L.B. Foster Launches Digital Signage Solution to Improve Accessibility for Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing, or Visually Impaired Rail and Air Transportation Passengers

Our Inform Media digital display units used in rail and air travel in the Americas and Europe now provide sign language accessibility and high contrast display modifications. The Company’s innovative mobile, wireless, and battery-powered digital display totems provide passengers with important travel, disruption, and onward journey information.

L.B. Foster’s rail technologies and services group was the first to pioneer this type of service for UK-based Network Rail’s passengers who use British Sign Language (BSL). “We partnered with Network Rail to develop a solution using our digital display technology to provide accessibility and fully inclusive customer support for their passengers who are Deaf, hard-of-hearing, or visually impaired,” commented Greg Lippard, L.B. Foster Senior Vice President, Rail Technologies & Services. Twenty fixed and mobile demo units, equipped with BSL functionality, were deployed throughout passenger areas on London Euston’s station concourse and platforms. 

As part of the Network Rail service contract, L.B. Foster developed a library of pre-recorded and predefined messages that are available through its proprietary content management system, Inform Media. The system is driven by a powerful media generator which provides plug-in applications that support ‘passenger first’ strategies within a wide range of applications, from visualized route maps to enhanced wayfinding and mapping tools, as well as social media and disruption information. The system also supports unique video content, such as urgent disruption messages or service updates that can be translated by experienced sign interpreters and made live within an hour of an event. Additionally, the totem displays also give travelers who are visually impaired the ability to make text bigger on high contrast screens.

With a large population of American Sign Language users in the US and Canada, and British Sign Language users in the UK, L.B. Foster’s Inform Media digital display totems, with its optional ASL and BSL applications, are making an important difference in the way passengers in rail and air transportation access essential travel information globally.