Straphangers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing now have access to on-demand sign language interpreters at select locations through an MTA app, the transit agency announced Monday.
The Convo app allows users to scan QR codes at locations throughout the subway system and be connected via video call to an American Sign Language interpreter.
“Just picture what a deaf person’s life looks like, getting into this massive transit system in a world of silence, trying to navigate through these different locations,” Jarrod Musano, CEO of Convo, signed during a Monday press conference in Brooklyn.
“If we were lost, we would try to write notes back and forth with the MTA employees, but that takes a lot of time, it takes resources, and there’s a possibility for great misunderstanding,” Musano continued. “So deaf people learn to navigate through our own paths, to avoid specific conversations.”
A scan with the app will connect a rider with an on-call ASL interpreter, who can translate a rider’s signing to an MTA station agent, as well as sign the transit worker’s response back to the rider.
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The app can be used by scanning QR codes at the 161 St.-Yankee Stadium station on the B, D and No. 4 lines, the Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Ave. station on the E, F, R, and No. 7 lines, at Times Square station in Manhattan or at Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn.
Codes will also be located at the St. George station of the Staten Island Railway; Atlantic Terminal, Babylon, Grand Central Madison, Jamaica, Penn Station and Ronkonkoma on the LIRR; and Grand Central Terminal and the White Plains station on the Metro North Railroad.