely, freely and 
independently throughout the city.”

Blind residents and advocates for people with disabilities celebrated 
the ruling, noting that the pandemic is changing pedestrian and traffic 
patterns that blind residents often relied on to navigate streets and 
sidewalks.



“The ability to have access to an accessible pedestrian signal is even 
more important now than it was two years ago,” said Lori Scharff, the 
former president of the American Council of the Blind in New York. “In 
my lifetime, the generation after me, everybody’s going to have access.”

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Jack Heim, john at johnheim.com