Advocacy Talks Episode 17 – The Independent Travel Support service

in this episode Madeleine spoke to Fiona Kelty, Independent Travel Support Assistant with Dublin Bus. She explained how this service works and shared some useful tips to help people who are blind or vision impaired travel independently on public transport. For contact information to avail of this service nationally visit Independent Travel Support - Transport for Ireland.

Transcript

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Welcome to Advocacy Talks, a podcast from the advocacy team at Vision Ireland. Here's what's coming up on this episode. When I did my training in Birmingham many, many years ago, there was no audible announcements. There was steps up onto the bus. It was just not very accessible. But when I did the training, we were told, okay, the first thing you do is you ask your driver to let you off the particular stop. Then you bear in mind the driver might forget he's busy, he's got other things to be doing. So you also ask a passenger beside you, are you getting off at such a stop? And you talk loudly. So if they're not getting off at that stop, maybe another passenger might speak up. And now here's Madeleine McNamara. Hello everybody. And thank you so much for tuning into Advocacy Talks. Again, it was really wonderful to have you listening in. Well, before I introduce today's guest, I just wanted to remind you about our last episode, which honestly was so inspiring. I really think you should listen to it if you didn't get the chance. So I spoke to Clark Reynolds, who is visually impaired, pretty much blind. And he recently ran the Brighton Marathon. And he managed a world first because he ran it using the Metaglasses and the Be My Eyes app as his sighted guide. So, you know, he's a phenomenal individual. There was so much more to hear about him and learn about his journey and all of the things he's involved with. So if you didn't get to listen to that, I really do recommend it. So today I'm joined by somebody who many of you might be familiar with because she was a long time employee of Vision Island before she jumped into her new role. So I'm very happy to be talking today to Fiona Kelty, who is the independent travel support assistant with Dublin Bus. So Fiona, welcome to Advocacy Talks. Thank you very much, Madeleine. Nice to be here. Oh, you're so welcome and delighted to hear you. And I hadn't realized when we were just starting beforehand and I hadn't realized that you had worked at Vision Island because we didn't pass, you know, we didn't pass, cost pass when we, you know, when you were here, I joined after you. So it was amazing to hear that you had been in Vision Island and to learn all about that. But to be quite honest, I was never in Vision Ireland when I was there. Oh, well, there you go. I was called NCDI, National Council of the Blind of Ireland, and I was there for 40 years. But the name changed shortly after I had left. So, yeah, amazing. So I'm sure many people will be familiar with you, which would be love. They'll be delighted to hear that you're doing such an amazing job, you know, in your new role, which, as I said, is as a independent travel support assistant in Dublin Bus. So, you know, maybe you could just tell me what that service is. Well, it's very straightforward. It's a bit like if anybody has done orientation mobility training for a vision impaired person would get in touch with NCBI and we would teach them their route to and from wherever they want to go. So it's like that, except instead of just being vision impaired people, we deal with any person at all with any kind of disability who would like to use the service. So we don't have any restrictions on, you know, you have to have this, that or the other documentation. It's literally just your ring up. We prefer you to email in name, address. If you want to tell us your disability, fine, there's no incentive on that. It makes more sense if you do so that we can properly accommodate you and then tell us where you want to go. And then we will then there's actually before I say, I keep saying we, Roger Flood is the main man. Roger's doing it for years and highly recommend it. When I was working in NCBI, I heard nothing but good about Roger and anybody who had worked with him was praising him up to the skies. Absolutely brilliant. And then he would occasionally have somebody helping him like a short term temporary assistant during the summer. There was a few people during the summer that used to help out. And then they decided, right, they're going to increase because the numbers were increasing. People were hearing about him. They were wanting the service. So they said, right, we'll hire some more full time people. And they got Philip Salmon, John Brennan and myself. Now, I was only full time short term because I had retired from NCBI, took early retirement from NCBI and I started with Dublin Bus. But I found I had arthritis was setting in and I found I couldn't do a full day. It's a lot of walking, getting on and off buses, standing, waiting, all of that. It's lovely work. I really enjoy it. But my body wasn't able for a full day every day, five days a week. So I decided, right, I was going to stop. And then Dolores, who is my manager at the time, Dolores Henson and Roger himself, Roger Flood, said to me, would you not just do if you're not able for a full day, just do mornings. So I just do mornings. Now, having said that, I'm flexible because the person might want to work in an afternoon. So, OK, I'll work an afternoon instead of a morning. Or occasionally I would do a full day. Now, it does take it out on me physically if I do a full day. But we would only do a route with someone if it involves public transport. Doesn't have to be Dublin Bus, has to be public transport. I can't just do somebody their walk to their local school or to the shops or whatever. I can't. But I can if they're taking a bus, train, Lewis, anything like that. Then, yes, you know, I can work with them. So it's about making you making people making it easier for people to avail of public transport even though they have disabilities. So it's for people who, as you say, who are doing their regular routes around and need to and would you make can you do more than one route with an individual or, you know, so if they needed to go from, you know, home to to drop their kids to schools, one thing and then another route was maybe, you know, going to their local shops or whatever it was. I know it has to use the public transport, but can you do more than one route with somebody? You can do more than one route with one person, yeah. But the thing is that we do have a waiting list, the same as NCBI's Orientation Mobility Instructors have a waiting list. We have a waiting list. So strictly speaking, if somebody applies for a particular route, we teach them that route. And then at that point, they don't automatically then. I mean, they could have us for life. You know, I'd like to go here. So it's kind of a priority thing as well that if somebody needs to get to college, say they have an actual start date for a job or for a college or a centre or something, and they have to learn the route in time to be there and to be able to do that independently when that opens, then they would be priority. So somebody else that you've been working with now wants to do another route. You say, sorry, no, you'll have to reapply because these are the people waiting to attend whatever and they have to take priority. So it depends on the situation. If there's nobody waiting who needs it more than you do, you can certainly apply for. You can apply for another one anyway, but nothing to stop you. But just you may not get it immediately. You may, if you're lucky, get it immediately, but you may not. Yeah. No, that makes sense. You know, because as you say, demand is so high and you need to make sure that everyone who needs it gets a chance to have it. And is there a kind of general, you know, probably varies, but you know, how long would it kind of could it take for someone to learn a route, you know, until they're confident with that? You know, I mean, maybe some people do it after once, but maybe other people is longer. I mean, what's the kind of rough kind of sense of how long it takes? Literally, it's how long is a piece of string. It depends on the route and it depends on the individual. I had a person with a learning disability, young woman with a learning disability wanting to get to her workplace, which had moved. And in order to get to it now, she was going to have to do it. I didn't do her original route with her, but she was on the waiting distance applied. It was seconded to me to work with her. And she had to get three separate buses to get to her and a walking route to and from, you know, in between everything else. So learning disability, three buses, you know, tricky, very tricky, very difficult and time consuming. Even before she got into work, she'd be tired, I'd say, you know, but she was so keen. She loved her job. She loved her workmates and her boss and everything else. And she was so keen and she really wanted to do it. I would have thought somebody like that, it would take them a few months. She was very quick to learn, have to say. I can't remember exactly how long it took, but I was amazed. And I think it was her so her own motivation. Plus, she was a kind of young one who had great. She had very good spatial awareness and very good understanding of the idea of doing a route. A lot of people don't. They're kind of a bit vague about it. And oh, where do I go now? And what do I do then? And, you know, it depends on the person very much. I'd say that although she had a learning disability, she was very capable in other ways and very steady and very determined. So, again, like somebody else who has a much greater disability, it might take them a lot longer or they might not be able to do it at all. You might have to go back to the drawing board and say, look, you can't do this this way. You may be going to have to take a lift from family or change jobs or something. You know what I mean? But it depends on the person. Again, you could have somebody, as you say, who's very quick to learn and you could show them the times and they'd have it. Now, it was just as quick that you could just do it in one lesson. Sure, their family could do that with them. You know, that that's true, obviously, if it was that simple. But I mean, so just sort of, I guess, bringing the focus around to people who are blind or vision impaired. Do you work with many people who are blind or vision impaired? Do they contact the service much? Yeah, we're getting quite a lot. I mean, I don't see the actual waiting list. It's my manager would see that and would sort of allocate people to the different workers according to how busy each of us is. Or, you know, obviously, there's no point giving somebody, you know, someone to work with who's way, way, way far from where they live when there's some other travel assistant who is much closer to them. So a lot of it be some of the geographic. Some will be, you know, on the person's level of ability and experience. So because I have the experience with vision impairment, I do have quite a lot of people with vision impairment being referred to me. But that's not to say I never get any other disability. I do, but it does vary. And I was told I think it was last year we got the highest number of vision impaired people applying for the service ever. We got quite a lot. I think it can depend as well on the waiting list in vision. Because, like, if people with vision impairment are looking for training and there's a long waiting list and they're told, sorry, it'll be next year before we can get to you. Obviously, then they're next. If they've heard about the independent travel support service, they would probably apply for that in the hope that they'd get that quicker. That they might or they might not. You know, we as a. Yeah, no, it's great to hear that, though, the people are availing of the service. I mean, because that's the whole thing. It's about making people aware of the services that are available and, you know, getting getting the help they need. And, you know, what what would you might, you know, what would you kind of find that, you know, for people who are blind or vision impaired? I mean, I guess people would know. But what would you think? What are the main kind of challenges that they're facing? And do you come across any particular, you know, challenges that that they might have that you're able to help people with? Well, one thing is the audible announcements don't always work. So I always report them to my manager. If I'm in a bus and the announcements aren't working or they're very, very quiet and you can't hear them, then I would report them to my manager and she would get in touch with the garage and make sure that that was corrected. But yeah, that would be a big deal. But when I'm teaching people myself, I would always teach them. When I did my training in Birmingham many, many years ago, I was. There was no audible announcements. There was steps up onto the bus. It was just not very accessible. But when I did the training, we were told, OK, the first thing you do is you ask your driver to let you off the particular stop. Then you bear in mind the driver might forget he's busy. He's got other things to be doing. So you also ask a passenger beside you, are you getting off at such a stop? And you talk loudly. So if they're not getting off at that stop, maybe another passenger might speak up and say, oh, yeah, I am. And then the other thing is you check your watch. Once you've sat down, once you're safely sitting down, check your watch, see the time and then check the time when you get off the bus. So you give an idea of the length of time. You also notice the traffic. Is there a lot of heavy traffic? Is the bus crawling along? Another day, there might be less traffic. The bus might speed along. So the actual time is you sort of say if it normally takes you half an hour on the bus when the bus goes at a normal pace, if the bus is going more slowly, it's going to take longer. If the bus is going faster, you want to get ready to be at your stop faster. So all of these things, you're also noticing twists and turns of the bus. Maybe there might be ramps on a particular part of the route. There could be, I mean, one person working at the moment is very handy. Just before her stop, it's a long straight stretch. Then there's a sharp right that you really would notice and a sharp left. And then that's her stop. So little things like that. Even if there's no announcements working, you've got all this other stuff that you can use to fall back on to help you to find where to get off. But yeah, having the audible announcements is a big deal for a lot of people. It's very reassuring. Yeah, absolutely. And not just for people who can't see, you know, for everybody, I think. Everybody, yeah. But it is for tourists, 100%. But as you say, no, it's great, it's great to sort of, you know, to have all those skills to fall back on. And I think that is so important. And I think, you know, because I obviously don't see very well myself. I have some vision, but to be aware of all those other things, you know, if you have for me, I'll have some sight so I can maybe see some landmarks, you know, as well as the fact that the, you know, but I mean, and when it wants to get stuck and that's no good. So then I'm more relying on you say the twist and turns. So it's kind of it is it's very much I think people do, you know, needing to be aware that even though we want all those things to be working, the audible announcements, you know, then there's always going to unfortunately, nothing's 100% going to work. And so you do need to have those. Those are the skills. Do you tend to use any sort of technology with people at all? You know, say like their Google Maps or other kind of navigation, things like that to use? Yeah, I actually find an awful lot of the young people with learning disability that I work with are better at the apps than I am. They're very, they're on the phone. You have to tell them to put the phone away like they're living. You know, they'd be there texting their friends or going on chats and whatever. I said, put the phone away. You're not allowed to vote. You have to pay attention for you around the bus. But I have occasionally showed people. Look, this is an app that you can use and it'll show you here. See the little blue dot? That's you moving along and see that you can click on the thing. It will mark your stop. This is a particular app that I like. It's Nextbus free. Nextbus, I think Nextbus is still open free. And then there's another one, Nexttrain. I think it's Nexttrain Ireland, free. And they're free to download and they're very simple. They're very intuitive to use. As I say, what I do, I use the apps myself. The ones I use myself are I would use Google Maps to initially scope out a route. Now, that's not always correct because the Google Maps will show you. They sort of say, right, this bus will get you into town. This Lewis will get you into town, whatever. And then you walk 10 minutes and then it's this and then it's that. And then when you look at it, I usually have my personal phone and my work phone side by side. And I'll get one bus route. I use the Nextbus token. Get one bus route up. Say I put the 16 bus route up and then I put the E1 bus route up. And I have a look and I see where do they come near each other or do they come near each other? And instead of going all the way into town to change the other bus and get it back out, there's a point usually somewhere along the line that you can get easily from one to the other without having to go all the way in and then all the way out again. So I look at that. So that's why I use Google Maps and Google Maps is a general overview. And then the different Nextbus token usually for the kind of comparing routes and then seeing where things overlap. And then the other thing I would do is I would actually always go and physically check out the route because what Google Maps and what the other apps don't show you is the conditions at the actual points where the person is walking or waiting for a bus or whatever. And you have to go and check it out yourself. There could be a very narrow footpath. There could be very broken surfaces that could be very badly lit. So for winter evenings and that there could be a lot of things that you might say, oh, God, this is a dodgy area. I wouldn't like an 18 year old son or daughter of mine to be standing around here by themselves at such a time of day or whatever. So there's all these things that you have to physically check yourself. You have to go out and check the route. And obviously, for wheelchair users, you're checking is there an actual dished curve that they can cross the road. Is the car dished on both sides? It's weird because sometimes they have a dished one side and not the other. Not on the other. They're getting better. I remember it out somewhere. Where was I? I think it was. And I went around with the area manager of the county council there and pointed out to him, look, we've got a nice dish in here to cross the road. And look, when you go to the other side, it's a high curve all along. And I've come across similar situations in Dublin for crossings. So I think it's I don't know. I couldn't tell you the name of the bridge, but you come across one of the bridges over the Liffey and you've come across and across it and then you get to the other side of the bridge and the crossing isn't on that side. It's on the other side of the bridge. You know what I mean? That's the Rosie Hackett bridge. I complained about that at the time as well. OK, now I need to cross. I need to go across the bridge to get to the other side so that I can get across the road on the keys kind of thing. You probably have to cross Holocan Street when you get to the other side. If you're going up towards Berkey, going up Berkey towards Westmoreland. Yes, so it's all of that. It's great to know, though, that, you know, that you are, you know, as you say, your team is so dedicated and knowledgeable that you're kind of really doing a lot of work, as you say, preparing for teaching somebody a route to let them know about all these things and making sure that it's the best route for them. Well, you might actually have to change the route. Like you might initially think, OK, I'll use this route and then you go out and look and say, no, no, no, back to the drawing board and try and find an alternative route, which might not be easy. It might be difficult to find an alternative route that also has you kind of the least of the two evils kind of. Well, on this route you have and you can actually say to the person or if it's a young person with learning disability, you can say to the parents or their key work or whatever. So look at on this route, you have this problem. On this alternative route, you have this other problem. Which do you think yourselves like is the safest? We always go with safety. Safety first. Safety is the guideline. Like you do not put somebody on a route that's not safe for them. So for me, it's, you know, as you say, Google Maps or something might take you, it might take you three different bus routes, two, three, whatever. But as I know, OK, I could get the train into here and then it might take a bit longer, but I know that's, that's, that's better to do that, you know, rather than the quickest route, but it might be the safest or it might be the easiest. Yeah, exactly. These things have to take into consideration. That's fantastic. Well, honestly, there's so much to it, isn't it? I think there's a lot more than people who don't have challenges in terms with disabilities. I don't think, you know, don't realize all of the complexity that goes into a kind of journey for somebody with a disability and all the things that you have to think about and be aware of. I must mention as well, the jam card that has been rolled out and that's really helpful. Everybody's very happy with that. They are double bus drivers and I'm sure go ahead drivers as well. And both air and drivers have all been shown, you know, what the jam card is and what it is. It's called jam just a minute, J.A.M. And if you need a little bit more time, a little bit more support, if you have some kind of disability, you show that to the driver as you get, excuse me, as you get on the bus. And then they know you've got some kind of disability. It mightn't be obvious to look at the person that they have something, but they realize, okay, give this person a bit more time, wait until they find their seat before you take off, you know, all that kind of thing. And they might ask you to let them off at a particular stop or whatever. So, you know, just showing the jam card covers all that conversation for somebody who maybe isn't good at expressing themselves. They just show the jam card and the driver then understands this person needs a little bit more attention, a little bit more of my assistance. So that's very helpful for a lot of people. I just want to say as well, the Dublin bus, our service, if a Dublin bus goes there, we go there, but we don't necessarily have to go on a Dublin bus there. As long as it's within that circle, that area of the greater Dublin area, then if we can go there on a Bus Aaron bus, on a Go Ahead bus, on a Lewis, on a Dart, you know, we go on all of those within that area, but we don't go outside that area. Outside that area, the service is run by Bus Aaron. So Dublin bus runs within the greater Dublin area, runs the independent travel support service within the greater Dublin area. Outside the greater Dublin area, it's Bus Aaron and it's also local link. So the other areas that are provided for are, where did I write it down? I just want to make sure I don't forget. I know it's Dublin, Cork. I think it's Cork, Galway, Limerick. Yes, Waterford and then Drawad and Dundalk have recently been added as well. Yeah, I've had it written down here. Cork, Galway, Limerick, Waterford, Drawad and Dundalk. So Drawad and Dundalk is run by local link by TFI directly, I think. And then the rest, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford are run by Bus Aaron. It's all financed by NTA. NTA funded and oversee it, but it's run by the actual companies, Bus Aaron and Dublin bus and local link. So they're the ones that actually run it. Our TFI, I think, are the ones running local link. Yeah, and similarly for Bus Aaron, as you say, you know, you have the fact that you can do all the different transport companies within your area. So Bus Aaron, they can take you on the train and, you know, the different buses and things there as well. So it's great to know that, you know, that that service is there. It's not just Dublin, it is around the country. And I know, you know, that NTA are trying to roll that out to more and more places to make it, you know, available for people wherever they're living. So it's fantastic. You asked, sorry, can I just fill in a little bit about the, you asked me about the technology in that, and I will say that some people use other apps as well. And there's people who use, like there's one person I was working with and he liked Soundscape because he had that on his iPhone and he was, he had hard of hearing and vision impaired. His sight was worse than his hearing. He had good hearing aids and whatever, but he was using Soundscape and he found it very helpful because it gave him his bearings. He was walking from his local area to a bus stop and it gave him his bearings of where he was. He remembered it from when he had good vision and good hearing and it kind of gave him the, oh yeah, I'm passing that road now. I'm passing this road now and he found that helpful. Another app that there's a young woman I'm working with at the moment and she finds Lazarello helpful when she's actually on the bus and as they go in one way, she had kind of a right turn, a left turn and that was her stop. Going the other way, it's a long straight stretch and it's very hard to tell when you're at your stop. So there's also, there's two different, one is called upper Church Street and the other is called Church Street. And if you kind of didn't catch the upper, you might think you're at Church Street. So, you know, it's easy to go there on. So what she uses, she uses Lazarello, which is, if you're looking for it on the app store, it's got like a picture of somebody with a guide dog and what it does is it tells her the names of the junctions as she's passing them. So she knows when she gets it, it doesn't tell the bus stop, but she knows when she hears May Lane, the junction of May Lane and Mary Lane and Church Street, she knows, okay, push the bell, mine is the next stop. So that's how she works. Yeah, so again, like it depends, she had to learn how to use that. Like she was, you know, but it was fine. She's well able. So, you know, one thing you can, you can use an app maybe for something that it's not necessarily designed for or you can use it the way it is designed for. But again, it has to be, and she's totally blind. So she has to have it actually speaking to her. So she'd have her, she has it linked to her hearing aids. So she has a Bluetooth to the phone and she can just listen for the sounds, you know. That's amazing. That's amazing. Oh, thank you so much, Fiona. I mean, it's been fascinating to hear all the different, you know, things that you're doing there and people that you're working with. And I think it is an amazing service. So, you know, we really did want to just highlight it for people to make them aware that that is available. And, you know, hopefully, you know, because it's all about, as you say, helping people to be independent, to be able to live their lives and do the things that they want to do. So thank you so much. Can I just let people know how to contact the service just yet? Of course, that's vital. Yes, please. If by email, you would email independent.travel at dubbinboss.ie. That's our lowercase. Independent.travel at dubbinboss.ie. If you're doing the BOSAIR in the outside of Dublin, then the email is independent.travel at boseran.ie. So it's the same beginning. But just instead of at dubbinboss.ie, it's at boseran.ie. And again, all one word, all lowercase. So E-I-L-E-A-N-N. Okay, that's really helpful, Fiona. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to talk to you today. And, you know, really, really do appreciate it. Thank you very much for having me, Madeline. It's a pleasure. You're very, very welcome. So look, you know, great to talk to Fiona. If you do need any support from Vision Ireland, as always, you know, you can go onto our website at www.vi.ie. And our info line is 1-800-911-250. So look, I hope you'll tune in next time. And I don't know what we have planned yet, but we'll... Well, I think I do, actually. I've got a thing possibly happening, which will be very interesting, very different to this. So, you know, stay tuned for that. And we'll hopefully catch up with you then. Bye for now. Thanks for listening to Advocacy Talks. To get in touch with our advocacy team, send us an email to campaigns at vi.ie. Or why not join one of our local advocacy networks, where you can work together with others to solve some of the biggest problems facing blind and partially sighted people in Ireland. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.