A young Hawick woman has launched a campaign to raise awareness of the difficulties faced by blind and partially-sighted people when using public transport.
Katrina Thomson – who was diagnosed with eye cancer when she was six months old and has struggled with partial sight and poor focus ever since – wants bus companies to understand the barriers that she and others like her face when travelling.
The 21-year old said: “I find it really difficult to know when a bus is coming and buses can pass if no one else is there to stop them. Sometimes a few buses can come at the same time and it’s difficult to know which is the right one.”
Katrina is able to travel on her own, but still encounters problems such as unhelpful drivers, different bus layouts and identifying free seats.
But she hopes to resolve some of these issues with the help of young person’s charity, Fixers, which supports young people aged 16-25 to tackle any issue that matters to them, by creating an audio guide, which will depict a conversation between a passenger who is blind or partially sighted and a bus driver, to illustrate how customer care should be undertaken by bus drivers in an ideal situation.
Source: Hawick News
