When you are deaf or your hearing is impaired, travelling by public transport can be a challenge. A lot of standard information is usually provided on screens, but in many means of transport it is common to call out additional messages, for example regarding unplanned situations like ’Unfortunately, we are running late due to a defect of this vehicle’ or ’Beware, there is a pickpocket on this train’. In Amsterdam, we would like public transport to be accessible to all. If hearing impaired and deaf people could also receive the information that is called out, for example on their smartphone, that would make the use of public transport more comfortable for them.
In Amsterdam, there are over 90.000 people who are hearing impaired so a lot of people could benefit of a solution to this challenge. In the European region, 20% of the population has some hearing loss or deafness (according to the World Health Organization). Therefore, citizens of many other cities could benefit of a solution to this challenge.
If we can solve this issue for this group, there will be a spillover effect for other people facing similar challenges: many large cities have visitors that do not speak the local language and public transport staff that only speak the local language. Having a solution that can translate most spoken European languages into most written European languages will be useful there too.
