The TTC has been ordered to hire a monitor to ensure its drivers announce stations on the subway.
A lawyer who has spent a decade fighting for concessions for blind users of the transit system called the demand "groundbreaking."
The Ontario Human Rights Commission tribunal issued the interim order Thursday, after a report stated that the TTC had a responsibility to accommodate blind passengers.
David Lepofsky, a blind man and a senior constitutional lawyer for the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney-General, said in an interview that a monitor was necessary because the TTC had repeatedly failed to accommodate blind people over the past decade by not regularly announcing subway stops.
"A decade of not obeying the law is bad enough," Mr. Lepofsky said.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission's report said that the TTC opposed the appointment of a monitor on the grounds that it was an "improper delegation of authority."
The commission appointed Matthew Garfield, former chair of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, as monitor to ensure the TTC announces stops and that drivers, guards and senior management undergo educational seminars within the next three months about being blind. Any employees who fail to make the announcements are to be disciplined or dismissed. Mr. Garfield will work at the TTC's expense.
The only other time that the Tribunal ordered a similar action was in the case of Michael McKinnon, a native corrections officer who was repeatedly harassed while working at the Toronto East Detention Centre. TTC chairman Howard Moscoe said that the ruling was reasonable and the TTC is "happy to comply." He also noted that drivers were mandated to announce stops in the last collective agreement.
Mr. Moscoe said that the TTC has been unhappy about the subway speaker system and hopes to improve it, ensuring comprehensible announcements.
But Mr. Lepofsky said he's not holding his breath waiting for TTC reform. When he took the subway to work on Monday, stop announcements were as intermittent as they had ever been, he said.
"Nobody should go through what I've had to go through to fight this," he said. "It's such an obvious way to help blind people."