SFO Installing Message Screens for the Deaf

From today's SF Chronicle:

Passengers with hearing disabilities will be able to read public-address announcements on dozens of large video screens at San Francisco International Airport in the coming months under terms of a lawsuit settlement announced Wednesday.

"We're hoping SFO is going to be a model for other airports to follow,'' said Kevin Knestrick, an attorney for Disability Rights Advocates, an Oakland nonprofit that claimed in a lawsuit filed in 2002 that the airport was not complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The key part of the settlement requires SFO to install 80 visual paging monitors in the airport. Large plasma screens will display text messages duplicating announcements made over the airport's public-address system. The text announcements will scroll on the screen so that travelers can view recent messages, including pages and emergency messages.

Read the full article.