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Euston station BSL live screens – Those thinking Network Rail are doing a good thing with their BSL stuff would do well to heed actual experience which three of us had at Euston, where staff tried to ignore us, no-one knew sign language, no-one had any idea how to use the information and we were left none the wider and very confused as to what their attempts to reach deaf people (and autistic non-verbals etc too) actually amounted to. It seems things like this are no more than a tick box exercise to say “yay we’ve reached another milestone in disability access” when they haven’t. To cap it all I filmed our experience on video too. The one response I got from NR Euston was clearly very dismissive.
“Messaging can be converted into BSL in an hour and uploaded to the screens directly via 4G technology.”
The main requirement at a station is real-time information. Does this mean no real-time informationin BSL? Or will they translate, in advance, the same phrases as an auto-announcer uses, and likewise auto-announce them in real time in sign language? But you’d have to be watching at the moment it was announced. Or would you be able to page back through the recent announcements?
Do you have to be able to read to operate the system? If you can read, does this offer anything at all?