NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — The blind community has won a major victory in New York City.
Blind New Yorkers say crossing the city’s busy streets has always been a risky endeavor, but the reduced amount of traffic in the five boroughs amid the pandemic has made it even more difficult to do so.
This is because most blind New Yorkers would listen for the normal road of traffic movie past to stop before venturing across the street.
Without that normal cue, it’s been difficult to cross streets safely.
On October, however, a court ordered New York City to come up with a plan to install more audible crossing signals to help visually impaired pedestrians.
One has already been installed at the corner of 86th Street and Broadway.
“When the walk sign is on, it will tell you that it's safe to cross,” says disability rights attorney Torie Atkinson.
She notes that the technology is not new and says the first audible traffic signal was installed in Queens in the 1950s.
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Atkinson says the city has had the technology for decades but has yet to utilize it, despite many attempts to make the streets safer for pedestrians.
“That's the great irony of vision zero,” she said. “The administration has been rolling out all of these efforts to improve pedestrian safety it without making those improvements accessible to people with disabilities and, in fact, in in the case of leading pedestrian intervals, making the intersections last accessible and more dangerous for blind pedestrians.”
Atkinson says that while the improvement is a huge win for the blind and visually impaired community, she says accessibility changes improves life for everyone.
“Accessibility always helps everyone,” she said. “Curb cuts were installed for wheelchair users, but everyone who has luggage, who has baby strollers, we all use those. And the same is true for ATS, I mean, people are on their phones, they're not looking at signals, they will benefit from an audio signal as well. It really can improve the lives of a lot of people.”
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