Arriva Rail London (ARL) is to trial an innovative solution to provide British Sign Language (BSL) users with access to important information when they travel on the London Overground network, which the company operates on behalf of Transport for London.
The solution, named ‘Luna'; has been developed in collaboration with GoMedia, a subsidiary of Icomera which provides onboard public transport ‘infotainment'.
Luna is powered by Signapse technology and translates digital information online into British Sign Language and transmitted directly to the user through their smartphone or tablet via a personalised digital sign language avatar.
The trial is to be carried out until September 2024 at five London Overground stations – Hackney Central, Hackney Downs, Hoxton, Upper Holloway, and Willesden Junction.
Each station will display QR codes that allow users to access a unique webpage where customers can access details of their station and details of the facilities available, live departures and travel disruption information, and station announcements.
Alternatively, customers can access the webpage by entering a URL code displayed next to the QR code.e accessed via a URL code displayed next to the QR code.
More than 150,000 people in the UK are deaf or have hearing loss, and struggle to access essential information whilst travelling.
Many of them rely on British Sign Language which makes travelling difficult, particularly during when there are disruptions to normal services as information is often only made via audio announcements,with information not always provided on visual displays or signs.
This trial follows a similar one by London North Eastern Rail which is displaying information in British Sign Language at some of its stations, and Northern on train services between Manchester and Leeds.
We are committed to finding solutions which will help London Overground passengers travel independently and with ease, so it made perfect sense to trial GoMedia's Luna solution. We hope our collaboration with GoMedia will be another step towards more accessible public transport for all.
Matthew Bromley, Arriva Rail London head of business intelligence
GoMedia is delighted to deliver another innovative accessibility project through the DfT's ‘First of a Kind' programme, adding to a portfolio of award-winning accessibility solutions that have been proven to give passengers more autonomy and independence in how they travel.
With GoMedia's other accessibility solutions, Visor and HEAR now expanding across the UK transport network and being evaluated by rail operators across the globe, we envisage a future where Luna can be combined with these solutions to provide full end-to-end journey navigation and information to passengers in BSL as well as audio and text in 33 languages, demonstrating a universal solution for anyone looking for more information on their journey.
Roger Matthews, chief commercial officer of Icomera and GoMedia's managing director
This sounds like a better system than the one that LNER have at some stations, where there is a BSL interpreter superimposed in the corner of the display, who reads through everything on the screen. The downside to this is that it means that the “Departure” screens – which only show a few trains at a time anyway – take *ages* before they move onto the next page … which is not good if the train you are looking for is on the next page!