Greater Anglia staff are improving the help offered to blind and partially sighted passengers thanks to vision awareness sessions from an expert charity led by people with lived experience of sight loss.

Sight Loss Councils, funded by Thomas Pocklington Trust, are regional groups led by blind and partially sighted volunteers. Together, they work with organisations to ensure what they do is accessible and inclusive.

Members from the Essex Sight Loss Council will be offering Greater Anglia staff the chance to learn about various eye conditions that customers may live with and the impact that this may have on their everyday lives.

They will also show the various technological and mobility aids that vision impaired customers may carry or use to help interpret the world around them.

The Essex Sight Loss Council members, who are all vision impaired, will also bring glasses that simulate the ten most common eye conditions in the UK including light perception, cataracts, diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration, hemianopia, glaucoma, and retinitis pigmentosa.

The team give attendees everyday tasks to complete while wearing the glasses including reading a menu, looking at rail map, and pairing some socks.

The four-hour training session, which is available to Greater Anglia conductors and customer service staff who work between London Liverpool Street and Norwich, will be delivered once a month until January 2025.  

The aim is that they will be able to provide a better service to passengers with different types of sight loss, helping to make their journeys smoother and make rail feel a more accessible form of transport for them.  

The first course was held on Tuesday 2 July, when 13 people attended, including 10 conductors from Norwich, Ipswich, Colchester, and Wickford depots.

Adrian Brown, Greater Anglia’s Conductor Training and Standards Manager, said: “These sessions give a real insight into what it is like for customers living with sight loss, allowing our staff to ask questions and have a go at guiding their colleagues around objects using hints and tips given by the training team, just as they would help a customer off a train or on a station platform.

“The training will allow both our highly trained conductors and station staff to become even better at helping passengers with sight loss who travel with us.”

Samantha Leftwich, Engagement Manager – East at Thomas Pocklington Trust, said: “It has been great for Sight Loss Councils to work with Greater Anglia to raise awareness of the needs of blind and partially sighted people who use their network as a whole.

“The vision awareness sessions we provide allow attendees to learn about what it is like to live with a vision impairment, hear from people with lived experience who share their own experiences of travelling as well as being able to ask us questions in a safe and non-judgemental space.

“The first session saw the staff asking some fantastic questions which were answered openly and honestly to highlight the barriers to independent travel as blind and partially sighted people, but also to share good practice and top tips.”

Sight Loss Councils across the country are working with transport providers to increase the accessibility of public transport, with blind and partially sighted people sharing that it is an issue that matters to them the most so they can travel independently and safely, living their lives as they choose.