Judge rules for blind
City lacks enough audible crossing signals
Blind people need better traffic signals to help them safely cross New York City intersections, a Manhattan federal judge ruled Tuesday.
The city’s lack of proper signals for blind and sight-impaired people violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, Manhattan Federal Judge Paul Engelmayer said.
In particular, Engelmayer ruled the city had failed to equip traffic signals with accessible pedestrian signals — APS for short — which include alarms or other audible alerts.
Audible signals are now in place at about 450 of the city’s 13,200 intersections that have traffic signals — roughly 3.4% of the total.
Engelmayer ordered city lawyers to seek an agreement with advocates for the disabled to make more intersections safe for pedestrians who cannot see.
The two sides must submit a letter to the court by Oct. 30, laying out a path forward to come to a resolution, which could include benchmarks and deadlines for adding APS to street signals.
Engelmayer’s ruling itself does not specify how many signals must be installed.
Laura Feyer, a spokeswoman for Mayor de Blasio, said the city is already working to expand accessibility for blind people at crosswalks, but declined to provide a timeline for the installation of more infrastructure to make good on the judge’s ruling.
“The city is dedicated to making our streets more accessible to all New Yorkers with and without disabilities, including those who are blind or have low vision,” said Feyer.
“We will continue to install APS across the city and are consistently working to increase access for the blind and low vision community in all facets of life.”
Lori Schaff, a plaintiff in the suit who is blind, said her group has been working with the city for a decade on the installation of accessible pedestrian signals, which she hopes will “provide equal access to information that sighted pedestrians have.”
“It’s taken all this time, and not much has been done,” Schaff said.
Torie Atkinson, a staff attorney for Disability Rights Advocates, which represented some 200,000 visually impaired New Yorkers in the suit, said the ruling draws a line in the sand when it comes to accessibility on city streets.
“It’s really our hope that this is a cultural shift,” said Atkinson. “For decades, New York City has been ignoring the needs of pedestrians with disabilities.”
Engelmayer’s ruling arose from a federal lawsuit filed in June 2018 by disability advocates.
They argued that the city’s Department of Transportation violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by neglecting to add audible features to crosswalk signals that let visually impaired people know when they have the light.
The suit is similar to one filed by disability advocates in Manhattan Supreme Court in 2017 that argued the lack of ramps and elevators in the New York’s subway system violated the ADA.
The plaintiffs in that case seeked to require the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to agree to a timeline to make more of the city’s 472 subway stations handicap-accessible but MTA and city lawyers have fought it, arguing the court should not be able to mandate billions in construction costs.