Passengers between Manchester and Leeds, as well as York and Leeds, will be able to see British Sign Language announcements thanks to a trial using AI.

Working with InfoTec and Signapse, AI is used to ‘knit together’ words signed by an interpreter and displays the sentence via onboard displays.

The announcements, which will initially focus on station names, are only available on some of Northern‘s fleet of trains between Leeds and York via Harrogate and Leeds to Manchester Victoria via Rochdale.

Marc Silverwood, onboard systems manager at Northern, said: “We know that rail travel can be daunting for anyone with specific access needs, and I really hope this makes a difference to give people confidence to travel by rail.  

“We hope to expand this trial further and we can only do that with help from our customers. 

“We are asking people to have their say on the scheme, so we are urging them to visit our website to give feedback.”