Judge orders Chicago to install audible crossing signals for the blind and visually impaired

Chicago Tribune

18-03-2025

A federal judge has ordered Chicago to install audible crossing signals at intersections with traffic lights to help people who are blind or have problems seeing to cross public streets.
The order would require the city to install at least 75 accessible pedestrian signals this year and more than 100 every year until at least 71% of intersections have the devices within 10 years.
All city intersections with traffic lights would have the audible crossing signals by the end of 2040. Disability Rights Advocates, the group that helped bring a lawsuit asking for the signals, welcomed the news as long overdue.
'With this proposed order, blind and low-vision pedestrians in Chicago are one step closer to being able to navigate the city's streets safely and independently, something they have been fighting to do for years,' Rachel Weisberg, supervising attorney with Disability Rights Advocates, told the Tribune in an email.
Peter Berg, who is blind and uses a guide dog to help commute from Naperville to Chicago, said the devices can be extremely helpful.
'If crossing signals are a good thing for sighted people, why wouldn't they be good for people who are blind or with low vision?' he asked. 'It's a matter of equality. Give me the same choice you're providing sighted people.'
The remediation plan the judge proposed last week comes about two years after a judge found that the city was in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act for its lack of audible crossing signals.
The city has begun installing such devices but has just 85 at about 2,800 intersections with traffic lights. The devices typically are attached to poles in the sidewalk at street corners and emit a locator tone, with a button to activate them. They then beep or give verbal alerts when it's safe to cross the street, similar to flashing 'walk' and 'don't walk' signs.
U.S. District Judge LaShonda Hunt proposed that the city install the devices whenever it installs new or substantially modified traffic lights. She recommended prioritizing intersections where the city receives requests for the devices, as well as dangerous sites such as mid-block crossings and intersections where three streets cross.
The judge also called for prioritizing crossings near public transportation, hospitals, parks, schools, libraries, police stations, shopping areas, major cultural venues, organizations serving people with visual disabilities and seniors and government buildings.
Hunt recommended that the city use input from a citizen advisory committee and would let the city extend its final deadline or eliminate the final five years of installations if it shows it has provided 'meaningful access.'
City officials and the plaintiffs, who include blind and visually impaired people, and the American Council of the Blind of Metropolitan Chicago, are to go to court April 29 to propose any changes to the order and to recommend an independent monitor to oversee its implementation. Until then, the city is to begin implementing the order.
The judge wrote that she will enter a final order that 'strikes an appropriate balance between the available reasonable accommodations and the resulting financial and administrative burdens.'
The city Department of Transportation (CDOT) told the Tribune in a statement that it 'fully recognizes the importance of Accessible Pedestrian Signals in ensuring an accessible public way.'
City officials said they will incorporate the signals into all new traffic signal installations or modernizations and roadway reconstruction, with a citywide retrofit program to come. Last year, the city installed the devices at 36 locations, with 160 more in construction, design or procurement.