Meeting of the Parliament 25 September 2014
I am suitably chastised.
Continuing with the positive—and, at a reasonable pace—I should also mention Dundee Contemporary Arts, which provides signed tours of new exhibitions as free events.
I understand that BSL signed tours carry a cost. Qualified signers charge, I think, up to £60 an hour. However, if we are to become a truly inclusive country, we need to bite the bullet, and we also need to recognise that it is not only at the end destination that those with a hearing disability struggle.
Deaf people often find it hard even to make travel and hotel arrangements. If they have no access to the internet or struggle to read English, because BSL is their first language, on-line booking is not possible and making a telephone booking is obviously not possible either. Usually people who are deaf or hard of hearing will turn to someone else to book on their behalf. However, the manager of Tayside deaf links, Alana Trusty, tells me that she recently tried booking train tickets on behalf of a group of deaf ladies and encountered problems using one of their debit cards, owing to data protection and security issues. Obviously we understand the need for safeguards, but we also need to think about flexibility.
Even if a deaf person succeeds in booking travel, other issues arise. As we all know, platform or gate changes and delays are usually announced over a tannoy system, often without accompanying visual indications of such changes, which a deaf person might not be able to understand in any case.
To be fair to First ScotRail, it has been supporting a voluntary staff programme training employees in sign language since 2006, but the experience of deaf or hard-of-hearing travellers suggests that there is still much to be done.
In order for Scotland to boast justifiably that it offers accessible tourism, much more must be done to meet the needs of all of those with disabilities. As I have acknowledged, there are costs involved in that, but those will be met as more and more deaf people from within Scotland and elsewhere become better able to visit our major attractions. In any case, as I noted at the beginning of my speech, this has to be about more than pounds and pence.
15:11