The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) met on November 17th to discuss “The Americans with Disabilities Act and Accessible Transportation: Challenges and Opportunities.” This event largely focused on people with mobility barriers to transportation; however, at least two witnesses mentioned that deaf and hard of hearing people need visual access to aural information. A captioned video of the hearing and reports from the witnesses can be found online at: help.senate.gov
The Committee also invited members of the community to submit written comments, and the NAD, along with input from members of the community, submitted comments. In our comments, the NAD explained that mass transportation is not fully accessible to individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing and that very few, if any at all, mass transportation vehicles or transport stations provide visual access to all aural information. The NAD believes that under the ADA, all mass transportation vehicles and transport stations must make all aural information visually accessible for passengers who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Our comments encouraged the Committee to push to make all transportation related information visually accessible for individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing. In addition, for any information shared with passengers on any form of transportation, a system must be in place to share the exact same information in a visual manner with passengers who are deaf or hard of hearing. The NAD recommended that the Department of Transportation create a working group largely composed of individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing to develop guidelines for communication accessible transportation.
Click here to view the NAD comments.