Month: May 2015

Accessible Pedestrian Signal Coalition (APSC) Westchester

 

APSC’s mission:

to work to ensure that blind, visually impaired and deaf-blind individuals have full access to the streets and sidewalks within Westchester County. Our goal is to work closely with other stakeholders interested in pedestrian safety, State legislators, County officials, municipality representatives, and departments to create safe streets for everyone in Westchester.

Accessible Pedestrian Signals

An Accessible Pedestrian Signal or APS is a device usually mounted on a pole near a crosswalk and which gives information about pedestrian signals in nonvisual formats such as audible tones, verbal messages, and vibrating surfaces. The primary purpose of an APS is to let pedestrians with vision or hearing loss know that the WALK signal is on for a particular crosswalk.

Visually impaired pedestrians can locate a well-constructed and properly installed APS by listening for the locator tone, a slow regular tick emitted by the device, as they approach a corner. One activates the APS by pushing the large button. When the WALK signal turns on, this APS button will begin to vibrate for pedestrians who are deaf or hard of hearing, and the device will also emit a clear rapid ticking sound or a spoken message that announces the street name and that the WALK signal is on. The vibration and sound stop when the WALK signal turns off.

 

For more information on APS or to hear and read more about them, go to:

http://www.passcoalition.org/#maincontent

 

or for an online resource of best practices for APS, go to:

http://www.apsguide.org/Westchester Council of the Blind of New York’s

A copy of the Pedestrian Safety Handbook is also available online from the American Council of the Blind. To access it, go here: http://acb.org/node/611#main-content