Braille signs that appeared to be installed upside-down at Detroit’s QLine stops have been causing confusion among riders since the streetcar’s inception.
Now the nonprofit that runs the QLine, M-1 Rail, says it’s planning to replace the plaques with new ones that are “right-side up.” The signs have the name of each QLine stop written in both braille and English.
In 2022 Metro Times met with Detroit Disability Power advocates who expressed difficulty reading the signs and said their locations — at waist height and along a railing far from the waiting area — weren’t practical. Additionally, Metro Times obtained emails from 2017 showing that other members of the blind and vision-impaired community had difficulty locating and reading the braille.
“When Detroit Disability Power reached out about this issue at the end of last year, that’s when it came to the surface,” M-1 Rail Director Lisa Nuszkowski tells Metro Times. “And so we said, ‘OK, let’s take a look at what we’ve got and how it can be more effective for more people.’”
Nuszkowski is working with Detroit Disability Power to replace the signs at each of the QLine’s 12 stations.
When the QLine was being developed in 2016, M-1 Rail worked with the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) of Michigan to create the signs. At the time, former NFB of Michigan President Michael Powell explained that though the signs appeared to be upside-down, they were purposefully installed that way so blind riders could read the braille with their hand placed over the railing.
Nuszkowski did not work at M-1 Rail at the time, and joined the nonprofit in 2020 after the braille had been installed.
“It wasn’t like we just said we’re going to check a box and throw something up there. To my knowledge, we put in a good faith effort and worked with a group that had given us their assurance that this was accurate,” Nuszkowski says. “While it may be technically correct for some people, it’s not useful for others and so we’re working to update that to make it useful for more people. We’ll do whatever it takes to make it right.”
Cathy McAdam is one of the Detroit Disability Power’s blind members who expressed concerns about the previous signs to Metro Times. When we visited the QLine’s Grand Boulevard stop with her last year, she remarked that she had never encountered an upside-down braille sign before and didn’t believe they were commonplace.
She says that Nuszkowski reached out to her and her vision-impaired partner Michael Patten to hear their concerns in November.
“We had a Zoom call with her. It was a fairly lengthy discussion, so it definitely felt like she wanted to understand what the issues were,” McAdam says.
Nuszkowski says M-1 Rail is waiting for a sample of the new braille signs to arrive. After that, the nonprofit will consult McAdam and Patten on the placement before installing them at all 12 QLine stops.
The company that originally produced the braille signs was unable to manufacture them, so M-1 Rail had to find a new vendor. Nuskowski expects all the braille signs to be replaced within the next month.
“This is not about looking good in the media,” she adds. “It’s about making sure we’ve got valuable information there for the people who are using our system.”
During their last session of 2022, state legislators passed a bill to extend the QLine’s $5 million annual subsidy for an additional 17 years, keeping rides free until 2039.
@metrotimes Upside-down braille signs on the Detroit QLine cause complaints… But some visually impaired people say there’s good reason for the apparent mistake.
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