Straphangers who’re deaf or hard-of-hearing now have entry to on-demand signal language interpreters at choose places by way of an MTA app, the transit company introduced Monday.
The Convo app permits customers to scan QR codes at places all through the subway system and be linked through video name to an American Signal 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 throughout a Monday press convention 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 join a rider with an on-call ASL interpreter, who can translate a rider’s signing to an MTA station agent, in addition to signal the transit employee’s response again to the rider.
The app can be utilized by scanning QR codes on the 161 St.-Yankee Stadium station on the B, D and No. 4 strains, the Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Ave. station on the E, F, R, and No. 7 strains, at Instances Sq. station in Manhattan or at Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn.
Codes can even be positioned on 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.
Initially Revealed: February 10, 2025 at 7:28 PM EST
