Visual Impairment Travel

I recently spoke to a fellow All4Inclusion member, who wishes to remain anonymous about his experiances of travelling by train.

I am an individual with disabilities these include a visual impairment, autism learning disabilities and Hand Eye Co-Ordination issues, the passenger assistance has mostly been good with the trains for myself, I do book in advance, were as you can do turn up and go assistance (TUAG) I would not recommend that especially if it’s a unmanned station as there might not always be someone on the trains

I regularly book assistance This is Sighted guidance and also help finding a seat and help to the exits.

In Scotland, we do run some older trains Inter7City on the lines between Glasgow/Edinburgh and Aberdeen/Inverness. These often have a higher step so he sometimes needs to use a ramp.

An HST train at Glasgow Queen Street

One of the major issues is getting access to the train station. His local train station is situated 300 meters from home but despite the hard work of getting tactile paving installed it is still inaccessible due to involving crossing a busy road. This can only be done when the nearby primary school children are going in or back home which restricts travel for going out and about to those times or needing to travel to an alternative station which adds time and expense.

Even with the platforms accessible there is still a lack of awareness from some on train staff so more training would help increase accessibility of the rail network. While this is slowly improving there is still a long way to go in making public transport accessible but with the hard work of campaigners and individuals we will slowly get there and hopefully over the coming years develop a more inclusive society for disabled people.

If anyone has any ideas or feedback on their experiences travelling please do comment and reach out.