BSL Access on Britain’s Railways: What the FOI Responses Reveal
An evidence review of passenger information, human interpreting, automated systems and the questions that remain unanswered.
By Tim Scannell , Deaf Accessibility and BSL Consultant. Evidence reviewed: 23 October 2026
When a railway announcement changes someone’s journey, passengers need to understand it in time to act.
For Deaf passengers, that raises practical questions.
Is the information available visually?
Is it available in British Sign Language (BSL)?
Does it include the latest platform change or an explanation given by a member of staff?
What happens during an emergency?
I have been requesting information from railway organisations to understand what their services provide.
This report brings together five substantive FOI responses: Chiltern Railways, Greater Anglia, Southeastern, TransPennine Express and South Western Railway. It also includes an update on a pending Network Rail request.
It is a developing evidence collection, rather than a complete audit of Britain’s rail network. The findings describe what each organisation reported at the date of its response.
My purpose is to recognise useful provision, identify gaps and support better access to passenger information.
What these responses can — and cannot — tell us
FOI responses provide evidence about the information an organisation holds. They are not a substitute for observing a service or testing it with passengers.
Throughout this report, three distinctions matter:
Confirmed provision: the organisation says a service or function is available.
Confirmed limitation: the organisation explicitly says a function is unavailable.
Information not held or not identified: the response does not establish whether the activity has occurred elsewhere.
A lack of recorded complaints does not establish that passengers are satisfied. Equally, a lack of records held by one organisation does not prove that no supplier or partner has carried out testing.
Questions reproduced inside an FOI letter must also be distinguished from the organisation’s answers. A claim appearing in the request is not automatically a finding confirmed by the response.
The services are different
“BSL access” can describe several forms of provision:
Station information in BSL gives passengers messages through screens or other equipment.
Remote human interpreting helps a passenger communicate with staff.
Recorded or automatically assembled content can provide particular messages, depending on the system’s coverage.
These services can complement one another. However, their presence does not establish that every spoken announcement reaches Deaf passengers in BSL.
A comparison of the checked responses
Chiltern Railways
Provides human BSL assistance through Convo, accessed through an app or browser. However, it reports no station-based BSL passenger information, and manually spoken announcements are not translated into BSL.
Greater Anglia
Reports BSL equipment at Cambridge South and Beaulieu Park. Neither service provides the live information about delays, cancellations, platform changes, route changes or emergencies listed in the request.
Southeastern
Provides limited BSL functionality at Tonbridge, alongside human interpreting through Convo. Manually spoken announcements are not translated into BSL, and no records measuring audio-to-BSL timing are held.
TransPennine Express
Provides BSL message boards at 16 stations, alongside human interpreting through InterpretersLive! Route-change and emergency coverage through the boards are not confirmed. Manually spoken announcements are not translated through the boards.
South Western Railway
Explains how One Scan scans and BSL video activity are counted. The separate reporting systems cannot reliably establish the percentage of scans that lead to BSL video use. This response concerns usage measurement rather than a full assessment of service provision.
Overall finding
Provision varies between railway providers. Having BSL support does not automatically mean that every announcement is accessible. Where coverage is not confirmed, further clarification is needed.
The aim remains the same: Deaf and hearing passengers should receive the same message, at the same time, with the same meaning.
The detail matters more than the headline station counts.
Chiltern Railways: human assistance, but no station-based BSL information
In its response dated 21 October 2026, Chiltern reported that none of its stations currently provided station-based BSL passenger information.
It did confirm human BSL assistance through Convo, available through an app or web browser. It also said a Kadfire trial involving BSL was planned.
Chiltern explained that live information was available through its website, app and some RailPoint screens, but was not currently provided in BSL. Where National Rail Enquiries produced BSL videos during major disruption, Chiltern provided links.
Manually spoken tannoy announcements were not translated into BSL. Chiltern held no recorded information about the timing between audio announcements and corresponding BSL information.
It also reported no records within the requested scope covering testing, assessments, feedback, evaluations or complaints. Its Accessibility Group had no BSL users at the time, although recruitment was underway.
What this means: access to a human interpreter is useful support, but the response does not establish direct BSL access to station announcements. Recruiting BSL users into the accessibility group offers an opportunity to strengthen passenger involvement.
Greater Anglia: two locations, with limited coverage
Greater Anglia’s response dated 21 October 2026 identified BSL provision at:
Cambridge South: a station welcome point.
Beaulieu Park: platform customer information screens.
The response described both services as using recorded human BSL content.
Asked which services provided live information about delays, cancellations, platform changes, route changes and emergencies, Greater Anglia answered “None.”
For manually spoken tannoy announcements and information about timing differences, it answered “Not applicable.” That wording should be preserved rather than expanded into a claim about how the systems operate.
Greater Anglia said it had not undertaken accessibility, equality or safety assessments relating to the units. It explained that the Cambridge South unit was on loan and that the Rail Delivery Group was undertaking testing. It was not aware of testing planned for the Beaulieu Park pilot.
What this means: the presence of BSL equipment should not be interpreted as confirmation of live disruption coverage. The reported external testing is a useful area for further evidence gathering.
Southeastern: limited station equipment and human interpreting
Southeastern’s response dated 21 October 2026 identified one station, Tonbridge, with a physical welcome point providing limited BSL functionality.
The response described this as AI-generated BSL for journey planning and departure announcements. It separately stated that the equipment provided limited information about departures and delays.
Southeastern also confirmed access to qualified human BSL interpreters through Convo using mobile devices. Passengers could obtain live information by asking staff and using Convo to support communication.
Manually spoken tannoy announcements were not translated into BSL. No recorded information was held about timing differences between audio and corresponding BSL information.
The response also provided an example of passenger influence: a Deaf member of its Accessibility Travel Advisory Panel had regularly raised the need for greater BSL provision. Southeastern said this feedback had helped accelerate the Convo rollout, with work expected to continue through the end of 2026.
What this means: Deaf passenger feedback can influence provision. However, communicating with staff through an interpreter and receiving an announcement directly remain different forms of access.
TransPennine Express: broader information coverage, with important gaps
TransPennine Express’s response dated 21 October 2026 confirmed BSL message boards at 16 managed stations.
It said the boards provided information about:
Departures.
Delays.
Cancellations.
Platform alterations.
The response described the system as combining recorded human BSL content with automated generation of information messages.
TPE did not hold recorded information confirming that route changes were separately communicated through the boards, or that emergency announcements were translated through them.
It explicitly confirmed that manually spoken public address announcements were not translated through the message board system.
TPE also provided human interpreting through InterpretersLive!, accessible through its website, ticket-office tablets and staff mobile devices. The reported hours were 08:00–20:00, seven days a week.
Its searches identified no recorded measurements of audio-to-BSL delays and no specific performance reports, assessments, feedback records or complaints within the scope described.
What this means: TPE reported a broader range of BSL passenger information than some other responses. Further evidence is still needed about emergency coverage, route changes, timing and passengers’ experiences.
South Western Railway: understanding what usage figures measure
South Western Railway’s response dated 20 October 2026 clarified how its One Scan and BSL usage statistics were collected.
This matters because a scan, a video play and a person are different things.
SWR explained that:
Every QR scan was counted, including repeat scans by the same person.
BSL analytics used browser or device identifiers, so one person could appear as more than one user.
Repeat video plays were counted.
BSL required the user to activate a toggle.
A completed video was recorded at its 100% checkpoint.
The QR scan system and BSL analytics were separate and not linked.
A passenger who scanned and then watched a BSL video could appear in both systems.
The response explicitly said the figures could not be compared, added together or used to calculate a BSL percentage of scans.
It also reported internal tracking validation, but no independent checking of the BSL analytics. Event-level BSL tracking in the supplier’s One Scan analytics was not available for the period before September 2025.
What this means: usage figures can show recorded activity, but they do not by themselves establish unique passenger numbers, understanding, translation accuracy or successful journeys.
This does not demonstrate that the service is ineffective. It defines the limits of the evidence.
Network Rail: further evidence is pending
Network Rail’s letter dated 19 October 2026 was an extension notice, rather than a substantive answer to the follow-up request.
The request covered assessments, passenger feedback, system capabilities, safety messages, deployment and a station-by-station breakdown.
Network Rail confirmed that it held relevant information. It said it needed more time to consider the public-interest balance concerning the commercial-interests exemption.
Its stated target for a full response was 16 November 2026, or sooner if possible.
The outstanding questions should remain labelled as pending. The extension does not answer them or establish what the eventual disclosure will contain.
What the responses show together
Manually spoken announcements remain a recurring gap
Chiltern, Southeastern and TPE explicitly confirmed that manually spoken announcements were not translated into BSL through the arrangements described.
Greater Anglia’s response used “not applicable,” which is a different answer and should be reported as such.
This raises a practical question: how does a Deaf passenger receive information that staff announce outside the structured information system?
Coverage varies considerably
A station with some BSL provision may offer limited prepared information, live departure information or access to a human interpreter.
Those differences need clear public explanations so passengers know what support to expect.
Evidence about timing is limited
The checked station-service responses did not provide measured audio-to-BSL timing data.
That leaves an important question unresolved: does information reach passengers early enough to support the same travel decisions?
Deaf involvement deserves greater attention
Southeastern described Deaf passenger feedback influencing its rollout. Chiltern identified a gap in BSL-user representation on its panel.
These examples show why it is useful to ask who participates, what influence they have and how their feedback changes services.
What I recommend
The following are my recommendations, rather than findings confirmed by the FOI responses.
Publish clear coverage information. Explain which stations, message types and communication channels are supported.
Test real journeys with Deaf passengers. Include disruption, short-notice platform changes, equipment failures and situations where staff give additional spoken information.
Measure timing and understanding. Assess whether information arrives in time and whether passengers understand what action to take.
Provide accessible fallback options. Consider what happens when a passenger has no smartphone, connectivity, battery power or access to staff.
Include different access needs. BSL, readable text, visual alerts and human support should form part of a wider approach that includes deafblind passengers, people with hearing loss and others with communication or sensory needs.
Make Deaf participation influential. Involve Deaf people in specifying, evaluating and improving services, with accessible ways to contribute and report errors.
Keeping the evidence open and understandable
This report should develop as further responses are received and checked.
Supporting documents should be presented in redacted form, alongside accessible text summaries. Personal details, officer names and identifiers do not need to be visible for readers to assess the findings.
Where supplier identities are removed from public copies, the remaining wording should preserve the meaning of the response.
Corrections and additional evidence are welcome. An updated response or clarification may change the picture.
The central question remains:
Can passengers access accurate, understandable information in time to make their journey safely and confidently?
I welcome experiences from Deaf passengers, deafblind passengers, people with hearing loss, railway staff, accessibility teams and technology developers.
What works well? Where does information still fail to reach you? What should railway organisations prioritise next?
Summary and conclusion
The aim is simple: Deaf and hearing passengers should receive the same information, at the same time, with the same meaning.
If hearing passengers are told about a delay, cancellation, platform change or emergency, Deaf passengers need that information too, through accessible communication that meets their needs, including BSL and clear visual information.
The FOI responses show that provision varies and gaps remain. Success depends on whether everyone receives the message in time to understand it and act.
Same message. Same time. Equal access.
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