Anyone who has travelled by rail will know how chaotic stations can be. For people with a disability, they can be highly stressful and even dangerous.
But UNE PhD-Innovation candidate Charles Chan has been working hard to improve the experience for the estimated 110,000 hearing and vision-impaired passengers who use trains throughout NSW.
For the past three years he has been consulting Deaf Australia, Vision Australia and Guide Dogs NSW/ACT to co-design state-of-the-art technology for some of Australia’s busiest railway platforms. His team’s ground-breaking work may even soon inspire similar Queensland Rail, Adelaide Transport and Victorian Transport improvements.
“Some rail users can be scared to travel, out of fear they won’t be able to access the information they need,” said Charles, Senior Manager, Audio Visual Services at Transport Sydney Trains. “My aim is to ensure that no passenger is disadvantaged.”
UNE’s Doctor of Philosophy-Innovation – which allows candidates to earn their doctorate from their workplace – has given Charles the opportunity to develop four key innovations.
First, he oversaw the roll-out of audio frequency induction loop technology to assist those with hearing loss. This system relies on a cable laid beneath the station platform, which generates a magnetic, wireless signal. When a person wearing a hearing aid enters this designated area, they can receive the signal and know to switch on their hearing aid to receive an announcement.
This is particularly useful because of the 15% of Australians who have a hearing disability – that’s one in seven of us – only about 5% use hearing aids to receive train information. For those who do, designated areas contain a lot of electrical devices that can transmit painful magnetic noise through their hearing aids.
Next, Charles introduced a program for the hearing-impaired called SpeechMagic, which converts audio announcements to text on train platform screens. Catering to travellers from non-English speaking backgrounds, he then created a free mobile phone app called Multilingual Announcer, which converts train announcements into seven (and counting) native languages.
“It is easier for those with hearing loss to receive messages in their native language and Multilingual Announcer is automatically detected as the person enters the station,” Charles said. “In future, we hope to add more languages.”
Most recently, Charles has introduced a trial of Auslan Assist, which broadcasts pre-recorded emergency messages in real time in sign language on station screens. He is also implementing changes to the colour scheme and screen displays to better cater to people who are colour-blind and vision-impaired.
“The feedback we have received is that these additional services are game-changing; they remove some of the hurdles that hearing and vision-impaired passengers face, because both rely on visual and audio information, to varying degrees,” Charles said.
“I am really happy that we can deliver services to help people with a disability enjoy their train travel like everybody else, at minimal cost and using existing infrastructure.”
After proof-of-concept is completed, Charles intends seeking funding to roll out these new services statewide.
