If only someone had to write a report about blind people's experiences of train travel...

[cosmolinguist]

I stayed in London last night, an extremely good idea after a ten-hour work day full of travel, the last thing I wanted was almost three more hours' travel to get home.

So I worked from the London office (gosh I sound like a wanker saying things like this) for most of today -- my manager suggested yesterday that I sleep in or leave early but I couldn't do much of either because of long-planned engagement with campaigners where I'd have really been letting my team down if I wasn't around.

So when I booked this train ticket I calculated that if I left right as that meeting finished this afternoon I'd be able to get the last train before afternoon peak time (which rendered my ticket unusable) would start.

And I would've been right but of course the meeting overran. Campaigners!

I got to Euston like six minutes before my train, so I didn't have time to go ask for passenger assistance. But since they have display screens I can actually read now, I could try to run and get the train myself.

Platform 3. So far so good. I rushed there, fishing out my work phone as I did because I have an e-ticket.

I have an e-ticket because I've had problems collecting paper tickets from the inaccessible machine or the office that's staffed for two hours early in the morning...except when it's not.

Neither paper tickets nor e-tickets are actually accessible.

Normally this is better (although I couldn't charge my phone today because Apple chargers suck and also my work laptop sucks but whatever).

But the app logged me out!

It never logs me out! It was fine yesterday! There was no warning or anything.

I was at the ticket barrier freaking out, shaking so I couldn't type my email address or password.

Even when I did finally manage it, it demanded a code sent to the email address. Which Outlook hid from me (all the other many many emails I get from this benighted institution go to the Focused inbox but for some reason these went to Other, which I don't get notifications of and which are more difficult to locate. Especially when you're freaking out because your train is visible and you can't get to it yet.)

I had to ask for another code and then I had to pay attention to which was the newer one so I didn't use the older one. This website has been known to lock me out for twenty minutes when I got my password wrong twice, so I was terrified of that happening too.

I copied the code and pasted it accordingly. Only at this point did I remember that my work phone doesn't let me paste anything. Because it lets me copy things as normal, oh yeah, no problem there. But when I try to paste them, my phone instead spits out a sentence something like "Your organisation does not allow data to be copied" or something like that. It tells you off. For expecting that you might ever want to copy something even when you have logged in with the same account to Teams and Outlook and Word and SharePoint... Surely no one ever needs to copy things right? Especially not a blind person who now has to memorize a string of random numbers...

My session timed out.

I had to start over again from the beginning. The shaky typing of my email address, the concentration it took to make sure my password was right when it's just showing up as a row of black dots... Getting a new email and knowing at least to check the Other inbox for it now. Trying to paste the six digits because my panicky brain had already forgotten that I couldn't. I had to do that three times before I got it to work.

I was almost in tears by that point.

I had also gone from hoping that the staff member standing just the other side of the ticket gates would help me, to worrying that he was seeing me about to cry or scream or more obviously have a panic attack, to wondering how Euston finds its staff because they really are an extraordinarily unhelpful bunch. I tried to imagine being as physically close as he was to any living being in such obvious distress as I was and just not reacting in any way.

When I finally got logged in and could access the lovely magical QR code, I tried to line up my phone and the scanner -- which is ridiculously hard to do, two smooth featureless panes of glass, and I find it ridiculously difficult not to accidentally touch any part of my phone screen in the process of trying to hold the phone there because if I do it'll select something, close the app, do something to ensure that the QR code isn't available for the scanner...

Turns out I was trying to use the outbound part of the ticket and not the return part.

This whole time the staff member stayed so exactly on the other side of the ticket barrier from me that when it finally opened for me I almost had to shove him out of the way.

Nothing but empty space in either direction and he still didn't move.

I can't help but think he didn't expect me to actually get through and get on my fucking train. I know that kind of stuff sounds paranoid but, it's not like it'd be the first time someone was waiting to laugh at a disabled person being prevented from doing something ordinary that everyone else is managing to do.

But: fuck that guy and fuck the app and fuck Microsoft and Apple because despite them all I did get my train and now I'm happily back home.

Comments

[angelofthenorth]

Bloody hell, that's awful. I'm sorry you had such a hellish experience. And I'm seriously cross with the person on the barrier for not being a sensible human being.

[brithistorian]

But just to be clear: You did make the train? At any rate, this sounds like a truly horrible experience — I was almost in a full-blown anxiety attack by the time I finished reading it, and I'm still not entirely calm. It sounds like it's a reason for a Strongly Worded Letter to somebody!

[cosmolinguist]

Sorry, yes I should have made that clearer: yes I did get the train!

[brithistorian]

Oh that's good! I thought that was implied in the end of the entry, but I wanted to be sure. Glad to hear you weren't stuck at the station doing whatever you would have had to do in order to get on the next train.

[otter]

May I somehow buy you a treat? You deserve something nice and soothing after that hellish rigamarole.

[cosmolinguist]

Oh you are so kind, but honestly I had a smooth journey home after that, I got home much earlier than I do when I go to London just for the day, the weather has been great, and it's the weekend now! So I have had many treats.

[otter]

I'm glad to hear that. :)

[cmcmck]

I know what you mean about Euston - they really are a useless bunch

[davidgillon]

Ugh, login codes are a pain even when you can cut and paste! And blocking cut and paste is egregiously stupid at the corporate level, there are just so many ways you can get around it if you want to illicitly exfiltrate data or whatever. "Hey, let's make everything, utterly everything, more difficult for our staff just in case one of them is ever naughty!"

[silveradept]

That is an impressive stressful situation, and what, the gate agent thought you might be trying fare evasion or something? That utterly useless person could be replaced by a mannequin for all the use they were in a troubling situation where their assistance would be useful.

[cosmolinguist]

what, the gate agent thought you might be trying fare evasion or something?

I can only presume so. But even then, you'd think anyone so obviously stopping in front of them with a mobility aid to tuck under his arm while he fought with his phone...might at least be worth a perfunctory "you ok?"

[silveradept]

You would think, but apparently they couldn't even be arsed to the perfunctory. I fell like this kind of thing would be a very effective Secret Shopper kind of thing, with sackings involved for those who are supposed to be assistance that don't actually assist.

[cosmolinguist]

Funny you should mention that... Sadly not with such enforceable consequences, but are talking about similar at work lately.

[silveradept]

I'll guess the report that comes out will be excoriating. Whether it will be listened to is another matter entirely.

[sfred]

Oof.

[skibbley]

This should be required reading for all of the people who design and people these sorts of systems.

[cosmolinguist]

I might sneak some of it in as examples in the report I have to start writing for work. :)

[barakta]

Euston is such a weird station with staff who seem to hate doing the basic assistances of their jobs. Doug P has sued them UMPTEEN times for repeatedly fucking up his assistance and various gaslightings and rudeness.

Reading your awful techno-fight with etickets made me feel sick in sympathy with you. I do think the app shouldn't be allowed to just log out like that. I am so wary of apps for this reason, they're too scary and I haven't yet braved the risk. I have a screenshot of my disabled railcard cos I'm paranoid that will fail to load. I wanted a hard copy one but didn't have time to get it delivered, so digital stuff it is.

Staff being really unhelpful is so unkind and I totally know what you mean about people who take joy in others' misery. A kind of anti-customer-service and Euston has that in spades. I do wonder what sad shitty awful lives they have that makes them so hateful. Even if he couldn't have helped, he could have shown you he cared and maybe helped with seeing on the phone.

As for the copypaste rule your work has, I think I'd actually tell them to cut that crap or see me in tribunal as it is a very basic accessibility feature and if people wanna copy shit, they'll do it with An Other device so they're not actually being cyber-secure. GRRR at your work for having such VI-hostile IT systems (and I know not the only VI org to have such shite). I'm out of fucks for employer access fail these days.

So relieved you got your train. I hope you DO put it in your report as the app being loggy outty is bad for everyone and EXTRA bad for disabled people who can't see and I imagine other impairment-impacts too.

[cosmolinguist]

staff who seem to hate doing the basic assistances of their jobs

Right? It's so weird. Like Piccadilly staff aren't always great at their jobs (with the notable exception of Nikki who I've made friends with) but they don't seem to begrudge my existence in the same way some Euston staff have.

I think I'd actually tell them to cut that crap or see me in tribunal as it is a very basic accessibility feature and if people wanna copy shit, they'll do it with An Other device so they're not actually being cyber-secure.

They're so shit with so many aspects of information security already -- our Teams chats used to disappear after three days which was so little time as to make them useless, we have to change our password every few months and when I told my works-in-information-security boyfriend about how I cycle through passwords with minor changes so I can fucking remember it (because I need it to unlock my computer umpteen times a day) he made such a pained face. I can't screenshot anything on my work phone either so when train tickets don't load on the train and the guards who already assume I'm doing something dodgy (because they assume anyone difficult is dodgy) and tell me to screenshot the ticket when it does load, and I tell them I can't, they give me looks that even I can tell mean they hate me haha.