New MTA Project Makes Subway Navigation Easier For Hard Of Hearing

New MTA Project Makes Subway Navigation Easier For Hard Of Hearing

By: Kafi Drexel

Source: http://www.ny1.com/content/ny1_living/health/151567/new-mta-project-makes-subway-navigation-easier-for-hard-of-hearing?CFID=111186&CFTOKEN=22893902

New York City is very noisy, making it difficult for those with hearing problems to get around. But there is a high-tech solution being tested in the subway system that could be a major game changer for those with hearing aids. NY1's Health reporter Kafi Drexel filed the following report.

Directions from a station agent used to be nearly impossible to understand for 17-year-old Arielle Schacter, who has severe hearing loss.

"It would be like I knew sound was happening but it's like a silent movie where everything's going on and you don't understand it, except when someone gives you a little bit of a hint," Arielle says.

That silent world is now becoming audible, with the introduction of a device called the "hearing loop" into more public spaces throughout the city.

In large part due to the work of Arielle's mother, Janice Shachter Lintz, who runs the advocacy group Hearing Access Program, it is in more than 400 subway booths around the city.

"We know there are 36 million people with some form of hearing loss and we know that number is growing," says Lintz.

The technology, known as an induction loop, is already common in some European countries. The loops, placed around the perimeter of a room or window, sends out electromagnetic signals that can jump to a receiver called a telechoil or "t-coil," which is already in most hearing aids or cochlear implants.

When the t-coil is switched on, it picks up only what comes through a microphone or loudspeaker and cancels out the background noise.

The $13.5 million subway hearing loop project is the largest in the country.

"Induction loops were a federal stimulus project. It was a project we were considering and had completely designed, so the project came directly from the federal government," says Marc Bienstock of MTA NYC Transit.

Advocates say the technology is so advanced that the sound can actually come across more clearly than what New Yorkers without any hearing loss might normally hear.

"It's gaining attention now but it's not even new. I seem to recall back 20, 25 years our hearing aids had t-coils on them. You used them for the telephone. Nobody talked about it," says Arlene Romoff of the Hearing Loss Association. "To put this infrastructure in looping systems, where it can actually do some good aside from just hearing on a phone or sitting in a looped room, to finally literally get light shown on this, it's enormous."