Ladies and Gentlemen, good afternoon. I am really pleased that I am given the opportunity to speak here today, because the topic of accessible rail transport is one that is of great relevance to all of us in today's society, yet we find that people with disabilities can be severely disenfranchised in their access to this essential commodity and as a result might face significant barriers to fulfilment and participation in an ever faster moving world. As a hard of hearing person myself, I experience these barriers myself on many occasions.
But first of all, I thought it would be helpful to spend a few moments talking about the organisation that I represent. RNID, the Royal National Institute for Deaf People, founded in 1911, is the largest charity representing the 9 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the UK. We are a membership charity with well over 35.000 members, employing around 1.200 staff and we spent more than 44 million pounds during our last financial year trying to dramatically improve the lives of deaf, hard of hearing and speech-impaired people.
Our mission is to achieve a radically better quality of life for deaf and hard of hearing people and really for anyone with a disability. We do this of course by campaigning and lobbying, by providing information and raising awareness and by delivering training courses and consultancy on deafness in particular and disability in general. In addition, we are the largest single communication support provider in the UK and our services include sign language interpreters, lip speakers, as well as speech-to-text operators and note takers. Furthermore, RNID runs various educational programmes seeking lasting change in education for deaf and hard of hearing children and young people. We also run comprehensive employment programmes to help deaf people into work and we operate care services for deaf and hard of hearing people with additional needs in care homes throughout the UK.
RNID of course also manages RNID Typetalk, the national telephone relay service that was founded in the late eighties, allowing textphone users to communicate with voice telephone users by translating text into voice and vice versa. Since a few years now we have established a Video Interpreting service that uses video conferencing technology for the purpose of remote sign language interpretation and recently we have extended this into a sign language video relay service.
RNID Products is the main supplier in the UK of equipment and products for deaf and hard of hearing people and we have extensive and unique programmes for social, medical and technical research.
The New Technologies department where I am a Research Associate is a research and development group consisting of engineers, scientists, computer programmers and researchers. It is headed up by Guido Gybels, our Director of New Technologies. We pursue every opportunity to harness information and communication technology to tear down the barriers to opportunity and fulfilment that sadly enough still exist in our modern world.
Anyway, that's enough of the propaganda for today, let's look at the topic at hand: that of making the case for inclusive design as a means to achieve higher accessibility of rail vehicles. My presentation today will cover the following topics: firstly, I will explain how the ageing population in Europe and elsewhere is creating a whole new reality in terms of your customer base, now and in the future. I will then discuss how important transport is for elderly people and those with disabilities, as it is indeed for everyone in the population, because, after all, people with disabilities are in the end just individuals like everyone else, it just might happen they have a different set of abilities and preferences.
Based on those facts, I will then clarify the ethical, social, economic and indeed legal arguments in support of inclusive design.
After that, I will explain in detail the end-to-end challenge in making transport accessible, and will highlight some specific examples of how rail vehicles can play a role in achieving that goal. Finally, I will leave you with a positive outlook about how inclusive design can be a proper business opportunity for you and your companies and make some recommendations as to how to pursue it.
One of the most commonly made mistakes today is to underestimate the shear number of people who are affected by age and disability in Europe. And that is despite the fact that in recent years the looming pension crisis has started to gain widespread attention from politicians, the media and economists. Where age is thus becoming a more and more debated topic, disability remains badly understood by many. People with disabilities constitute a quite large user group in Europe, with conservative statistics showing at least 39 million European citizens recognised as being disabled and further tens of millions of Europeans affected by lesser degrees of impairments. Worldwide, according to UN statistics, there are at least 610 million disabled people. These are significant user groups and if you are a player in the rail vehicle industry, your products and services are being used by millions of disabled people every year.
However, disabled people do not form a homogenous group, rather they are as diverse and mixed as the rest of society. Amongst these people, we find individuals with sensory impairments, like blind and vision impaired people or deaf and hard of hearing citizens. Wheelchair users and those with other mobility or dexterity problems are another category, one that is often more visibly present and acknowledged. Other groups are mostly forgotten, like for example individuals with cognitive and learning disabilities. But all of these people can face very significant barriers in using rail transport, barriers that not just make it difficult for them to use the train, or even prevent it all together, but which mean that these people are socially and economically disenfranchised in their ability to fully participate as citizens in our modern societies.
In recent years, the big names in industry have started to realise that there is a serious problem and that the scale of it is truly daunting. For example, according to a study commissioned by Microsoft and carried out by Forrester Research, 60 percent of working-age adults in the U.S., in other words: more than 100 million people, would benefit from using accessible technology. Not all of these people are considered "disabled" in the strict sense of the word, but it does illustrate quite well how many of us are affected in some form or another by sensory, physical, cognitive or other impairments.
On top of that, these numbers are increasing. And one of the main reasons why they are rising is the fact that Europe's population is growing older. We simply live longer and longer. And surely that is, overall, a good thing. It's also a clear indication of how improved health systems and better care systems are paying off. But at the same time, it is, of course, creating a raft of new challenges and problems for society. I mentioned the pension crisis before and fortunately we won't have to deal with that problem here today, but other aspects of how we organise our world, how we create and deliver products and services to an ageing consumer base, are of relevance in this forum. Because, in the end, the process of growing old is one that is directly responsible for increasing the prevalence of disability. Growing older means that your eye sight becomes gradually worse, your hearing won't be as good as it was anymore and arthritis and other conditions could very well impair your dexterity and mobility. In that sense, most of us who will reach old age will in fact become, to a lesser or higher degree, disabled. So, if you, until today, thought that accessibility and usability was not of interest to you personally, or indeed to your company, you could not be further from the truth. Eurostat estimates that by 2050 half, that's right, half, of the European population will be over 50. If you think that it makes business sense to exclude those consumers, then I think you will find that you will be missing out on a lot of revenue.
By the way, don't think that the problem is exclusive to elderly people, even though they are a very large group. In reality, there are plenty of young and working age disabled people. In my field of expertise, deafness and hearing loss, we in fact see more and more young people affected by self-inflicted hearing loss, damaging their hearing beyond repair through exposure to unsafe levels of sound, because of personal stereos that can be heard three seats down the row or by going to clubs and other venues that play their music at volume levels that would be unacceptable in any other environment.
Let's now look at the specific environment of real transport. The last few centuries, mankind has seen technological progress like never before in history. These advances in science and technology have dramatically changed the way we work, the way we organise our economies, yes even the way we entertain ourselves. Most noticeably, our operational theatre is no longer confined by the boundaries of the village we live in. Travelling around is no longer something for the high society, travel has become simply essential for all of us who want to be fully empowered citizens. When the Industrial Revolution happened, as a direct result of the developing economies of coal, iron and steam, where the railways played such important role, it changed the fabric of society and led to the kind of world we live in today, a world where being able to travel around effectively is simply a basic requirement. Rail transport is incredibly important for all of us, but sometimes even more to people with disabilities. Yet, despite this increasing importance, we cannot ignore that disabled people all too often find themselves hampered in, or excluded from using trains as a consequence of the fact that designs and implementations of services and equipment have often not taken their abilities and preferences into account.
In addition, this important role of railways for the citizens of today is likely to increase in the decades to come. Our energy resources are being stretched to the limit. The environment is under threat; our roads are becoming more and more grid locked. Railways offer great potential for dealing with these questions. Trains are more energy efficient; they are environmentally friendlier and they are much safer than cars. If we are to really solve the huge challenges we face as a society in the decades to come, if we are to leave our children with a world that has a future, rail transport will have to be part of that.
So, the question is not whether or not we have to consider railways as an important domain for accessibility. The real question is how we can achieve that goal, in a manner that is sustainable, economically and practically feasible while still meeting the needs of the users. I believe inclusive design principles offer the answer to that.
I want to explore the various reasons for inclusive design of rail in some more detail. I hope that at the end of this exercise, you will all go away convinced that this is not just a possible strategy, but in fact the only right way to design rail vehicles and services.
Let's look firstly at the ethical and social perspective. Surely no one will argue that every individual, every citizen of our European society, has a right to full participation, must be able to fulfil their potential - regardless of what their profile is in terms of abilities and preferences. We do not accept any longer that people are discriminated against on the basis of their gender, race, religion, sexual orientation or personal beliefs. Discrimination of disabled people is not any more acceptable from a moral and ethical perspective. But of course, in the past, many barriers that people with disabilities faced were of an almost absolute nature and could not always be addressed in full. Now that advances in science and technology are allowing us to deal with many of these previously considered unbreakable barriers, we really have no excuse for failing to act.
As I said before: people need to get around today, that's the way our world works. If disabled people are to lead fully enabled lives, then their access to transport need to be as seamless and complete as for everyone else. Being able to work, having access to education, these are all very basic human rights. Railways play a vital role in this for many people, so it is only just that we make sure disabled people have full and unimpeded access to them as well.
Obviously, the ethical and social case should be more than enough reason to make trains fully accessible. But we should not overlook the fact that it actually makes economic sense as well. As I have said before, Europe's population is ageing rapidly. With that evolution comes an increase in the prevalence of disability. We are talking about seriously large user groups here. Excluding all these people from contributing to the economy, as consumers, but equally so as skilled and committed employees who bring their expertise and dedication to their job, simply does not add up. Unless we are able to bring as much disabled people into education and employment, and unless we will be able to offer services and products that will meet the needs of the over 50s who by 2050 will make up half of your potential customers, Europe's economy will flounder. So, it is directly in your economic interest to start taking accessible railways seriously.
Because politicians and others are becoming more and more aware of this pressing economic as well as ethical need, the law is changing too. If the carrots don't convince you, then you will find that there are sticks that you might run into. Some European member states have already introduced legislation to tackle the problem of disability discrimination. Others will follow. The European Union itself is currently looking at various legislative and regulatory measures to address accessibility concerns and achieve policy objectives. At the basis of such legislation lies the concept of reasonable adjustment: it means that where technically and practically possible, you have no longer any excuse not to create accessible transport services and vehicles. I have never heard anyone in any industry who likes more legislation and more regulation. In the light of what I have said before, it would therefore be sensible to consider, as an industry, that voluntary action now might be far better than legal or regulatory obligations in the future. If given the choice, would you not prefer the carrot over the stick? Surely, long term business interests are clear: you want to be able to meet your customer's needs, in ways that are technically and economically sound and as free from legal and regulatory burdens as possible. If you agree with that, then inclusive design of trains and rail transport in general can really be the only option.
Having, hopefully, made a successful case for inclusive design in railway transport, I would now like to take a few minutes to outline the end-to-end challenge. When disabled people want to have a successful journey, there are several factors that come into play.
The whole transport experience can be divided in different phases, from the pre-travel stages of information gathering, planning and ticket booking and purchasing, over the actual journey itself and through to any post-travel follow-up.
Every stage of this end-to-end experience needs to be designed in an inclusive way. Before they travel, people want to get relevant information about timetables, routes, possible detours, engineering works or other special conditions, promotional offers etc.
Yet, how do you access the phone lines that offer this information when you are deaf and your rail operator has no textphone access point or your country does not offer text-to-speech relay services yet? How do you use the website that offers this information if you are blind and your screen reader cannot process the badly formatted html on your site, or the mark-up fails to provide textual alternatives for images and other visual content? What do you do if you have impaired dexterity and can't use a mouse when the online form uses mouse specific event handlers to provide essential functionality? I won't go into too much detail about these here, since our focus today is on the rail vehicles, but clearly these are very important issues to consider.
When your journey has been booked, you need to be able to get to the station, get on board the train and into your seat. If your train platform is only announced over the public address system and you are deaf, well you might not even find it. If you are a wheelchair user and there is no ramp, you might not get on board. If you would get on board, but the corridors would be too small for your wheelchair, how do you get around, to the bar, to the toilet?
Once you are on your way, how do you get real-time travel information when you are deaf and the information is only broadcast only over the loudspeaker? Or when you are blind and it is only provided on the LCD display at the end of the coach?
If you are a sign language user and your first language is sign language, not the spoken language of the land, then you might have problems with written statements or announcements too, just as much as such statements would confuse a person with learning disabilities or a severely dyslectic individual. So, how do you access complicated information based on the spoken language of the land you live in, yet not written to be plain, clear lingo, but instead full of jargon and incomprehensible constructions?
While most rail stations and more and more trains have some form of text display these days, all too often they do not offer a fully equivalent rendition of spoken announcements. Yes, they might show schedule information and even be updated when platforms change, but how many of the messages that are being broadcast over the public address system, are effectively in real-time delivered to those boards as well? The answer is appallingly few, and hundreds of thousands of rail journeys every year go amiss because of this lack of visual counterpart for spoken messages.
So, when your disabled customers then want to contact support desks or file a complaint, they often face the same barriers they already had to overcome in order to contact your services before the start of the journey.
We are not able to deal with every detail and every problem here today. In addition, our focus is clearly on the vehicles and that is only part of the overall challenge. I just hope that these examples have given you some understanding of how important it is to get things right. And of course, a major part of the journey does actually take place on board the train, so the accessibility of the vehicle is indeed of crucial importance.
As such, let me give some more vehicle specific examples of important accessibility features. Trains should have clearly contrasted pathways and corridors, wide enough to accommodate wheelchair users, also in their bends, and with good lighting and logical lay out so that a blind or vision-impaired person can find their way around. Icons and indicators should be large and readable, and intuitively understandable. None of this requires extra cost - it's just about best practice and common sense, really.
Where real-time travel information is provided, do not assume everyone will use a specific channel, like voice or text, to access that information. Make it available in alternative modalities. Similarly, where there are alerts or indicators make sure they are usable and reachable by anyone, irrespective of the person's abilities and preferences. If there is a sound when the doors close, then make sure there is a visible alert too. Put the door controls at a height where a wheelchair user can reach them and do not require the muscle strength of Arnold Schwarzenegger to operate these buttons, the seat controls or indeed any other adjustment on the train. Again, none of this is costly or problematic, as long as you take it into consideration from the earliest stages of design.
Emergency buttons are important, but when you locate them just under the ceiling, a small person or a wheelchair user is not going to be able to reach it. If it does not contrast well, then a vision-impaired individual might not be able to find it. If, once it is activated, there is no visual indication of that, a deaf person will not know whether or not the alert has been acknowledged.
Handrails and steps must be easily locatable, be slip resistant and connect well to ramps. This does not benefit only wheelchair users and blind and partially sighted people, but is of benefit, as so many accessibility features, to most of us.
This brings me to one of the most compelling arguments I can offer: inclusive design is not just something that you do for disabled people. Not even just for disabled and elderly people, which by 2050 will account for well over half of your potential customers. Inclusive design will make the experience better for every single traveller that uses your train.
You might think that easy access features that I mentioned before are just for people with mobility problems and wheelchair users. But in truth, the mother with her pram or the bloke with the heavy suitcase benefit from them just as much.
The same argument applies to about every other aspect and feature: is there anyone would not benefit from a clear and logical lay out? From easy to understand signage? Isn't the visual travel information as useful for the teenager listening to their ipod as it is for the hard of hearing traveller?
So, in conclusion: I hope this short talk has convinced you that there is a great need to design rail vehicles inclusively. I hope that it has demonstrated to you that it is not just the right thing to do, but it also makes a lot of business sense to do it. Inclusive design principles can help you deliver it. Some people call it design-for-all, others refer to it as universal design, but the name doesn't really matter that much. What is important is that it is the principle of human-centred, user-focused design. Unfortunately, it is also often misunderstood. Inclusive design is not creating an amalgam of different systems and provisions; it is not doing a lot of isolated work for individual user groups. It is not an esoteric, highly expensive, practically impossible utopic school of thought. It is simply an approach to the design of mainstream equipment and services that are accessible to, and usable by, as many people as reasonably possible without the need for special adaptation. At the heart of it lies the involvement of users: involving them, from the earliest stages of design and implementation, in the definition of user requirements, in testing of the systems, in making decisions about the interfaces, execution paths and any other aspect of the system. Inclusive design means that engineers and manufacturers develop systems not based on what they want as designers and technicians, not driven by technology, but based on what people need as users.
There are plenty of user groups around that would be only too happy to share their expertise and knowledge about specific customer groups. So, please, make sure you involve them from the earliest stages of design and implementation. And of course, it is not enough to speak to user groups at the start of your project, you need to continue to involve them, including during testing and evaluation. Remember that inclusive design is about integrating the concept of user needs into your whole project, it is not about bolted-on, last minute fixes or additions.
Nothing what people do comes for free. But in the light of the ethical, moral, social, economic and legal arguments that I set out today, inclusive design should be seen as delivering incredible value for money.
Public transport is an essential commodity in our modern world. By making sure no one, irrespective of abilities and preferences, is excluded from rail transport, we will create a more equal environment for everyone. We will be creating a world where each individual would be able to participate to the fullest extent and thus could realise their full potential. Surely that is a worthy cause for all of us!
Thank you for your attention.
Speech by Guido Gybels, given at the Railway Interiors Expo, Köln Messe, Köln, Germany on 19 November 2005.
Slides for: Deaf People and Rail Transport. (Microsoft Powerpoint 2000 Show 4.64MB)