My name is Liam Perry (nicknamed Larm), and since birth I have been visually impaired. Born completely blind, throughout all of my 22 years I have suffered with sight loss. With each year spent in England I have strived for independence, I am a man with a mild disability, not a disabled man. I am independent, I live a normal life, I have a good job, I travel independently and live on my own in a flat completely free from any form of care.
I personally feel that forms of ‘care’ in my situation are oppressive and that rather than have somebody help me to do something, services should be made accessible for all. So I am going to tackle the biggest offender TRAVEL!
Travel services in Britain are not accessible to the visually impaired. buses do not stop when they are supposed to, trains are expensive, and train stations are impossible, with their timetables suspended from the ceiling and their trains having no clear distinguishable features.
If I want to get from A to B ‘independently’ on a train in the UK, I must contact the train station, and request assistance, an employee will help me on to a train, and another employee will meet me off the train. Is this independence? doesn’t sound like it to me. Just give me large print timetables, Large print signs, TV screens showing times and platforms at eye level. is this too much to ask?
Once you get off the train, on your ‘independent’ journey, what next? how do I know where to go? where is the exit? more to the point what is outside, what street am I on, If I am in London, how do I get to the London Eye, what bus do I catch? what tube do I get on? A perfectly sighted person can find all this out, read a nice small print leaflet or follow the nice signs suspended from the ceiling. The truth is at this point I cant even ask for help, there is no assistance outside of the train station, if I want to get to the London eye, I have to depend on the general public to help me. As you can imagine, this is often unsuccessful. I am lucky, I can just about manage on my own, but I need to plan all of my journey in advance using the internet.
So.. I plan to travel independently from Land’s End to John O’ Groats, stoping off at all the main sights Britain has to offer. I am going to see this country though the eyes I was given, independently. I will keep a video blog of my journey, documenting how difficult, or easy I find it, and at the end of my journey I will produce a film, showing the journey in its entirety and highlighting what needs to change.
I am blessed with pretty good eye sight now, it is not 2020 but it is good, I am very independent and do travel with out aid, so I plan to meet visually impaired and blind people along the way, to see how they find travel in the UK, to get their perspective.
I am currently in the planning stage, starting at Land’s End, I need to first plan the sights I want to see, then plan how I am going to get there. I will only use public transport and walking.
If you would like to find out more, get involved or have any ideas please do not hesitate to email me at perry.liam@googlemail.com
Keep checking the blog for updates.
