Washington Metro Area Transit Authority

After the deadly train crash in the District of Columbia on June 22, 2009, language access advocates began to wonder how LEP individuals, given the language barriers, were being serviced by Washington Metro Area Transit Authority (WMATA). In 2007, when John Catoe (General Manager, WMATA) came into office, WMATA adopted a language access plan and charged Deborah Coram with the implementation of it.
WMATA, though not obliged by the Language Access Act of 2004, is required to comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and has adopted a language access plan. Advocates, however, were unsure of what kind of provisions were going to be made to properly serve the LEP population and were very concerned that the LEP populations affected by this crash were not able to access important information regarding the crash and its aftermath. Some additional issues/concerns that came up were
“1. More people must use SmartTrip cards now, in order to get transfer credit. These cards must be registered online, and the online site is English only (also a problem for English speakers without internet access).
2. Metro card machines are English only! Unless the three “hot spot” stations have bilingual machines. Which I don't think they do yet.
3. Apparently if there’s a machine error and you lose your money, you have to fill out an English-only form and submit the request to get reimbursed. “
The questions and concerns were presented to Deborah Coram by the director of the D.C. Language Access Coalition, Jennifer Deng-Pickett. Ms. Coram responded with a formal letter addressed to Jennifer Deng-Pickett wherein Ms. Coram discussed the efforts undertaken by WMATA to ensure that the LEP populations were well informed about the crash and its aftermath.

Letter From Deborah Coram

WMATA