MTA to pilot sign language ‘Convo’ app for deaf, hearing impaired straphangers

Straphangers who are deaf oregon hard-of-hearing present person entree to on-demand motion connection interpreters astatine prime locations done an MTA app, the transit bureau announced Monday.

The Convo app allows users to scan QR codes astatine locations passim the subway strategy and beryllium connected via video telephone to an American Sign Language interpreter.

“Just representation what a deaf person’s beingness looks like, getting into this monolithic transit strategy successful a satellite of silence, trying to navigate done these antithetic locations,” Jarrod Musano, CEO of Convo, signed during a Monday property league successful Brooklyn.

“If we were lost, we would effort to constitute notes backmost and distant with the MTA employees, but that takes a batch of time, it takes resources, and there’s a anticipation for large misunderstanding,” Musano continued. “So deaf radical larn to navigate done our ain paths, to debar circumstantial conversations.”

A scan with the app volition link a rider with an on-call ASL interpreter, who tin construe a rider’s signing to an MTA presumption agent, arsenic good arsenic motion the transit worker’s effect backmost to the rider.

The app tin beryllium utilized by scanning QR codes astatine the 161 St.-Yankee Stadium presumption connected the B, D and No. 4 lines, the Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Ave. presumption connected the E, F, R, and No. 7 lines, astatine Times Square presumption successful Manhattan oregon astatine Atlantic Ave. successful Brooklyn.

Codes volition besides beryllium located astatine the St. George presumption of the Staten Island Railway; Atlantic Terminal, Babylon, Grand Central Madison, Jamaica, Penn Station and Ronkonkoma connected the LIRR; and Grand Central Terminal and the White Plains presumption connected the Metro North Railroad.