Note: The output shown below is from the Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) system used in the subcommittee meeting and is unedited, except the title was changed from Signage Subcommittee to Communications Subcommittee. The CART system was used to provide an accommodation to persons with hearing loss and persons who are deaf, and was streamed in real-time and available to the public on the internet during the meeting. 1

x--------------------------------x UNITED STATES ACCESS BOARD
RAIL VEHICLES ACCESS
ADVISORY COMMITTEE

x--------------------------------x

COMMUNICATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

TELECONFERENCE

THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 2014

1:00 p.m.

**DRAFT TRANSCRIPT**

Staff Location:

United States Access Board 1331 F Street, NW, Suite 1000 Washington, DC 20004

Reporter: Sandra Gartrell2

P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S
SIGNAGE SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIR PACHECO: Good afternoon, everyone. I want to thank you all for participating today and welcome you and I think we need to first go around and do some self-introductions. I will start here. We have a group of us at the Access Board office today, so we will go around this table first and then open it to everyone on the lines. I'm Terry Pacheco. I am representing the American Council for the Blind and am very proudly serving as the chair of the Communications Subcommittee for the Rail Vehicle Access Advisory Committee. I have to not talk in alphabet soup for a minute. And to my right we will go to Lisa. MS. FAIRHALL: Lisa Fairhall, Access Board staff. MR. PECHT: Jim Pecht, Access Board staff. MS. MAZZ: Marsha Mazz, Access Board staff. MS. SESKER: Earlene Sesker, Access Board staff. MR. BEATTY: Paul Beatty, Access Board staff. And on the line we have André Gagné -- I apologize if I butcher people's name. MS. MAZZ: Can't they introduce themselves? MR. GAGNÉ: It's close enough. Thank you. CHAIR PACHECO: Can we have everyone else3

introduce yourselves, please. MR. ROMAN: Steve Roman from LTK. MR. PORTER: Michael Porter, Amtrak. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: Janice Schacter Lintz, Hearing Access Program. MS. HAMLIN: Lise Hamlin, Hearing Loss Association of America. MS. THORP: Kim Thorp, North County Transit District in San Diego, California. MS. SHURLAND: Melissa Shurland, FRA. MS. LYONS: Crystal Lyons, Southwest Transit Association. MR. MALDARI: Frank Maldari, MTA New York. CHAIR PACHECO: Do we have anyone else? MR. SLAUGHTER: Terry, I'm not sure. I think I talked over someone before. It is Blair from Amtrak. CHAIR PACHECO: Hi, Blair. Thank you all, very much. Sounds like a good turnout. Sounds like we can make a lot of progress. I am going to do some assuming here. I believe you have all taken a look at the new scope and objectives for this committee since the renaming, restructuring. I was kind of going over the scope and the objectives. One thing that struck me, that we are in the process of looking at the old guidelines and4

making recommendations for updates. And we are making these recommendations to the Advisory Committee, which will then make final decision as to what will go forward to recommend to the Access Board. There is quite a bit on here under tasks. I think we shouldn't have any difficulty getting through all of them, especially by October, hopefully long before that. We are reviewing the various types of signs. If you look at number 3 on the agenda for today, for review types of signs for each category, classification we had talked before about way-finding, information, emergency features and amenities, whether we are talking visual, audible, induction loop, braille, other formats. Right now we are limiting ourselves to that for the purposes of today's discussion. And on the types of vehicles, be it the rapid rail, light rail, commuter rail, inner-city, high speed. MR. PECHT: Automated guideways and transit.

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MR. SLAUGHTER: Street cars. CHAIR PACHECO: Street cars. There we are. I want to thank. I -- I hope you had a chance to take a look at -- anyone who thought they might have benefited from it. I think we all can. I want to thank Blair for the very accessible document that he5

put together for us for some of the types of signs that Amtrak uses and with pictures on them, with braille on them, with an audible description or, in this case, a written description of each one of the signs. There is about 10 different ones on here. Anyone want to take a couple of minutes and look over those. I think they are a good learning tool for anyone not familiar with the different types of signage that we are talking about here. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: I wanted to thank Blair for compiling this and spending the time to do this. Because this was extraordinarily helpful, I have to tell you. Some of the signs I thought what they were not what they were. So, Blair, I really appreciate you taking the time to compile it. This will make it very simple. Because it turns out most of the signs are not applicable for hearing loss. MR. SLAUGHTER: Good, Janice, thank you. I appreciate that. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: It was a lot of work, but I think it was really helpful to people like me who had no idea of what the terms meant, so I really appreciate it. MR. SLAUGHTER: I have to thank Terry. I sent the first few to her to make sure I was not off course. I6

was writing these elaborate narratives and Terry said, "No, you are overdoing it." So I appreciate it. It actually streamlined the process a lot to go back and be short and sweet to the signs. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: So, Terry, then, also thank you. I didn't realized you were involved. I really appreciate it. It really makes a huge difference for a layperson like myself. I was really clueless of what some of these signs were, and it is helpful. So thank

you. CHAIR PACHECO: Well, I'm glad it has worked out so well for you. Next, the table that Jim put together, and thank you, Jim, for doing this, because it finally fell into place in my head. Unfortunately, it was a little late in falling but it finally did. The table, I'm hoping everyone either has it or can access the copy of it on the website. The table that Jim put together, here is my thought on it. And I think we can probably get through a lot of it very quickly today. I did a little bit of extending of the table and -- I'm sorry. MR. BEATTY: The table is no longer on the website. We moved it into the archive material you can7

access at regulations.gov. There is a link on the website. I think we put it under signage Number 4. CHAIR PACHECO: Okay. No, what I'm talking about, at least, or have a copy of it. I think we sent it out with the last agenda. My thought on this is we have got cells; one for tactile and visual, one for just visual, one for induction loop, one for audible and one for not required. That was what we had come up with at the last session. I'm thinking the X's that are in there pertain to what the ADA requirements for buildings are now. Let us use the letter -- I have been trying to come up with one that doesn't follow up with anything else. And the best I have come up with is the letter S, as in Sam. What I'm thinking is let's use the letter S and go through these types of signs and if you believe that it should be -- let's say, for instance, let me do it as an example. The first one says "direction signs, includes direction for direction signs." And there is an asterisk. And if you follow down what the asterisk says, "Applies to sign that provide direction to or information about interior spaces and facilities." So what I'm saying is, first of all, do we believe that that should be tactile and visual? Just visual?8

Why do I have so much trouble saying the word "induction." I always want to say inclusive loops. Induction loops, audible, and not required. Right now we see that the ADA building requirement requires it to be visual. Whatever we feel it should also be. If we feel it should also be tactile and visual, let's put a letter S in that box, in that cell. And then let's take the -- I'm trying to see whether we should do this all in one step or do it in two steps. I'm thinking, then, what we should also put in there is the types of vehicles that we think this applies to. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: I'm sorry. I'm trying to find the chart. Where is the chart? MR. BEATTY: If by chance you have the last email, I think it was Signage Meeting Number 3, I sent it as an attachment. If you don't have that, go to the RVAAC website. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: I do have that attachment. We are talking about that document. I just needed to be clear. Thanks. I know which document it is now. CHAIR PACHECO: Okay. If we use that table we should be able to go through this fairly quickly. I'm hoping we can get through pretty much all of them today and see which ones we feel need to be updated, need to9

be added, maybe even some that don't need to be on here at all that are now. Let's use the letter S. Anybody that wants to fill something in on those. Then let's put in if we want it to be audio visual just on subway cars, on commuter rails rather, let's say, commuter rail, you just have to just put in C for commuter rail. If you want to write it out, that's fine. But we can get all this information on to this one form and get the whole thing done as concisely and quickly as possible, I think if we do it that way, unless anyone has a better suggestion. That just seems like a logical way to go. MR. PECHT: I would like to make just one recommendation. When you look at putting your S, if you are assuming it is for all the rail types, just leave it a plain S, just assume it applies to all. If it only applies to a certain type, then start putting the letters in for the specific ones. If it is specific to only one type or two types or three types. CHAIR PACHECO: Excellent point, Jim. Thank you. If you look at the bottom of the table you will see that the -- trying to see -- here it is. There is a listing at the bottom that says A, automated guideway -- wait a minute. I'm halfway down the table. I have an extremely large print on paper here, folks.10

I'm sorry. It says R for rapid rail, L for light rail, C for commuter rail, I for inner-city, A for automated guideway, H for high speed and T for trams. If you want to refer back to that on your copy, so much the better. But it is right there at the bottom, just below that table. Okay. Does anyone have anything they want to say before we get started? MR. MALDARI: I had a couple of quick questions. When we identify that it is visual, we still have to decide what the requirements are for visual signs,

correct? CHAIR PACHECO: We will need to do that. And I think that is all little further down in our tasks. I thought maybe we can get the overview in first -- MR. MALDARI: No, no. I agree doing the overview. I just want to make sure that we are already agreeing to what visual means in the ADAAG right now. Right now we are saying it should be a visual sign and then we have to decide what the requirements are for visual signs. The reason why I'm saying that because the font requirements are rather large. 5/8 of an inch in a rail car takes up a lot of real estate. I think we11

should to be cognizant of that when we say what should be visual and not. MS. MAZZ: As I noted for the Committee on the very first day, not the subcommitte but the full committee, if you want to depart from the established requirements in the ADA, you have to have a reason based on the specific environment you're talking about. And you have to have some belief that it results in accessibility. I mean, obviously if you make something 11 point Calibri print it will not be accessible to people with low vision. Just with that in mind, as you tinker with these technical requirements, there has to be some basis for an understanding that they result in accessibility and that you're tinkering with them because of the unique needs of the environment we are dealing with. And another option is to find other ways to present the information. MR. MALDARI: Okay. I do remember that. It does make sense and I think it is a unique environment of being inside a rail car and that may provide the justification we need if we need to change from 5/8. I just wanted to make sure when we are agreeing that all these signs need to be visual, that we're not stuck on sticking with the 5/8 if we deem it to be overly12

restrictive. MR. SLAUGHTER: To Frank's point -- I think maybe one of the things you should plan to try to do as we move through the process between now and October is once we nail down what slots these different signs go into, visual or visual and tactile, or whatever, is then pick some of them and try to throw them into our respective environment, those of us who are from railroads and operators, to get an idea. It think one of the things that is critical when we are looking at signs in rail cars, it is a fairly compact space. The viewing distance is much less than it would be in the built environment, versus a car. That would just be my offering. Once we get through the table here and start assigning things, then we start looking at some of the trickier spots that we have to deal with on the cars and bring those back for discussion as we move along. My hope would be ultimately it would help the Access Board in crafting the proposed rulemaking based on that sort of information. CHAIR PACHECO: Thank you, both. Frank, did you have any other issues? You mentioned a couple of questions. Did you have anything else? I don't want to step on your toes.13

MR. MALDARI: I appreciate that. The only thing I wanted to mention, maybe it is obvious, is that when you put a requirement on for directional signs, it is not a requirement that you have to have directional signs. It is a requirement if you do have directional signs it has to have to meet the format. That is the understanding I'm proceeding with. Does that sound right to everybody? CHAIR PACHECO: It certainly does. Is there anyone it doesn't sound logical to? Okay. Well, then, moving along directional signage, right now only requires it to be visual. Can I make -- I'm Chair I am not sure I can actually make this as a motion. I would like to kind of introduce this as a best practice, I guess, for us going through this. Unless there is some specific reason why you wouldn't do this, which personally, I'm not sure that I can think of, I am not a deaf and hard of hearing expert by any matter of means or an electronic experts by any matter of means. But I'm thinking if something is audible it should be in an induction loop as well. Can we just kind of -- unless there is some reason to separate them out, just kind of automatically feel like those two belong14

together. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: Yes, because that was my question. I was going wait until the end when we went through this. The signs you have in the format, which is why this is so helpful, those appear, at least in my opinion, but I would defer to Andrew and Lise, none of those signs appear to need any sort of induction loop for people with hearing loss, but I assume if an induction loop is installed at various point we are going to need a sign about an induction loop and an induction loop will need to be installed if there is any audible portion. So from the viewpoint that I'm looking at, none of the current signage from that chart needs any induction loop signage but if we add anything with audible, then we need induction loop signage. I don't know Lise and Andrew if you agree with that. MS. HAMLIN: The only caveat I would put to that is that in some situations -- there are signs that may be developed, for example, that are on subway cars now, that tell you what the station stop is and the direction of the door where you should go. Those are often also -- what is also said on the sign is also spoken by the -- I don't know, whoever15

speaks them. So in that case whoever it speaks it goes through the loop and that makes sense to me. But sometimes the VMS signs are standalone, they will say things that are not spoken. So VMS should be treated separately. But I think what you are saying, Terry, is whatever is spoken should also go through the loop and be text as well and I would agree to that to the extent that it is possible. CHAIR PACHECO: Okay. Thanks. We do have VMS as a totally separate subject because that really is an animal to itself these days. About the second or third from the end, as I recall, on this list. Can I just remind folks that when you do want to speak, if you please say who you are, I think would make it a lot easier, especially for the person doing the CART --
MS. MAZZ: CART. CHAIR PACHECO: I was saying wagon. Actually when you brought that up about the induction loop, one of the things that occurred to me is under information signs and features, we should probably have a sign in there that there is an induction loop on board the vehicle, if there is. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: Yes. If we had induction16

loop, we may need to circle back to the signage category, and I had mentioned this on our first phone call, as equipment is added. I think all equipment for all the different disabilities, this may be an initial signage requirement based on what is currently available. But as equipment is added or things are changed on the train, I think we are going to need to circle back to this committee to just adjust the signage. Because currently there is no loop so we don't have signage category. But if a loop is added, we need to add the signage because otherwise nobody will have any idea that it is there. And if a loop is added, we will need some sort of visual alert to notify people when the speaker is actually speaking. MR. MALDARI: I think the sign for announcing that you have a hearing loop would be a nonemergency information sign and falls into that category. So there already is a category assigned for that. CHAIR PACHECO: Right. MR. MALDARI: Requiring that you have a sign when you have a hearing loop, seems like a logical thing to do if that is what you are asking. I am not sure where exactly that goes but I'm sure it can be worked in the requirements.17

CHAIR PACHECO: That is what I was getting at, Frank. Thank you for clarifying that. That is what I was saying. A sign of that nature would go under information and/or features. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: Absolutely, but based on what the signs we have now, that was part of my not understanding what categories the signs are. So once we have the -- once we know there is a loop in place, then we will have to figure out the category and we may need to adjust some of the categories. For example, if there is an induction loop sign we are going to need some sort of visual alert to let people know. We may not have a visual alert now currently in whatever category we just discussed, but we may need to add that. At the end it should be like a template for initial, what currently is on board. But we are going to need to circle back and we may need to make adjustments based on any changes that the Board makes, which I think makes sense because there is going to be lots of tweaks to this. MR. SLAUGHTER: Just so I understand, someone who uses an induction loop system, would they not necessarily have their device always on anticipating announcements or is that why you would need, say, a light that blinks or something to let you know to turn18

that feature on? Is that what you're saying, Janice? MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: The way the induction loop system works, you have basically three settings on your hearing aid, M, M/T, T. T being t-coil, M being microphone. Microphone is when you are speaking to the person and they are just hearing you back and forth. When you have it on full T, telecoil, you are only hearing what sound is coming through the telecoil and all other sounds are blocked out. So if you wore that all the time, you would never be able to hear anyone around you. If you have M/T, then you are hearing both the person around you and the T, but you are not having the full strength of the telecoil. Depending on where your hearing loss is, some people find it difficult to hear the telecoil when it is on M/T. From a safety perspective, you would never walk around or just sit in your seat with telecoil, because you want to hear the other person around you, the conductor. And also there is not constant announcements. So you need some sort of indication when the announcement is being made. I know on Swiss rails -- I have a photo of showing they have when the speaker is on, it is a light that goes on with like an overlay that shows a speaker. So it indicates to someone the speaker is now on. I'm19

happy to send it but I don't know if it is correct for someone with a visual impairment. Since I don't know the current things, I am happy to forward to Terry or whoever. That just let's you know, "Okay, announcement coming, switch my hearing aid to telecoil." MR. SLAUGHTER: That is what I thought you were saying. When we get to the point that we are talking about the induction loops, then, as an example -- and I will be brief. When you have an induction loop, then you will also have an indicator, some sort of visual indicator to let you know it is on and you will also have a static sign that alerts people that that service is available on that vehicle. So those all wrap in together. And then that sign would fall into the information category or wherever we choose we need to put that. So okay. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: Absolutely. Although I think -- and I'm not a sign person. But there may be a way of wrapping those together so it is not confusing. I'm just thinking about this. It is not like I thought about this before. And I don't know how this works within the ADA code. But my thought is you don't want someone thinking that the induction loop signal is always on and you can listen to it.20

It might make sense -- and this maybe one of those things, a reason for a change -- having the induction loop symbol and only go on when there is a light and not having the main induction loop symbol posted, but just doing it with a light when it is on. MR. SLAUGHTER: Yes. I mean, I don't want to get into designing the sign right now. But to that point, if we are going to activate something and it is not something as simple as a light, but it could be like you see on restrooms, "restroom occupied when sign is lit," something, that kind of thing, those kind of details we can work out. I think as we move through the other processes we can think about how we want to describe that to your point so it makes the most sense. For installing a system, it is not that big of a deal when it is activated to have it activate something else like a sign. So okay. I'm good. CHAIR PACHECO: Okay. So directional signs. Start with the first one. Back on Blair's examples, I think the very first one, if I recall, would be an example of one. My own personal feeling -- and I would like anyone that has got any feelings on any of these, please, that is what we are all here for, is to get our brains working together, to come up with what does seem logical.21

I have a real problem with that one being only visual on the directional signs. I think it should be tactile and visual. An awful lot of people who especially would be using tactile, maybe very low vision, maybe totally blind, are traveling independently. And any information that someone can use for getting somewhere, especially in a closed environment, such an inner-city train or commuter rail, any information they can get tactilely is an absolute benefit. Anytime there is -- keep in mind -- here is my basic thought. Just keep this in mind. Anytime there is information that somebody cannot physically access, you are actually keeping that information from that person. And if we kind of look at it from that perspective, maybe we should be looking at some of these that should actually also be tactile as well as visual. Oftentimes if you have got a sign that you may -- you may have a sign that is pointing an arrow to the right, but if it's four feet away from someone, you know, 7 feet, 6.5 feet in the air, they very well are not going to be able to see it. It is that person that could do much better with a tactile add-on to it beyond just the visual. MR. SLAUGHTER: Actually I included that22

particular sign because we have that sign and variances of it that tells the same kind of story in similar cars at various places. And they are not tactile, which is why I included this one as a not tactile. We have other signs that do sort of the same job but they are tactile and I can't tell you right now why that is the case. But I thought that if I included the one that was not obviously tactile then it would bring on the discussion we're having now. I agree. I mean, I look at the sign now and I'm thinking when I was doing the write-ups and everything, I don't know how that one fell through the cracks here because we were -- gosh, it has been at least 10 years now. We were very diligently trying to go through our signs, which is what created a lot of the tactile signs. They are certainly not required today, but we were trying to be logical about it. And to me this falls into that category. So for my railroad I would say, absolutely, it makes sense to have those as tactile signs as well. CHAIR PACHECO: I think it makes a lot of sense for anybody who has low vision because I really hate walking into the wrong person's bedroom. You really need to know where you're going. I might can see the door, but maybe not the C on it. I might mistake for a23

G, something like that. MS. MAZZ: Terry, can I ask a couple of points of clarification and also explain why in the built environment we don't require directional signs to be tactile. CHAIR PACHECO: Go for it. MS. MAZZ: In the built environment, we don't require directional signs to be tactile because they proliferate everywhere. They are all over the building. And there is no cuing mechanism that we can think of that would enable a person to reliably find that sign. That may not be true on a rail vehicle, which is a pretty linear arrangement. And if, in fact, your directional signs can be located in a reliable way so that someone who is walking from the dining car knows where to look to see "am I going the right direction toward rooms 1-10 versus A-E? I can check the sign." Then the reason for not making directional signs accessible in the built environment may not apply on a rail vehicle, if you can find a reliable location. The second observation I wanted to make is that the sign to your room, that designates your room in the built environment would not be considered a directional sign.24

CHAIR PACHECO: That's true. MS. MAZZ: It would be considered a designation sign and it would be required to be accessible because the doorway to your room is that cuing mechanism, that tactile cue that you would find. If you were totally blind with your cane, you would find the doorway and you would look for the latch side of the doorway for your sign. Or on the rail car you might look on the door for your sign because the door is typically going to slide back and forth and not open in your face. So just with that in mind, the decision, of course, is yours. But if you do recommend making the directional signs accessible, it might be useful to also recommend some consistent location criteria as well. MR. MALDARI: I agree with that. I know we said that a few times. If you are going to have a tactile sign you really need to identify an area. What is troubling me about directional signs, is that it also includes exit signs and arrows. And currently in our equipment we have a lot of exit signs to meet emergency exit sign, signage requirements and they are all over the place. They are not in one location; they are up high, they are down low, sometimes they are not reachable. And generally we put25

them in the most visible area that we can fit them, considering whatever other equipment is in the area. So every car is different as to what is in the way in the vestibule or what is in the way of the end compartment. It is where you can fit these. So there is real really a visual cue. And trying to make it in an area consistently depends the layout of the car. A sign like this with rooms when you are walking into a sleeping car, seems to me that you can make that particular sign in a specific location when you went through a car because you are expecting to have this type of directional sign. But when you are talking about exit signs -- and they could be high and they could be low and they are all over the place, and typically may not always be within reach. I think is a mistake to require all those to be tactile as well. CHAIR PACHECO: You bring up a good point, Frank, and I want to ask Marsha a question I'm not familiar with. I, by no means, am a sign expert. Is it possible to do something like -- and I'm not saying this is a solution for this, but I am just wondering in general terms, is it possible to do something like if you're going to have a sign that one can't touch tactilely, then can we require an26

additional sign that could be reached tactilely? MS. MAZZ: Thank you for that question. In the built environment, building codes typically require exit signs high up. CHAIR PACHECO: Yeah. MS. MAZZ: For example, above your exit door. CHAIR PACHECO: Yeah, that is what I'm saying. MS. MAZZ: And there are two different kinds of exit signs. There are directional ones that have arrows on it that says "go this way to find the exit" or there is one at exit or exit discharge. And those are typically, you know, right at the door of the space that you want to access to get out of the building. So in the ADA standards, those signs that designate the exit access, the exit discharge, the exit itself, the stairway, in the case of a multi-story building, have to be tactile. Because you can't comply with the building codes illuminated overhead sign requirement and be tactile within reach, you end up with two signs. You end up with the overhead exit box, if you will, you know the big box, the big glowing box, and the smaller exit sign at the exit door. But the directional signs are not required in a building to, you know, to be tactile because, again, we27

don't know how to make them findable along your exit path reliably and we certainly don't want to slow anyone down exiting looking for them. And there are a lot of new technologies now with low level exit path markings that are down on the baseboard and things like that. Although you may have to crawl out of a building, we don't want only blind people to have to crawl out of a building. MR. SLAUGHTER: Marsha, thank you for that. We have within the rail industry, we have the APTA guidelines and of course the 49CFR 238. And in some cases things that are presented by APTA become rule by default because it is an industry association. So the FRA adopts them without ever really going through a formal process because the industry has adopted them. So what we have as an example is the -- I'll have to look back. But, just generally, we don't necessarily have way-finding elements that point you in a direction to an exit. There are some cases where we do have those. I think the Acela may have some tactile elements. But, to give you an example, when you are stand in a vestibule at the end of a car, if you walk in that area and let the door close behind you, if you happen to be at the end of the train, there are going be four28

doors, all of which will have exit signs on them. And the signs are down low and they are also up higher. They are down low because in a rail car, because it is a rolling hotel or environment, you can have smoke issues. And the idea has been if you had to go low, you can find your way to an exit. In those cases they are very large letters, they are tactile and they are in those multiple locations. We also have -- to add the to complexity of it, we have three escape scenarios from a car. The first thing we want folks to do is go to the adjacent car. The second thing we want them to do is to exit from the doors, if they are available, depending on the situation. And then the third thing we want them to do is pull the windows out and escape. So when you start talking about exits and emergency exits, it becomes a very complex thing and we start walking into, you know, other agencies and advisory groups' territory. Just to make the point for us, at least at Amtrak, we make those tactile and visual and they are the scale that the APTA guidelines recommend. CHAIR PACHECO: That's good to know. Thank you. I think if we look at the table we have, we have exit signs under the directional exit and then we have29

them on the -- MR. PECHT: Designation. MR. MALDARI: You have it covered in two locations. It is a little confusing. CHAIR PACHECO: Well, no. I think it kind of fits into what Blair was just saying. We should really have it in the location, in emergency and in direction, perhaps. MS. MAZZ: I mean, that is the same as in a building. In a building we have directional signs, which are not required to be tactile, and we have the designation signs at the exit door that are required to be tactile. So they do appear in two different places and they are two different types of signs in a building. What I heard Blair say is that you may not have very many, if any, directional exit signs; in other words, "go this way for the exit." But you have a variety of designations at the exit door and at the means of escape, which would be typically a window. MS. FAIRHALL: Perhaps either as we go through this discussion today or when we cycle back it would be useful to identify those kinds of signs that might be regulated by other schemes and flag that so that down the road we can make sure that we are not inconsistent30

or -- at least be aware of the kinds of requirements we are imposing so that we are not inconsistent, that they all working together. MS. MAZZ: Good point, Lisa. Because I heard Blair mention that the low level exit signs are tactile. And I asked myself whether the APTA guide requires them to be tactile or they simply are by practice. MR. MALDARI: APTA guide doesn't require them to be tactile. I guess it depends on if you have an opportunity to make it tactile or not. The concern I have is when you make a regulation that require all signs of that type to be tactile. You end up putting less signs out because you don't have space to meet all the requirements. In our vestibule, the vestibule of a car, we have at least 10 signs that designate the location of the exit with an arrow, 10 signs. If we had all 10 signs having raised lettering and braille, we couldn't fit the 10 signs. I guess what I'm saying is, I know you're thinking practically at times, gee, at least one of the signs should be raised lettering and braille and certainly a few of those signs could be. But when a regulation is written that all signs of this type have to meet this31

requirement, it means that all 10 of those signs have to meet the requirement. And part of the reason for having so many signs is that they are photo luminescent and you are trying to light up the area with emergency light as well. So if there is some way to have a sign that is part of that and doesn't meet that requirement, that is something that maybe a little easier to meet the requirement for. When you designate a type of sign as a directional sign that every single one that exists needs to provide that tactile ability, then that is very difficult to have all the signs. MS. MAZZ: Frank, are there situations where a door in a vestibule would not be an exit or would not be labeled as an exit? Would that be a rarer situation and maybe one that presents an opportunity? MR. MALDARI: Wouldn't be an exit when it is locked out for some reason. MS. MAZZ: But it would be labeled as one even so? MR. MALDARI: It would be, yes. So all the doors would be an exit. And, as Blair mentioned before, there is a hierarchy in what we are asking our passengers to do in an emergency. Our first priority is to make sure they listen to what the crew is saying32

because you may want to exit the side door, you may want to go in the next car, but you may want to stay exactly where you are. And that is when the crew's communication with the passengers is important. And that is going to be a big part of the VMS stuff. You don't want the person to do anything automatically. MS. MAZZ: The thing that has got me a little perplexed is for a sighted person, every door in a vestibule is likely to have some designation as an exit door and that person has to use other information to decide which one to go out. Right? MR. MALDARI: That is true. Good point. MS. MAZZ: Instructions of the crew members or, you know, judgment of the ground conditions or something. MR. MALDARI: Very good point. Because, I mean, the end door is an exit door and so is the side door. MS. MAZZ: And so is the door you just went through. MR. MALDARI: And the door you go through is dependent on direction, is that what you are saying, right? MS. MAZZ: And from what you said, so is the door you just walked through, because you said all four doors are labeled "exit."33

MR. MALDARI: Correct. MS. MAZZ: You just left the fire behind you, you just walked through that door and you get in the vestibule and you turn around and the door you just came through is also labeled "exit." You are not going to go back through it if you know that is the door you just came through. MR. MALDARI: True. And being there is two doors, one on each side at least, one may be adjacent to a platform and the other one wouldn't be. Even though it is designated as an exit door you may not want to go out through that one. MS. MAZZ: I don't think you will find that in a building. MR. MALDARI: Right. MS. MAZZ: For example, you have an exit stair, you won't find an exit sign on the interior of the stair, except at exit discharge where you are meant to go out. You are never going to ever be instructed to come back in toward the building. CHAIR PACHECO: But, on the other hand, with a train, the people in the car in front of you, the door on your car could well be an exit if I'm coming out of my car into the vestibule, your door could well be my exit.34

MS. MAZZ: And we would call it a horizontal exit in buildings, where you exit one rated area into another rated area that is separated and protected from the other area. Maybe trains function a little more like that. MR. SLAUGHTER: I am so glad that we are all experiencing the dilemma of the railroad because we are taking a building and rolling it down a railroad track and sometimes it leaves the track. So it does present a lot of extreme challenges. Folks ever wonder what people who work at MTA and Jersey Transit and Amtrak do, this is the stuff we do, trying to think of every possibility. But one of the things that we do, we provide an emergency information card, passenger safety card, we call it, much like what you have on an aircraft, and there is a whole litany of information there. One of the conditions you can have, as Frank mentioned, you can get to the end of the train and the last door of the train that would normally take you to the next car is going to be locked. The door that takes you into the baggage car on a long distance train has to be locked by law now because we carry firearms as required by law. So then you are going to have to use some of the other options.35

We also have the unfortunate situation where if you have a severe enough incident, the car that you're in ceases to be part of the train and is now its own independent vehicle cut off with communications with the rest of the train. And at that point you hope that people's logic and the things we provided will get them safely off the car. Fortunately, when you have those situations very seldom any chance of fire or an immediate life-threatening conditions. But still, suddenly, you now have all three exit scenarios available and possibly necessary, which is the doors, you moving out of the end door, out of the side doors and out of the windows. We try to avoid those things. MS. MAZZ: Good. MR. PECHT: Can I make a recommendation, Terry. Can we sort of simplify just the first pass-through of this table to sort of say, okay, let's just sort of a look at -- if you want tactile -- directional signs to be tactile, let's just put an S there and then we can go back later to say, okay, do we want all of them? Do we want some of them? Do we want specific one s and how do you want to do that? And leave that discussion for the next pass-through.36

In other words, you could say -- when you start indicating specifics, you can say "if a door is designated as an exit, it shall have at least one sign that does this and be located in this area." And then discuss where other signs -- Honestly, if you are talking about a sign that is meant to be read when I'm on my hands and knees, I don't know how you designate that if I have to read it tactilely. What is the height range for somebody -- I don't know what the human anthropometrics for people on their hands and knees trying to reach in front of them. You know, I don't know that number at this point in time. We have to sort of look at that. MS. MAZZ: In fact, that was an objection with the building code when the manufacturer of the luminescent signs brought them before the building code as a suggest for people who are blind. And people said, "How do you know people who are blind can read those at that level?" Because essentially at floor level you end up reading upside down because of the angle of your hand. I don't have an answer to that. MR. MALDARI: I think that is a real good point. What Jim was saying I think is a good idea. I think in this particular instance there are some directional signs which could be tactile and visual and some that37

shouldn't. Maybe there is a way of indicating it with a special letter here -- I don't know how you want to do it -- that tactile and visual should apply to some of these directional signs but not all of them. And then we can move on through and argue about which ones should and shouldn't be at a later date. I think that would be a good way to get going. CHAIR PACHECO: Okay. I think that sounds like a great idea as well. Anyone who wants to put a note on your copy of the table so that you know what it means as well so it is most familiar to you. If you just want to put some, whatever, let's do that and let's keep going and see what we come up with. Some of them probably shouldn't be -- I won't say shouldn't be required. Go ahead and slap my hand. MS. MAZZ: No, no, no. CHAIR PACHECO: The next one on here was designation signs for spaces including exit signs. I think this is where we are talking the actual exit sign as opposed to direction to the exit sign. And designations of other spaces as well. I feel like we are living just on commuter rails and trains, but this is one area where I don't see that we really have much on any of the other types of trains, the other types of vehicles than those.38

Again, I think this probably is primarily the -- MR. MALDARI: Bathroom sign, restroom is probably only on a commuter or long distance train. Exit sign could be on any -- CHAIR PACHECO: You're right, exit signs can be on any. I'm thinking as far as the other spaces, I'm sorry, as far as the other spaces part of this category is concerned. MS. MAZZ: Take the low hanging fruit first, things like the cafe car if you label them or the restrooms if you label them. CHAIR PACHECO: Right. Most all of those are inner-city vehicles. You are not going to run into those probably on a rapid rail or a subway car or a light rail vehicle. MS. MAZZ: I'm not sure it really matters. I think the question would be more a matter of do you want room designations, for example, to be tactile. If so, then do you want to recommend that wherever they are provided, for whatever reason, they be accessible. Or can you think of situations where they might be provided on a particular mode and they shouldn't be required to be accessible. My guess is for room designations, you won't be able to think of a situation where a room designation,39

if provided, shouldn't be accessible. But you may be able to think of plenty of situations where an exit designation, if provided, maybe not all of them have to be accessible. And you may want to approach that differently or you may want to approach it differently for different modes. I don't know. CHAIR PACHECO: Exactly. What I was getting at is we are pretty much not talking about rapid -- always I was getting at, so let's just start primarily on the inner-city, commuter, that type of situation, the types of spaces on other vehicles. That is what I was going to ask. Other than inner-city and commuter, can anyone think of any spaces on other types of vehicles on rapid rail? Am I forgetting something. MR. ROMAN: No, on rapid rail or light rail or street cars, there really are no other passenger spaces separate from the seating area. So this wouldn't apply to those cars. MS. MAZZ: But if they did happen to put a restroom on one of those cars for whatever reason, then you will have an accessible sign. The provision doesn't apply if you don't have a restroom or you don't have a separate seating area. But if you did, it would apply.40

I think you don't want to waste too much time on "should it apply here or should it not apply here" if it is a where provided provision, if you see what I'm saying. MR. SLAUGHTER: But in the case of a rapid rail where you have a designated seating area or space that is accessible, that is a designated space, would you not identify that with -- would that need to be -- MS. MAZZ: That is a great example -- CHAIR PACHECO: Excellent example. MS. MAZZ: -- of one of those decision points you want to make. Should designated accessible seating wherever it is provided, have a tactile sign. MR. PECHT: I will put that down in the next category. <<<: The sign designating the seating area are above a seat, which may make it a little difficult for somebody to reach. MR. MALDARI: Right now the handicapped or the wheelchair parking area, handicap parking area, is not required to be designated at all. Some people -- most people, most authorities do designate them by putting the accessibility decal adjacent to them. I think it would be clearer with this particular item if we identified for a specific types of these41

destination signs with the required not all -- maybe we can list the ones that we know. Because really it is the bathroom, it's the restroom and cafe area maybe. Maybe we can just list the ones it applies to so it is clear and exclude the ones that we know would be problematic. MR. SLAUGHTER: We have sort of taken the idea that if it is a place that a passenger can go and occupy, then we have a designated with a visual and tactile sign. So, in other words, if it's they're own room, the restroom, dressing room, you know, anything that is available for passengers, then it's identified with a visual and tactile sign. Other places like electric lockers are locked anyway. We don't put tactile signs on that because you can't get in there anyway. Not relevant. MS. MAZZ: Do you put tactile signs on seat and row designations? In other words, if I reserve a seat, row 1/seat A -- and I'm not talking about accessible seating, but just -- you know -- MR. SLAUGHTER: All seats. MS. MAZZ: So you do have tactile? MR. SLAUGHTER: We have hundreds of them. Yes, all our designated seats, sleeping row designations are all visual and tactile.42

MS. MAZZ: That is an example of something that is not required in the ADA standards as specific exemption for seat and row designations. So that may be a change that the committee wants to recommend. MR. SLAUGHTER: Here is the difference and maybe it is less relevant to short trip rapid rail situations. Obviously with some a few exceptions, I think one of the shortest trips you can take on Amtrak is 20 minutes, but it is generally a lot longer. So if you leave your seat and you are at row2/seat F and you know that, then you make your way to the restroom and you come back, those seat placards are on the leading edge of the luggage rack so you can find them. Your hand runs right over them and you can find your way back to your seat. That was our thinking with room designations. MR. MALDARI: The designations that you have for the seating locations, does it meet the current building code requirements for tactile signs? MR. SLAUGHTER: When we were developing these, because there were no hard requirements, the gentleman that was doing a lot of the sign work reached out I believe at that point to the Access Board and to people from the community to try to get some sense of what do we do when we have limited space.43

I think most of our letters are in the half inch range so they are at the extreme low end of the tactile lettering range but we use typically braille to braille. So that is what we did. And some of those instances we could go with larger letters and not jeopardize anything. But that was the way we went at it with no other firm guidance from the Access Board, other than that because there was nothing really to lean back on. We thought it was

necessary. MR. MALDARI: Well, I think doing it is good. And if you have the flexibility with size, it might be a little easier to do. I'm just worried that if you have this requirement that we currently have for the size of the tactile, tactile and visual decals that you may have some problems in certain instances, maybe, depending on the equipment. MR. SLAUGHTER: And I think that is where as we move down through this list, it is going to be important to the point you made before. Let's go ahead and tag some of these things and then we will come back. I think the burden, Frank, will really be on those of us from the authorities and the operators to look at our situations and to bring those back for further discussion.44

But if we could move through and say generally, yes, we agree that it makes sense for these things to be visual and tactile and then we can come back, I think, with specific situations that we could further discuss. That would be my way of going at it. MR. HART: I'm going to offer that I will pull the -- if we use the viable coaches that MBTA is just now receiving from -- I will pull that signage. I will try to get you guys photos of every tactile sign that we have on new cars. I will tell you that most of them are tactile. We do not have accessible signs on the equipment lockers, per se. But to Frank's point, I think now we can see overwhelming -- actually when we sit down and do it, it is not quite as bad as it may seem, but I will get you guys that stuff. It is going to take me a couple of weeks to do it here in Boston. CHAIR PACHECO: Thank you, Chris. Chris can you answer a question I'm curious about. The MBTA has done an awful lot in Boston in making a lot of their information audible. Do you know if they use induction loop up there for that, do you know? MR. HART: I will tell you that we were not -- very rarely. We do not have an installed induction loop. So we opted out on the rail. With that said, we45

know that things go through rail induction loop. So we just have to get the right technical stats and then we'll figure it out. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: There is no place, to the best of my knowledge, in the United States that has used an induction loop on the rail car. The only places we are aware of are in Scandinavian countries such as Sweden; Ireland, Australia. Spain has it specifically in its regulation that it specifically says "induction loop." I forwarded the information to David Capozzi recently detailing all the information. I'm just not aware how to put this in an accessible format, but I sent David the details, assuming the Access Board knows the appropriate way to administer everything. MS. MAZZ: Janice, in the future please send your communications to the RVAAC inbox. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: Well, I sent it to David about a different issue. MS. MAZZ: I understand, but if you send them straight to the RVACC inbox that's our central point for the committee's information to be distributed to the committee. If you do that, we can take a look at them and see if we can render them accessible. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: Happy to do that. Marsha,46

just so you know, it was not meant to circumvent -- MS. MAZZ: Oh, I understand. I understand. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: It was an issue with MTA in New York who has advised me that they will not put an induction loop on their buses even though they previously committed to and did a pilot program. And they will not put it on the rail unless the regulations require them to. So it was more in the form of a complaint that David was cc'd. I don't want you to think I was circumventing anyone. MS. MAZZ: No, I don't. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: It is more of I don't believe that MTA of New York is requiring regulation to move this forward. That was not the impression I received from the Long Island Railroad people at one of the meetings. So it was more in the form of a complaint but I will do so going forward. MS. MAZZ: Okay. Thank you. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: You're welcome. CHAIR PACHECO: Paul, I think you wanted to say something. MR. HART: Just so you know, David and I have requested the technical stats they are using. And I'm going to try to track down the Scandinavian as well. MR. BEATTY: Janice had given us the Spain rules a47

few weeks after the first RVAAC meeting, which we placed on the electronic, regulations.gov. So if you are interested in that, you can go to the regulations.gov site through the RVAAC website. And when you go there, click on "supporting documents" and you will see something that says "post first meeting, hearing access program material." And there you can see the things that Janice asked me to make available to the committee, which we did send out a link on and an email and one of the attachments regards the Spanish rules. CHAIR PACHECO: Thanks, Paul. Let me just jump in here for one second about emailing things that are accessible. That's not anything terribly tricky. I am just going to give you all a very, very quick thumbnail for sending something in to see that it is accessible. As a general rule of thumb, if you do a Word document, it is going to be pretty accessible. If you cut and paste a PDF in it, that is a different issue. If you are going to put a picture like Blair did with these, where he inserted a graphic, put a picture in the file, just put a brief description, just like Blair's. Blair's file is an excellent example of what you can do to make a file very, very accessible to anybody. It is very accessible visually, it is very48

accessible for anyone to read it from a text perspective. If you have anything that you have any questions on or you want to submit, please send it in and we can work on it. I had said to the committee back in the very beginning, that's what I do for a living, is making documents accessible and putting them in alternate format. And I had said from the very beginning I would be more than willing at no cost to the committee to make anything accessible that needed to -- that I could help them with at all. So please don't hesitate. If you have got a picture of some kind of a sign and you think it would be a good one for us, just give us a brief description with it and send it in with the description. We can take care of it from there. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: Thank you, Terry. That would be really helpful to me because sometimes the document that I have are coming in PDF format from other countries and I don't have the ability to change documents that I don't own. CHAIR PACHECO: That is where the problem comes in. So many PDF documents are not accessible. Virtually any Word document is, as long as you cut and49

paste a graphic into it without a description. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: Right. These are fully PDF documents. Should I just send them to you directly? CHAIR PACHECO: As long as it is not really long, if you want -- MR. PECHT: Send it to RVAAC, to Paul. CHAIR PACHECO: Jim is saying send them to the RVAAC and he knows how to do it as well. If you send it to RVAAC they can deal with it from there. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: What address should I use for the RVAAC? MR. BEATTY: Use the RVAAC@Access-Board.gov, the basic email address I send out to everybody. One other thing, it is great to get things in, but just to point out, that when we get things last minute, it is not always making sure it is accessible, is one of the things, there is a time constraint. In general anything used in the subcommittee has to be placed on the web. Our web guys have been really helpful in dealing with last minute things, but we can only go to the well so many times on the last minute. Some people sent me some good information, in my opinion, this morning, but it was just too late to go through the process and even speak to the Chair here and possibly put it on the web. So keep that in mind.50

CHAIR PACHECO: Okay. Getting back to our table, I believe we are making progress today with the table. We are at least discussing what these things are. Designation signs for spaces, we just talked about that one. The designation signs for elements. Jim, remind me again the difference between a space and an element. MR. PECHT: A space would be a room. An element would be like a fire extinguisher or a telephone. This is a sign for where the phone is, this is a sign for where the fire extinguisher is. That would be an element. Seat and row would be a space. MS. MAZZ: If you have a sign in there that says cups, that's an element. CHAIR PACHECO: Yes, the cups would be an element. I guess where I am getting a little confused is between elements and features. I think it is a fuzzy line there. Some are features and some are elements. MR. PECHT: I'm speaking ADAAG. I'm sorry. That is just sort of me. MS. MAZZ: Features is really not a term we use very much in ADAAG. I think features and elements tend to be kind of synonomous. You're right, features kind of further blurs the line. CHAIR PACHECO: Sorry.51

MR. PECHT: We actually define element. CHAIR PACHECO: I might know a couple of languages, but ADAAG is not one of my better ones, I

guess. MS. MAZZ: We find a lot of people don't know it. CHAIR PACHECO: Non-emergency operational signs, that is the area, if I'm correct. And I can see it is just using visual for this. That is the area that is employees only, the janitor's college, that type of thing, I believe is what we decided is in there. MR. PECHT: Non-emergency operational signs that would be something like the doors is operated like this, this is how the lock is, this is directions about how you operate a thing. MS. FAIRHALL: The example in the package is how to operate the faucet. MR. GAGNÉ: I found a sign on the Internet for Amtrak quiet cars. Which category would that fall in? Would it be a destination sign for space or something else? Just curious. MS. MAZZ: It depends on whether that's the sign that tells you that the quiet car is this way. Let's say I'm in the cafe and there is a sign that says "quiet car" and it points to the back of the train. That's a directional sign. In the building standards52

it would not be required to be tactile. But once I get to the quiet car, if there is a designation at the quiet car that says "this is the quiet car, you are now in the quiet car," that is a designation sign and it would be required to be tactile. MR. GAGNÉ: Because it doesn't look like it is a directional signs. It says please refrain from loud talking and using cellphones in this car. MS. MAZZ: Yes and that is rules of conduct and rules of conduct are not required to be tactile in a buildings guidelines. Only the name of the space, the designation of the space, whether it is a name or a number or some other way of designating the space has to be tactile. So bear in mind that the information you get in a building in tactile format is very, very, very minimal. MR. GAGNÉ: So in that context, would quiet car -- part of the sign says "quiet car" so that part has to be tactile while the rest of the instructions can remain as a regular visual sign; is that correct? MS. MAZZ: An accessible visual sign because it is information about the space. Do you want to correct me on this. MR. PECHT: I would probably put that in53

operational. MS. MAZZ: Jim says he would probably throw that in operational. The rules of conduct are not really required to be, you know, made tactile at all. And in terms of visual, something like "no smoking" is a rule of conduct. It is not the label of the space. It is not the -- it is how you behave within the space. MR. SLAUGHTER: André brings up a very interesting sign. When we have a quiet car in a train, it can be any coach that happens to get made up into that train. What happens now the conductor now carries the -- there is actually a very nicely printed paper, typically, sign. And in some cases a static applique that they place on the window of the door of the car as you approach it. So with the exception of Acela, the quiet car moves around. So when we -- I'm curious what people think about how we handle that. Obviously it needs some designation but it is also part of the announcements that are made. The conductor will point out where in the train the quiet car is. So I'm not sure how we do that. Obviously with something like the Acela where the quiet car is the same car over and over again, it is much easier. But in a locomotive and individual passenger car, railroad like Amtrak, it becomes a bit more difficult.54

MS. MAZZ: So you're saying you don't have a sign that says "this is the quiet car"? It is really communicated verbally? MR. SLAUGHTER: Well, no, it's both. You take any coach in Amtrak on any given day in Washington or New York or Boston, when the train is put together and they put in five coaches and a food service car, or whatever it happens to be, and a business class car, the coach that happens to be next to the business class car is going to be designated the quiet car and the conductor literally has signs that he takes and places in the car to designate that car for that trip. MS. MAZZ: Temporary signs, then?
MR. SLAUGHTER: Yes. MS. MAZZ: Okay. And under the ADA, standards, temporary signs, 30 days or less, whatever it is, are not required to be accessible. MR. SLAUGHTER: Okay. But it is also -- so that we are not leaving people uninformed, that is also one of the things that the conductor announces after each departure. The conductor would describe where things are on the train and that is included where the cafe car is, where the quiet car is. CHAIR PACHECO: I'm wondering -- this is to Blair but it is also to all the other vehicle people on the55

call. Do any -- I understand how it is on Amtrak. I'm thinking about other types of -- other vehicles that also have, for instance, a quiet car or a family car. Now we are getting into planes, I guess, that have no families, that kind of thing. MS. MAZZ: Really? CHAIR PACHECO: Yeah. Another issue. I guess my question is, are we using VMS's for a lot of that, for any of that on any other vehicles besides Amtrak now? Is that something that should be going under VMS too? MR. MALDARI: Terry, to answer your question, we just use audio announcements right now. We just started designating the quiet car, typically lead car. Trying to use VMS, understanding our current system, to do such a thing is a pretty difficult thing to do because it is doing other things at the same time. It is announcing the stations. So trying to get it to say it is the quiet car also is a little more complicated and not set up for that. We don't have the temporary signs. And typically trying to get a person to do that consistently is not an easy thing to do. Even though we have well-trained staff, it is a repetitive type of thing. It is hard enough to have them make an announcement consistently it lead cars and it is not every train that has the56

lead car, specific trains that they assign them to. So, yeah, it is a good question. I was wondering myself how do you make this information accessible. I guess if it is a temporary sign, it doesn't need to be, but I don't, you know. It is called a quiet car, but really it is a change in the rules of conduct in that

car. MS. HAMLIN: I think the question was more to the point if we were thinking that everything that was audible would also be on a VMS sign. If you could can that, essentially, and have it preprogrammed, it may be able to be put on a sign. So that becomes a question, if that's doable. MR. MALDARI: That's a good point. Typically the way the can signs work now they go out through the whole train. So you have to target it toward the specific car and that is what makes it more difficult in this instance because you are not telling the same information to the entire train, only to a specific

car. MS. HAMLIN: Wouldn't you want -- in other words, if you say the third car in the train is your quiet car, wouldn't you want that in all the cars anyway? So somebody in the second car can say, "Oh, I want to be in the quiet car. Let he go down there."57

MR. MALDARI: If that -- if it is always the first car or always the third car, I guess you could do it that way. If it changes, you can't do it that way. MR. PECHT: Let me jump in real quick with a reminder that the guidelines and therefore the standards are only going to be dealing with newly constructed vehicles or totally remanufactured vehicles. We are not talking about going back and retrofitting existing stock that's out there. So it is the question of, is it doable in a newly designed and newly constructed car and that may be where you want to direct your proposal as to whether or not you want to have VMS and audible, visual and audible, however you want to do that. And not really worry about whether it is difficult or doable in existing rail stock at this point in time. MR. MALDARI: That's a good point. I think from my understanding, a canned message is a doable type of thing. But having an on the fly, every audio message that comes across being displayed visually is a difficult thing to do. I'm not sure -- just look at what we are doing now with the card, there is somebody correcting everything that is being said. Unless you have somebody doing a real-time correction, an active system of everything you say being translated into58

text, this is not an easy thing to achieve. So just to assume that we can get a VMS system that will automatically put everything in a visual format that is spoken audibly is not realistic in my mind. MS. HAMLIN: I understand what you're saying and I think that some of the signs, you're right, are pretty much static. But I have seen -- Amtrak has a system in the station that allows for correcting on the fly. It is Passenger Information System. I don't know it that is translatable to the cars. Maybe it is something we can look into or we can say something at the point that it is doable. It should be an expectation. Technology is going to change quickly. I wouldn't want to say this would never happen in the future. MR. MALDARI: But at the same time you don't want to require something to happen that you don't know can happen. So all I'm saying is, you want to try to do it with the technology that exists, not with the technology that may exist because then you are forcing people to do something that is currently not done. The technology that we're aware of that does exist is canned messages. So a canned message can be created to say, as you said, like the third car is going to be the quiet car and you say announce it to the entire train59

and you can possibly put it on the VMS system as well. But if you require that everything said, then you are making it a challenge. And do you really want a new procurement to proceed along the lines of developing specialized equipment that has not been used before. It makes it a very risky proposition. We in this industry are trying hard enough to get existing equipment to respond reliable, rather than to get brand new, never tried equipment to work at all. I'm just saying, when you are working for an audible message to be displayed, that we provide some flexibility in the information that is displayed and be aware that a canned message is possible now and active text correction is not something that is functioning in industry now on rail cars. If you are doing it in a station, it is kind of like what you are doing online here. You have a person dedicated to fixing it and that is not an easy thing to do on a rail car. MR. HART: One of the things I would like to suggest is that essentially -- on dual audio and visual system. I understand what is actually available around the world, although not necessarily frequently seen in the U.S. market yet. I think most of us are familiar, to a degree, with60

a typical one-line, two-line VMS -- in Chicago, in New York, in D.C. and that actual technology goes way beyond that. I think it might be helpful when you guys do have the VMS's specs to really understand what is being used around the world and know what the manufacturers are now providing and are looking to provide because the technology is -- compared to what we have in the United States. MR. SLAUGHTER: Thanks for the reminder that we are dealing with new cars and remanufactured cars. I'm sure the folks at Amtrak would appreciate if I came up with a changeable sign so that the conductor didn't have to carry signs in their bags. Ha-ha. In thinking about it and getting out of my operating the railroad today mode, even for a temporary situation for a train, it is probably not that big of a deal to make a sign that is exposed when the car is, in fact, the quiet car, if we are talking about new cars. So my apologies for being archaic and not looking to the future. CHAIR PACHECO: I don't think anybody is being archaic. I do think that Jim made a very good point. I think we all live with this everyday but we don't think about it living without us or living beyond us. Sometimes I think it is hard to look at the future.61

Fifteen years ago who would have thought we would be sitting here with laptops and I-Pads and all of that. It is a difficult issue looking into the future. Sometimes you don't always make a hit on exactly what the reality is going to be. Let's just run through the rest of this table. So everybody is kind of in the same places before we do homework assignments. We have got things like Non-emergency informational signs and Non-emergency operational signs. And then the emergency informational signs. We need to decide what needs to be in which formats, what kinds of Non-emergency informational signs are we talking about. These are things for everyone to think about, to think about what kinds of signs. You know, I have been paying a lot more attention to what signs are on the Metro on my way to and from workdays. Look around and see what are the ones -- some of us work with this every day. Some of us, like myself, take four trains a day and that's our primary exposure to it. But let's see what we can come up with for ideas -- I'm sorry, of examples of these and which situations they seem are, first of all, necessary and are they working the best they are now, what can be improved. We need to get this in here. And that62

brings me back to a little bit of homework. I think we all need to take this table and put in occurrences to us, give us examples, bring it back to the committee. There are things -- how many topics have we hit on today that we said, "Oh, I didn't think of that one." If everyone could just come up with a few things to add to this table before we meet again, we can -- I really think we can get through this and really move on to our black and white tasks. And I think we can do it -- I think we have made a tremendous amount of headway today. We are down to our last less than 20 minutes. And I know we need to do public comments. And we need to determine a date for our next meeting. I want to thank you all for how well this one -- how much we have made, how well this has gone and how much progress we really have made today. I know sometimes it is a little hard to see the big picture, but I really do believe we have done an awful lot today. Do we have any one on the phone that does want to make -- for any public comments? MS. THORP: Will I be able to ask a question. Not necessarily a comment. A question I hope would be covered today, I don't think it was. Because it's63

about a station. CHAIR PACHECO: You want to identify yourself, please. MS. THORP: My name is Kim Thorp. I'm from North County Transit District in San Diego, California. CHAIR PACHECO: Thank you. MS. THORP: I just have a question about signage on the platform, the stations. If we have a -- I think I know the answer. If we have a visual sign, we also have to have an audible sign. But my question is does it have to be like that -- does the audible go with the text automatically or could it be a push button you would push and then get the audible of what the sign says? Does that make sense? CHAIR PACHECO: It does. It makes perfect sense and I see Jim wants to answer in response. MR. PECHT: This committee is solely looking at vehicles and in the vehicles. We are not looking on the architectural side at the stations that is already covered in the ADAAG and standards and all that kind of good stuff. So it is only the vehicles and in the vehicles that we are talking about, as far as this committee. MS. THORP: Okay. I apologize. Thank you. CHAIR PACHECO: No need for an apology. As64

exemplified -- used as an example in the past, if you can pick up the train and shake it and it falls out, we are not dealing with it. But you do raise a very good question. Unfortunately, it is not under our purview at all. Anyone else with any other questions, comments? Hearing none, can we look to scheduling our next meeting? Does Thursdays still work well for folks? MR. MALDARI: The problem I have is we also have the other group that is meeting regularly, the rest of the month every Thursday, I believe. There is one Wednesday in there, right, Paul? MR. BEATTY: Correct. Next Thursday we have on board circulation and the week after that, the Wednesday, the 26th, they are meeting. Then remember April 10 and 11 is the full RVAAC committee meeting. MR. MALDARI: What I was getting to there is not a lot of time left. I don't think I could support two meetings a week just with the RVAAC. That is taking up a lot of time. I don't know if we have time for another meeting before the face to face. CHAIR PACHECO: I was kind of hoping that we would be able to bring something really good back to the April 10 meeting. MS. MAZZ: How much time do you need for notice,65

Paul?MR. BEATTY: In terms of a conference call? MS. MAZZ: Yeah. MR. BEATTY: Hardly anytime. So two days. MS. MAZZ: You have to hire CART. MR. BEATTY: Yeah, well, going through admin and so forth. CHAIR PACHECO: Could we do April 1? That is a Thursday, a week before the full meeting. MR. BEATTY: It's a Tuesday on my calendar. MS. MAZZ: It is a Tuesday on my calendar too. CHAIR PACHECO: I'm in the wrong month. I'm

sorry. MR. BEATTY: I would say from an administrative standpoint, that is enough time to logistically get everything lined up. MR. MALDARI: Well, why not make it the Thursday, then, because it would be consistent with the Thursday schedule? We don't have any meeting scheduled for the Thursday yet, do we, Paul?
MR. BEATTY: Correct. MR. MALDARI: Same time on Thursday. MR. BEATTY: So I understand the Communications Subcommittee will be meeting April 3, which is a Thursday, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. eastern time. And I66

will make the necessary logistical arrangements. Pay attention to the RVAAC website. Because if you have not received an email, you can look there real quick and you can see future meetings schedules as well as any handouts, meeting material. So go there first before asking me but it is okay to ask me. CHAIR PACHECO: Thank you, Paul. I don't know what we would do without you keeping us all lined up. MR. BEATTY: You would survive. CHAIR PACHECO: Here is history in the making. I think we are actually 11 minutes ahead of schedule. Again, I want to thank you all. If everyone would just make whatever additions. Take your table and go crazy with it. And if you -- actually, this is what we should do. If you could take your table and look at that and have it back in here to us by the 27th. Is that too short for you? MR. PECHT: That's fine. CHAIR PACHECO: If you could have a copy of your table into the RVAAC, using the RVAAC email, RVAAC@Access-Board.gov by close of business on the 27th, then we should all be able to see each others, do a compilation and have it out in time for the next meetings. And with that I'm going to --67

MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: We haven't done anything yet for hearing access because it has not come up in the context. So I have not made any revisions to the table, except for whatever is being discussed now. So I won't have anything to send to you until we figure out where to incorporate induction loop signage. So I have nothing to add, but I don't want to look like I have not submitted anything. MS. MAZZ: Maybe you can make your recommendations off the table. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: I'm not sure where the appropriate table, because we haven't even planned yet where the induction loops are going. I'm going to be on the circle back end that we discussed during the meeting, but first we have to figure out induction loop and then add in signage. MS. MAZZ: Frankly, the table you have is all about signs. It is not about communication generally. It's about signs. So you really haven't got before you an instrument about making recommendations on where you would require induction -- where you would suggest requiring induction loops. And, Janice, it seems to me, you know, anybody on the committee with an interest in that subject could propose something to the subcommittee for their consideration.68

CHAIR PACHECO: And on that table, you had suggested at the last meeting, and we've have included induction loop -- it's tactile and visual, just visual, audible, induction loop and not required. So that absolutely brings in the opportunity to put something in as far as an induction loop is concerned under any of the categories, any of the types of signage, I mean. MS. MAZZ: She is not talking about signage. MR. MALDARI: I don't want to speak for Janice but I think she is saying these particular categories laid out are not induction loop sensitive, but you would like to have a requirement, which is separate from these signs talking about induction loops. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: Exactly. Thank you. I appreciate -- I don't even know where to stick it in yet because based on the pictures you sent me, nothing seems appropriate for an induction loop. But as we put, install or agree to induction loops, it may become obvious but at this point it's not. I don't want to be kind of boxed into something that may not be appropriate. MS. MAZZ: Janice, you are making a good point. The chart that you have before you is all about accessible signs in buildings and trying to provoke69

some discussion about how it should be different for vehicles. And so it talks about when signs have to be tactile, when they have to meet the visual requirements. Your issue and the issue that I think, you know, others will share is one about audible communications. So you're wanting to ensure that things that are either -- it doesn't matter whether they are preprogrammed or they are spoken into a microphone or whatever, that those announcements on the train are accessible to people with hearing impairments. And in particular your interest is in loop technologies. So it would make sense for you to come forward to the committee with a recommendation that would suggest where loops should be provided on a vehicle or a set of vehicles, you know, in the case of a train; and what type of information should be fed into the loop system, should it just be the canned announcements that are already there or should it also be the live announcements. And that is a good starting point and other things will follow later. It seems to me that you and HLAA and others are the ones to make that recommendation. We didn't have a good corollary in the building world because in the building world the assistive70

listening requirements in the standards themselves go to assembly spaces where you are having a performance or that kind of thing. So just like on the vessels where the group talked about vessels and where you might have loops, you want to raise those same sort of issues with this group. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: Right. The thing is I think it is almost putting the cart before the horse. The signage group right now is dealing with current signage. Induction loops are going to be about future signage based on recommendations. We need to work through the committee and figure out what will be done and then circle back. I think we are going to need a category called "new signage recommendations" because there aren't currently recommendations and this will is going to be the category of why we will be different than what is recommended -- MS. MAZZ: My point, Janice, is that these are not signs. You are not talking about signs. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: Yes, we are. MS. MAZZ: Not necessarily. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: Yeah, we are. MS. MAZZ: Because right now you have audible announcements on trains that says, "Your next stop is71

New Carrollton. Please exit to the front of the car." These are purely audible; they're not visible. And my guess is that you would like to have an assistive listening system that transmits that audible message to individuals who have a t-coil. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: But I need a sign that tells me that the announcement is being made and a sign that says there is an induction loop. MS. MAZZ: You need a signal, you need a signal to let people know and you spoke about that before. And you need a sign saying there is an assistive I listening system present. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: No, no. That is not accurate. That is not accurate. MS. MAZZ: Wait a minute. Janice, Janice, you don't need a sign if the committee doesn't agree you should have an induction loop system. So the first battle, I think -- MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: I don't think it is a battle. MS. MAZZ: Okay. The first issue is should induction loops be required and where. And then once there is agreement about whether they should be required and where, then the next issue is how do we let people know that they are on the vehicle and how do we let people know that they are activated.72

MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: Right. So we should have a placeholder on the list of new signs to be added to the signage requirement. And I think we need a placeholder because there are going to be other changes like that. And I think we are going to need to differentiate because we need to let the Access Board know that these are new and maybe different from other locations of what's required. So that part of the mandate -- if something is different, we need to explain why we need it and why it is different and why this is a different situation. So I think we need a placeholder and then we can figure out what category it fits into. I think working with people like Amtrak people, who will know this falls into their category. Because, frankly, I'm not 100 percent sure which category would and, frankly, I don't care which category it goes under, as long as we have the right sign. CHAIR PACHECO: As Jim pointed out earlier, we are looking to the future here, is one point that I want too bring up. The second one I think we already talked about -- we didn't actually use the term "placeholder" but we certainly can, in that we did talk about if there is an audible loop -- an induction loop, then this is the73

category. We mentioned a couple of different potential categories it can belong in. It absolutely should be added in on anyone's table who believes that, probably most all of us. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: Well, it is already in the R&D for CalTrain and Amtrak. So it is definitely going in. CHAIR PACHECO: Excuse me, Janice. Can I just finish. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: Sorry. CHAIR PACHECO: My other point was I think that -- here is my feeling on this issue of the induction loop. Right now we are talking signs. I think the point I'm getting from you and what Marsha just said as well, is this is another issue of communication, which is exactly what this committee is charged with dealing with, is communications. I think what we should actually be doing is not trying to find a spot to fit it on this table any more than a place marker. But we should be putting it back in our S and O under our objectives and the tasks. I think we should absolutely. And I would like to see you write up a three or four sentence type insertion on our task on the S and O to deal with induction loops in all of these types of vehicles and we can add that as74

one of the additional tasks that we have to deal with. I mean, we have lots of them on there and I think the induction loop should be another one that should be in there. MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: I think if we just add the words "induction loops for announcements" that pretty much sums it up. CHAIR PACHECO: Okay. Write up something for it and -- MS. SCHACTER LINTZ: I don't need to write up anything on because it doesn't require anything more than induction loops for announcements. It doesn't require more than that. So I wouldn't know what else to write up, other than "induction loop for

announcements." CHAIR PACHECO: Okay. Great. Thank you. Do we have any other business, any other issues to bring up before we adjourn? MR. SLAUGHTER: One seed I would like to plant -- and I'm sitting here staring at this faucet sign that I provided. Some people it would be, why do you have a sign to tell you how to use a faucet. It is because sometimes we use a sign on trains that work on the trains and they are not normal. They are not what we find in everyday life so we feel the need to explain75

them. So I think APTA quite often in their documents one of the examples is door latches. They say where it is not immediately apparent how something works, then you need to explain it. And that is a great "if then" thing to keep in mind when folks are looking at the list. I think there are going to be it items that almost in any of these that you may say -- maybe generally you would say, "Well, it doesn't need to be tactile." But you may want to say, "But if it performs a certain function, then it should be tactile." And I think that would make the whole process a lot more relevant to make sure we achieve our goal of communicating everything that needs to be communicated in the right way. So I would just ask that people keep that in mind. I think it is a good thing to carry forward. CHAIR PACHECO: Excellent point and with that I think we should -- with that very good attitude I think we can call this day -- call it a day. Thank you all, very much, and we will expect to see everybody -- anyone who is willing to submit information by close of business on the 27th and we will all be back here on the third and hopefully we will see everybody here in D.C. on the 10th, I think it76

is, 10th and 11th. Thank you all, very much, and have a good evening. (Whereupon, at 3:03 p.m. the meeting was adjourned.)