Thomas Pocklington Trust

So this is the ticket office.

This project has come about through a partnership between the charity Thomas Pocklington Trust's Sight Loss Councils and the train operator Greater Thames Link Railway, or GTR.

Dave Smith is the engagement manager at Thomas Pocklington Trust and Cole Martin is the accessibility lead for Greater Thames Link Railway, and they join me now.

Dave, I want to start with you first because I hear this was your idea, so how did it all come about?

It was a conversation that I had with Patrick Lamptey at GTR and the idea was to audio describe station images so that blind and partially sighted people could understand what was at a station and it would support with the orientation and being able to get around.

So do please have a look at the website for all of those, uh, sessions and the recordings and the handouts from those.

There are other sources of support available, too, besides the Braillists if you're looking for more generic, um, academic support, things like Thomas Pocklington Trust's education team.

So do feel free to go to places like Thomas Pocklington Trust and, and ask them, and of course, you can always ask us in parallel or ask us beforehand, and we'll forward you on or ask us afterwards.

Um, Look UK through their mentoring scheme may also be able to offer some support, so there's lots of opportunities there to get support if you need it.

The Braillists runs a regular session called the BrailleBar.

Thank you.

Martha Folds from Thomas Pocklington Trust, a blind people's equality organisation.

And building on the points made by Ellen and Kate, will panellists commit to in future making sure that the voice of disabled people and claimants such as myself and others here are heard loud and clear at events such as this?

Okay, thank you.

And then after that, I had laser as well on my another eye.

I did actually then start working for the Thomas Pocklington Trust.

as an intern and it was there as well where everything again impacted because I realised that I was part of part of a community really but at the same time I had all these other things going on so to do with my mental health but also to do with my eyes that were just unstable at that point so when I started working for Pocklington I got a great deal of help which was really good really positive and began to use my research skills, which I hadn't been using after my PhD.

So my journey was really over about 10 years, I think, where my sight was still unstable.