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IN TOUCH – Tactile paving at train stations; Braille and assistive technology

TX:Ìý 13.07.2021Ìý 2040-2100

PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

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PRODUCER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý BETH HEMMINGS

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White

Good evening.Ìý Tonight, your response has always been the major driver of what goes on In Touch and after our opinion piece, a couple of weeks ago, suggesting that braille might need a major makeover to survive in the technological age, many of you made it clear you wanted your say about that.Ìý We’ll be hearing some rather stern comments about our coverage later.

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First though, promising signs are emerging from Network Rail around the installation of tactile paving on the edge of train station platforms.Ìý But tonight, we are questioning whether action is being taken quickly enough to make train stations a safer place for blind and partially sighted users.

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Last year, the death of Cleveland Gervais at the Eden Park Station in southeast London highlighted the immense importance of having tactile paving on the edges of railway platforms.Ìý Following his death, it emerged that at the time more than one-third of the total length of the UK’s rail platforms were still without tactile paving.Ìý Back in February, we dedicated a programme to Cleveland Gervais’ tragic death and sought some answers from Network Rail’s Alan Spence about their future plans and whether the tactile paving installations were being put in place quickly enough.

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Spence

We are already accelerating fitment of tactile surfaces where stations are partially fitted and we will make sure that we look at what options there are to accelerate fitment elsewhere as well.

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White

Now Sir Peter Hendy, who’s Chair of Network Rail, has recently said he wants all operational platforms to be fully tactile by March 2029, can even that be achieved in that timeframe, are the finances in place?

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Spence

The finances are not yet in place, no.Ìý The industry’s financed on a five-year cycle.Ìý The cycle we’re in at the minute finishes in 2024.Ìý And what Sir Peter was talking about in that letter is our intention, subject to the funders wanting that to happen, is that we would want to do that in the next control period, the next five-year cycle, which would end in 2029.Ìý It’s not appropriate to say that we’re waiting for the next cycle, we’re actively installing tactile surfaces at platform edges wherever we’re able to do so.

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White

I just finally quickly want to go back to rail safety campaigner, Clive Wood.

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Wood

Accessibility means that you can travel independently and with confidence and I think that’s the important thing.Ìý We’ve waited 30 years, Peter.Ìý Emergency measures need to be put into place now and we can see what measures are going to be done and how long it’s going to take.

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White

Well Network Rail have since made some fairly significant efforts to install tactile paving to some station platforms around the country but only earlier today Network Rail has confirmed to In Touch that plans are now in place and work is underway to fit tactile strips to platform edges across the country and that an additional £10 million has been agreed, by government, to get the work started straightaway so that Network Rail say – we can finish the job as soon as possible.

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Well, we have been seeking confirmation of this figure with the Department for Transport.Ìý They say, though, that no figure has yet been agreed.Ìý Next week, the RNIB is going to be presenting a petition to the Department for Transport and Network Rail.Ìý RNIB’s policy officer Roisin Jacklin joins me now.

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So, Roisin, some confusion about what’s actually happening as far as money’s concerned, I mean what can you tell us, what is your understanding of what’s happening?

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Jacklin

We understand from Network Rail and the Department for Transport, from the conversations we’ve had, that there are commitments in place to possibly accelerate the rollout of tactile.Ìý But at the moment we remain really concerned that it could be as late as 2029 that we’re seeing platform safety.Ìý This is such a fundamental safety measure; we really can’t be waiting that long.Ìý So, it’s really important that this continues to be the pressure for rail safety to be delivered much quicker.

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White

And do you know anything about amounts of money promised?

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Jacklin

I don’t know the amounts of funding; I know that it’s something that the Department for Transport has said there’ll be a financial plan by the autumn of this year.Ìý But it’s absolutely critical the pace of funding is increased and sped up.

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White

Now the concern was that 2029 was a long way away, if there is more money what would you want the aim to be for completing this work?

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Jacklin

At the moment, up to 15% of people who are falling from platforms are blind and partially sighted and it’s just not acceptable.Ìý We do recognise it’s not something that can happen overnight but with the right financing in place, it’s really important that this is urgently installed.

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White

Now one of campaigners’ main concerns is that there are still stations where there is textured paving on some platforms and not on others and that this can cause confusion for blind people.Ìý You know, you’d naturally think if there were paving on one platform it would be on all the others.Ìý Would you want making the policy consistent on stations, to be given priority?

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Jacklin

Yeah, absolutely.Ìý At RNIB we’ve been very clear, kind of top of the list needs to be the stations that are partially tactiled, as these are the most dangerous for rail travellers.

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White

Are there other issues which could make stations safer for blind and partially sighted people, I mean staffing levels for instance?

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Jacklin

Yeah, absolutely.Ìý And it’s really important that there are these interim measures while we’re waiting for tactile to be fully installed across the network.Ìý You’ve mentioned staffing levels, something that’s also incredibly important is audio announcements on the platforms, so that blind and partially sighted people are aware if there is or isn’t tactile installed on the platform edge.

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White

Roisin Jacklin, thank you very much indeed.

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Now, our item on braille and its future a couple of weeks ago had the stated aim of opening up the debate.Ìý Well, it’s certainly done that, indeed more like opening up the floodgates.Ìý Braille teacher, Anna Janickyj’s opinion piece, contending that to survive braille needed to be simplified and that other sources of technology were taking over some of its roles, has brought braille supporters out in force.Ìý Here are just some of your reactions.Ìý First, Steve Tyler.Ìý Now this is only a brief part of Steve’s very detailed response:

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Tyler

For the moment, braille is the nearest mechanism we have that renders the printed work into tactile form, using similar techniques such as formatting, spelling, style etc.Ìý There’s no mediation between the item being read and the user, so you’re left to draw conclusions with little outside influence.Ìý But more than that, in the learning of braille, a user becomes aware of spatial layout and formatting, conventions, spelling, use of grammar.Ìý Today, I would maintain that my job would be extremely difficult to carry out competently without braille, especially in its newest guises.Ìý For example, technical and PowerPoint presentations are regular in my world – I can drive a PowerPoint presentation using a portable braille display wirelessly connected to computer systems; I can read and control the presentation without distraction from synthetic speech delivering information to me while I’m trying to speak myself.Ìý When it comes to detailed work, especially written pieces or tabular information, braille is indispensable.

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White

And John Lafferty makes an equally powerful claim for braille and its effect on his working life.

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Lafferty

I am now in my 72nd year and have been in constant employment since graduating from university in 1973, firstly as a teacher of English in a large comprehensive school in Scotland, then as a practising solicitor in London and finally, as a full-time judge.Ìý I could not have carried out any of these jobs without braille.

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White

Oriel Britton doesn’t see braille being made redundant by new technology any time soon.

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Britton

I think that some who advise newly visually impaired people have a perception that computers can do everything for us – tie our shoe laces, make our dinner, even get us out of bed.Ìý However, you are more likely to be reasonably independent and earning a living if you use braille.

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White

And Anne Wilkins makes the point that far from being in opposition to each other, braille and technology can reinforce each other.

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Wilkins

Devices such as iPhones, iPads and tablets work best for us when both speech and braille are used on them.Ìý I think that refreshable braille displays should be cheaper and more accessible to us all than they are but they are definitely the best technology which has been invented in the world of braille.Ìý With regards to reading, I make no secret to the fact that I’m not a huge fan of audiobooks and it shouldn’t be assumed that all blind people read them.Ìý I prefer curling up with a good braille volume and really using my imagination to get involved in the content of a book and having my own interpretation of what I’m reading, instead of that of someone reading a book to me.

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White

Well, that’s just a sample, there were many more.

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Someone who also centres their thoughts on this topic and was particularly passionate about the things we didn’t raise in our opinion piece last time is professional musician James Risdon.Ìý Now James, in fairness to braille teacher Anna Janickyj, whose article prompted our item, it was always intended as an opinion piece to open up the discussion, which it patently achieved.Ìý That’s fair enough, isn’t it?

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Risdon

Absolutely, yeah, I think having a discussion about braille is always relevant and as you’ve seen from the response that you’ve had, braille is a very emotive topic and those of us who are lucky enough to use it are very passionate about it and I think it’s anything that we can do to raise the profile of braille among the wider population is fantastic.Ìý I know several sighted people who listen to this programme quite regularly and enjoy the debate and the discussion and the information that you give out.Ìý But I think the problem I have and what prompted me to write in was that it was a slightly one-sided piece and I think would have left quite a lot of people quite confused about exactly what braille can and – can be used for.

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White

Well, just let me put a couple of those points to you.Ìý Her essential arguments are tenable aren’t they – a low rate of braille use, compared to the visually impaired population; tasks now possible using speech technology which before you would have done with braille and a complicated, sometimes, rather pedantic system of rules.Ìý Is that unfair?

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Risdon

I think – I think, yes, you could make those points.Ìý But I think I would argue against all of them, to be honest.Ìý And I think let’s take simplicity.Ìý So, braille is often cited as being a rather complex laborious thing to learn.Ìý I think that confuses the tactile nature of braille, so how easy you find it to read with your fingertips and your ability to understand language and learn letters and symbols, you know, literacy. ÌýAnd we know that lots of people who are blind will have difficulties obtaining literacy, like a number of sighted people.Ìý But actually, braille is no more complicated than print, so you have 26 symbols to show your letters, adding one more symbol can make any of those capitalised, whereas print requires 10-12 different symbols for capital letters, I can add one more symbol and get the numbers 0-9, whereas print needs another 10 symbols to learn those.Ìý I don’t think, actually, there is a case for saying that braille is over-complicated, I think we conflate the issues of literacy and braille and that’s why it’s confusing.

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White

So, where does the problem lie, if there is one?Ìý I mean many of our correspondents cited the lack of braille teachers and Steve Tyler, part of whose email we’ve already heard, said the problem isn’t with learning braille but with teaching it.Ìý Do you agree and what’s to be done about it, if that’s right?

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Risdon

It’s worrying to me when you have a teacher of braille at a college, a sense college supporting deafblind people, who is openly saying that braille’s too complicated.Ìý If a teacher of braille is saying that, there’s little hope for their learners.Ìý I remember my braille lessons very fondly, they were fun, they were interactive, they were amusing, they were really engaging and inspiring and I wanted to learn braille.Ìý I’m not sure anyone – anyone going into a lesson with a teacher who think’s braille’s complicated and irrelevant is going to make very good progress.

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White

Well, again, to be fair to her, she likes braille, she’s a fan of braille, she just thinks that it’s time that some of these points were made.Ìý I mean you said we were in danger of putting off people from providing braille services, like braille medical information, braille menus – you said that in your email to us – isn’t the real problem, though, the way such information isn’t given to the 90% of visually impaired people who don’t use braille?Ìý You know, it isn’t our job to gloss over such facts because they’re uncomfortable.

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Risdon

No, no, no and I access information in many different ways.Ìý I couldn’t get through the amount of email and documents at work without using a screen reader.Ìý I’m all for information being available in your preferred format.Ìý I’m merely saying that those of us who are able to use braille and who had the benefit of good teaching, should be given the choice to use it and I don’t think that having a debate about whether braille’s going to be dead in 50 years is necessarily going to help service providers make informed decisions.

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White

Okay, well James, thank you.Ìý

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Just to return to your emails for a moment.Ìý Pete Torode wants to challenge the assumption that you can’t learn braille in later life.Ìý He lost the ability to read print in 2016.

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Torode

I made the choice to learn braille to get back into reading.Ìý I studied it myself using the RNIB fingerprint course, starting in October last year.Ìý Although I didn’t understand some of the punctuation, I was able to start reading on contracted braille by December and I’m now reading fully contracted braille.Ìý My reading speed is slow but increasing.Ìý However, to have the choice to read in peace rather than have electronic speech suck all the emotion out of the story is really important for me.Ìý I really hope braille is not dead.Ìý It’s a big commitment to learn it but, in my view, worth it.Ìý I never expected to use it as much as I do and I’m still finding new uses.Ìý Groups like the Braillists Foundation provide fantastic resources and encouragement and I have them to thank for the initial idea to learn, when most other people said that if you didn’t learn as a child, you just won’t get it.Ìý I’d encourage anyone facing sight loss or who has not learned braille to give it a go.

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White

Well, we have the Chair of the Braillists Foundation – Dave Williams – here now.Ìý Dave, you couldn’t really have had a better vote of confidence there but as Chair of the Braille Foundation, for those who’ve not come across it, what is it, what’s its aim?

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Williams

Our mission is simply more braille.Ìý So, following on from James’ contribution, we really are keen to see more braille, more opportunities to learn braille and to see more braille technology innovation.Ìý And I think that makeover, that you spoke about earlier, is well underway.Ìý There are new braille technology devices, things like the Canute, Multiline Reader and the Orbit Reader that are trying to lower the cost or change what it means for a braille display.Ìý Every tablet, smartphone and computer have software built into it that can easily convert text on screen into braille and also the code, itself, has been simplified in recent years to improve automatic translation and also to respond to some of the issues raised by teachers about its complexity.

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White

Now, we talked about teaching braille just now, you are – the foundation – is teaching braille online but you would have thought that of all things braille, as a tactile skill, would be tough to teach to blind people this way, rather than face-to-face hand-to-hand.

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Williams

Absolutely and we felt exactly the same 18 months ago.Ìý Coming into this pandemic, we’re a young charity, attempting to promote braille usage and then suddenly we weren’t allowed to be near each other and discouraged from using tactile things.Ìý So, we had a little bit of an existential crisis and we started running online community calls to basically teach those who were interested braille.Ìý And we would find a qualified teacher, the students would request the hard copy materials be sent to them and then we would guide them through that content online and we’ve had hundreds of adults over the last year and a half take up this opportunity, not just new braillists but existing braillists learning new skills, learning about braille music and learning about braille for science and maths and all sorts of subjects.Ìý And it’s just grown beyond our wildest expectations.

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White

Just one more thing Dave and that is encouraging for people who – and I’m one of them – who support braille, and I gather braille’s been a player at one or two key moments in your life as well hasn’t it?

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Williams

Ah, absolutely, look as a dad I can’t imagine any other way that I would read the bedtime story with my son.Ìý I can’t imagine how else I’d use a recipe.Ìý But it was proposing to my wife, actually.Ìý We play braille Scrabble and you’ll know the tiles don’t fall out the board, so we’re quite lazy and we put the board in the box with the tiles still on the board and one night I pulled the board out and rearranged them to say ‘Will you marry me’, so the next time we came to have a game my wife received a proposal.Ìý I’m glad to say that after endless rooting around in the Scrabble bag she did manage to locate the letters Okay, because apparently I’d used all the Ys in the question…

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White

There were no Ys. [Laughter] It’s a great story.Ìý Dave Williams and James Risdon, thank you very much and perhaps we’ve redressed the balance a little there.

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And that’s it for today.Ìý Don’t forget to share your comments about anything we’ve covered on the show today – braille of course, also your experiences with tactile paving or the lack of it on train stations.Ìý And you can email us intouch@bbc.co.uk, you can also go to our website bbc.co.uk/intouch where you can download tonight’s and many other previous editions of the programme.

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From me, Peter White, producer Beth Hemmings and studio manager Jonathan Esp.Ìý Goodbye.

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