Sign language on train route information displays (and station departure boards)

philthetube said:

If more information is being provided than I am able to understand then as a BSL user I am being discriminated against, While thinking providing BSL is a good idea these information boards are not there to provide additional info to any minority.

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By 'additional information' I was referring to information such as "See It, Say It, Sorted" or "First Class at the front" etc that is being given over the PA and would be unavailable to d/Deaf passengers. So it is not information that you are not being provided with, simply the same information being provided in a more accessible manner.

Justin Smith said:

Why cannot the deaf person read what it says on the display

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You’ve had the reason why explained at least three times.

So it costs £37 per person who might benefit. If each of those people buys one long distance advance single that they otherwise wouldn’t have done before BSL signage was introduced then it’s paid for itself.

_toommm_ said:

BSL is different to spoken/written British English. A lot of people think it's just signing what you and I may speak, but it is in fact its own language with its own grammatical rules and vocabulary. Whereas English uses Subject, Verb, Object (SVO) for its sentence structure broadly, BSL doesn't. People who are born deaf will learn BSL first then sometimes learn English as a second language. As such, a deaf person may not understand 'This train is currently being delayed due to a person being hit by a train earlier today' written on a PIS on a platform., but will understand however that sentence would be formulated in BSL.

Makaton and BSL are both sign languages, but their own separate languages. Some signs are interchangeable, but Makaton is a very simplified language system, often used by people with learning difficulties. In BSL, you can form full sentences, and it has signs for conjunctions, verbs, all pronouns etc., but Makaton only has signs for the main points in a sentence. My brother uses it as he has autism and severe learning difficulties, so instead of signing 'I need to go to the toilet', he will just sign 'toilet'. For an idea of what Makaton is, have a look at the series 'Something Special' on CBeebies.

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Thank you for the insightful post, very interesting!

I can see some benefit during times of disruption.

However I really can't see the point of signing departures. Looking at the departure boards is going to be much quicker than waiting for each departure to be signed.

Cross posted with the moderator, so edited, but as someone with a disability, I would very much like to be inconvenienced simply by slow scrolling screens and not my autism and limited mobility. Life is a series of compromises and and perhaps it's possible for able-bodied people to be slightly inconvenienced by something that empowers someone else. A lot of the time we talk about the railways being a public service, and here they are doing something for the part of the general public who are often invisible.


== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Sunday at 21:29 ==

74A said:

I can see some benefit during times of disruption.

However I really can't see the point of signing departures. Looking at the departure boards is going to be much quicker than waiting for each departure to be signed.

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There's plenty of reasons up thread why someone might need that.

BazingaTribe said:

Cross posted with the moderator, so edited, but as someone with a disability, I would very much like to be inconvenienced simply by slow scrolling screens and not my autism and limited mobility. Life is a series of compromises and and perhaps it's possible for able-bodied people to be slightly inconvenienced by something that empowers someone else. A lot of the time we talk about the railways being a public service, and here they are doing something for the part of the general public who are often invisible.

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Very well said. A minor inconvenience to some is nothing compared with a major improvement for others who are generally more disadvantaged.

Justin Smith said:

Why, when the text is just above the "signer" was it so "beneficial" though ? That is the thing I cannot understand.

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BSL (sign language) is not the same language as English. The text is written in English, not BSL. You might as well ask why a sign would be bilingual in English and Chinese.

There are around 100 thousand people in England whose first language is BSL - English is their second or third language and may be harder for them. I don't know for sure but I imagine that's at least comparable to the numbers that speak e.g. Welsh as their mother tongue.

I understand all the arguments for. But, it should be in addition to a regular departure board listing all the imminent departures on a none scrolling screen.

Just the other day stepping off a late train at Doncaster, and couldn't find what platform the connection was to depart from, because it was on screen 2, of 4. Waiting for the BSL to reel off 3 pages of irrelevant (yes to me) wibbling.

So asked a rather harassed member of platform staff, who also agreed that these boards are a 'nightmare'. They are, when time is of the essence.

Why can it not be in addition to.

NER1621 said:

So it costs £37 per person who might benefit.

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And I imagine in the longer run it will be far less than £37, because you'll have the displays, have the technology to sync the messages, have recorded the vast majority of messages and (like audio announcements) have to occasionally pay for a new one when a new station opens or similar. The ongoing costs should be much smaller.

And the £900k (for 3 years) in that tender was the upper limit for bids - for all we know someone could've come along and said £450k.

Railguy1 said:

Thank you for the insightful post, very interesting!

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I can use both Makaton and BSL though am somewhat rusty due to lack of opportunity to use them but struggle to explain it to others at times, your explanation was perfect

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Monday at 13:15 ==

Despite the reason being explained here at least half a dozen times some people still don't seem to get why the BSL is necessary.

chris53 said:

I can use both Makaton and BSL though am somewhat rusty due to lack of opportunity to use them but struggle to explain it to others at times, your explanation was perfect

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I have the same issue with BSL, but I'll try and sign while talking in everyday situations, every now and then, to keep on top of it - the person I'm speaking with might not understand the signing but that's not really an issue!

Harratt4 said:

I have, the “next train to” board at my station is on page 2/3 for about 60% of the time.

Funnily enough it doesn’t feature a BSL interpreter.

The BSL interpreted screens I have seen (which of course may not be the same as the ones the OP has endured) have the BSL guy in the bottom right hand corner which otherwise would have been dead space. So removing them wouldn’t help anyone).

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Screens aren't that expensive (well, to the railway I'm sure they are) but you can solve a lot of issues with waiting for screens to go through multiple pages by having more screens, or perhaps changing the layout so - perhaps - you have the next train or two always on every display with a partitioned part paging through different bits of information.

It's only software, so anything is possible and it doesn't mean getting rid of something that is useful to people who may have different needs than you or I do.

I cannot view screens that have moving images as I am one of the people that it is a trigger for migraine, so having sign language on departure boards (that already has the information in visible form) prevents me from looking at them, it also means the page does not advance for an extended period meaning that one would have to watch for much longer to find your train, frustrating and likely to put people off, or delay to the point of losing their train, yet another case of catering to a tiny minority at the detriment of the majority

Those who complain that the sign language screens take too long before scrolling back to the typed departure boards or that the screen is somehow too distracting could of course look up the details they require online themselves whilst they're waiting.

TUC said:

Those who complain that the sign language screens take too long before scrolling back to the typed departure boards or that the screen is somehow too distracting could of course look up the details they require online themselves whilst they're waiting.

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There's then an argument that the BSL version should be online/on an app as well. Careful what you wish for!

satters said:

I cannot view screens that have moving images as I am one of the people that it is a trigger for migraine, so having sign language on departure boards (that already has the information in visible form) prevents me from looking at them, it also means the page does not advance for an extended period meaning that one would have to watch for much longer to find your train, frustrating and likely to put people off, or delay to the point of losing their train, yet another case of catering to a tiny minority at the detriment of the majority

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I am unaware of any station where all of the screens have the signing app running. That is certainly not the case at the ones I am familiar with.

Kilopylae said:

BSL (sign language) is not the same language as English. The text is written in English, not BSL. You might as well ask why a sign would be bilingual in English and Chinese.

There are around 100 thousand people in England whose first language is BSL - English is their second or third language and may be harder for them. I don't know for sure but I imagine that's at least comparable to the numbers that speak e.g. Welsh as their mother tongue.

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My wife occasionally receives texts from one of our friends who is deaf from birth (in her 50's) and has BSL as her first and primary language - frankly, some of the texts are barely legible to me because they have the BSL syntax and some odd (for English) choices of words.
As an aside, there has been a long running campaign to have a GCSE in BSL to make it more widely available as a language choice in schools for the benefit of the friends and families of d/Deaf people. Although the government previously accepted the requirement in principle, implementation has yet to happen.

Genuine question. I get that many deaf people use sign language as the syntax of it makes it much easier to communicate than having to sign every word of a full sentence. Nevertheless, isn't it important in terms of deaf people maximising their ability to live as equal members of society with the widest range of possible jobs available to them for them to also be able to read and write everyday English? (I'm probably using the wrong terms here, but hopefully you know what I mean.) Therefore, isn't it not an either/or in terms of which deaf people are able to use, but rather both?

TUC said:

Nevertheless, isn't it important in terms of deaf people maximising their ability to live as equal members of society with the widest range of possible jobs available to them for them to also be able to read and write everyday English?

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Yes, but that's a slightly different point. For many deaf people English is their second (or third, etc) language, not their primary language. So whilst many deaf people can understand English they'd have to think about it, in much the same way that we have to think about the signs when travelling abroad. If I stop and ponder for a minute I can work out what the German or French signs are saying, but it is so much easier when they also put the signs up in English.

Tetchytyke said:

wIf I stop and ponder for a minute I can work out what the German or French signs are saying, but it is so much easier when they also put the signs up in English.

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I think (with no deaf credentials nor experience on this myself) that this is different - in information screens what you read (in English) is not sentences, and largely not verbs - just destination, stops, time. Call that the Class 1 info. That's largely language independent - except for places like Wales and Belgium where dual languages mean you may have to translate names, or where a French name is not the same as the English version, say.

Then you get add-ins like length of train, position of first class, bike spaces etc - things you can live without but are helpful to what to do to get the train dispatched quickly. Class 2 info say.

Finally followed by comforting info like 'the train is between Northallerton and Thirsk'. Class 3. Can live without it - I already know it's 5 mins late, I have no idea how long it'll take to get here from Thirsk.

I've no idea how all this is handled by the signing video.

Class 1 info isn't sentences - it's just names, times. Need this in a bigger font for sight-impaired folk. Presumably PRM regulations specify the minimum sizes and distances - they do on the trains themselves. Can BSL/other signers read this sufficiently well as is? Does the BSL person on LNER convey _this_ information, or is that unnecessary given it's not a complex wording/structure?

Class 2 and 3 - is this where the video spends most of its time?

What's striking to me is that - like audio announcements - if you have to rely on a stream of info (possibly long as you find out about the Class 3 info), then it'll take a very long time to get round to the Class 1 info that you really really need when there's multiple trains on the board.

When you put yourself in the shoes of someone with blindness, or if you shrink their access to class 1 info by reducing its font - they're listening for announcements at the station - they also have a single linear feed of information, and can easily miss the train waiting for that to roll round.

TUC said:

Genuine question. I get that many deaf people use sign language as the syntax of it makes it much easier to communicate than having to sign every word of a full sentence. Nevertheless, isn't it important in terms of deaf people maximising their ability to live as equal members of society with the widest range of possible jobs available to them for them to also be able to read and write everyday English? (I'm probably using the wrong terms here, but hopefully you know what I mean.) Therefore, isn't it not an either/or in terms of which deaf people are able to use, but rather both?

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You are right, up to a point..... Unfortunately learning to read and write in English requires someone to teach you and that requires that you (the deaf person) can hear what the teacher is saying.... Otherwise we would all be able to just look at a board or sign in the local type in, say, India or Cambodia and just understand what it means.....

My BSL is terrible (I did level 1, approx GCSE standard, years ago, a term of level 2, studied BSL and other linguistics a bit, rarely get to practise in the last 20 years). Almost all the signed conversations I have are when there's problems on the trains, and someone at Clapham Junction or whatever station clocks my hearing aids and asks for help. Fortunately I'm pretty fluent in train-delay-speak so can understand from staff what's going on, and then explain it.

I don't count in any stats of people who use BSL as a main or secondary language, but being deaf, I was surprised how useful I found the BSL when I was at Doncaster last year and the trains were in chaos. Written English is my preferred communication method (Stagetext for theatre is wonderful; wish more cinemas would have subtitled showings), but the BSL was actually quicker than the scrolling of messages across the screen. And easier than trying to find staff who weren't already being harangued, not to mention I struggle to lipread in Yorkshire!

The scrolling messages are already made to go slowly because of how many people can't read very fast. Adding/removing BSL won't make them go faster. They are little flickery but only in a very small area, so don't trigger my vestibular issues - unlike the ads at KXStP where there's huge video screens flashing from dark to light so I have to avoid that main corridor from the back of St Pancras, or all the escalators I have to close my eyes on.

It would be nice if stations cut out the regular 'see it, say it, sort it' etc announcements when there's disruption, so I'm not popping up like a meerkat every time I can tell something is being announced and then having to figure out what it was and whether it was relevant.

Also, if you spend an hour watching the screens, you should be able to figure out the signs for most Northern numbers, and a fair bit of the BSL alphabet, which is educational.