Tulsa Transit Releases New App To Help Visually Impaired Riders

Tulsa Transit is using technology to help the visually impaired take advantage of its services. Tulsa Transit has partnered with an app called "Aire," which uses the rider's phone camera to allow a representative within the app to see for the rider to get that person from one spot to the next.

BreAnna Hall, Tulsa Transit's Marketing Communication specialist said that the technology will also be able to tell visually impaired riders where the particular bus they are heading towards is going, to make sure that the rider is getting on the right bus.

So how did Tulsa Transit decide to partner with Aira to bring this service to Tulsa? One of the employees at Tulsa Transit is visually impaired and helped spark the idea.

"We actually were fortunate enough to have an employee work with us that had visual impairments, and so we worked with them to develop a plan to open accessibility for the community and Tulsa to help expand our ridership and help out the community a little bit more," Hall said.

The app is designed to not only help visually impaired people but people with low vision as well which can cover a wide variety of people within Tulsa.

"I think it’s a really important thing because it’s not only just for visually impaired but low vision as well, so this can be a very vast majority of people, and it really just opens up accessibility," Hall said.

The app is free to use with the help of a Tulsa Transit promo code and riders are currently able to take advantage of the new service.