State ferries settle lawsuit, will caption announcements
The Washington State Communication Access Project (Wash-CAP) and the Washington State Ferries have amicably resolved their lawsuit with an agreement that the ferries will begin to caption their public-address announcements made on board and at their terminals. The agreement is embodied in an order that will be signed by a court, giving it the same effect as if the case had gone to trial, and this was the decision.
Wash-CAP's lawsuit stated that passengers with hearing losses can't understand those announcements. While some are routine and relatively trivial, others are specific and extremely important -- lost items, cars with lights on or horns blaring, and so forth. And while this may come as something of a surprise to those of you who don't often ride the boats, low-priced or free tickets to sporting events and concerts are frequently offered over the PA system, and the race is indeed to the swift.
Under the agreement, WSF will immediately begin a process of collecting information about available captioning systems. Working with user groups such as Wash-CAP, WSF will then issue specifications, ask for bids, purchase a system and install it on its two largest boats, and at its terminals in Seattle and on Bainbridge Island. Following a six-month test, WSF will then either buy and install similar systems for all its boats and terminals, or we'll go back to the drawing board and try something else. (I'll post the agreement next week after the court signs it).
Exact timing is hard to pin down, because the Coast Guard has to improve most vessel installations, and until WSF knows exactly what kind of systems it will use, it can't develop a deployment schedule. The agreed order does require WSF to proceed diligently, and report to Wash-CAP, so we can hold their feet to the fire.
WSF is the nation's largest fleet of passenger ferries, carrying over 26 million passengers per year. With latest statistics indicating that 7.8 percent of the adult population suffers significant hearing losses, this agreement may mean that some 2 million riders per year will be able to understand messages they would otherwise miss.
Now for a good word about lawsuits. We'd corresponded for months with WSF before filing the suit, and couldn't get any specific commitments. Filing a lawsuit ensures two things. First, it ensures that the problem will come to the attention of the people in a bureaucracy or a large corporation that have the power to say "yes" and fix the problem. Second, it creates a time frame in which they must work. So we were able to get this problem resolved in just a little more than six months.
A good word -- lots of them, in fact -- have to be said for the Washington Attorney General's office. Once that office got involved, we stopped arguing about whether WSF had to make its announcements understandable to folks with hearing loss, and started working cooperatively on how it was going to be done.
Sometimes, lawsuits can make a bad situation worse. But other times, lawsuits can be the quickest and ultimately least expensive way to get a problem resolved.
