Braille Sign Unveiled At Railway Station

A sign spelling out Colchester in Braille has been unveiled at the city’s main railway station.

The blue and white plaque – which features tactile lettering – is part of an exhibition of artwork created by blind and partially-sighted people.

The exhitibition, called Do You See What I See?, coincides with the 200th anniversaries of both Braille and the birth of the modern railway.

A similar sign has been unveiled at Norwich station.

The exhibition – which aims to raise awareness of how sight loss impacts people differently – has been designed by the Essex Sight Loss Council and was funded with £5,000 from Greater Anglia’s Customer and Community Improvement Fund

The artwork represents a number of different eye conditions, such as peripheral vision loss, and cloudy or hazy vision, based on descriptions from blind and partially-sighted people on the ways they perceive the world.

Visitors can scan a QR code to listen to an audio description of each piece of artwork and the eye condition it represents.

Samantha Leftwich from the Thomas Pocklington Trust, which funds the Essex Sight Loss Council, said the unveiling of the Braille sign was “very exciting”.

“It is tactile, so we want people to come and feel it as well as look at it and admire it for its beauty,” she told the BBC.

“We would like to encourage people to use Braille and certainly tactile lettering more, so that we can also access the information that sighted people get from a visual sign.”

Jonathan Denby of Greater Anglia said: “Having this [artwork] in the waiting room at Colchester is a chance to showcase the role and contribution of blind and partially-sighted people in a rail context.”

Mr Denby told the BBC the heritage railway sign was “the first time that some sort of Braille-related artwork has been put in place on the rail network”, adding the signs showed “how important the rail network is to those people who are blind and partially-sighted in living their lives normally”.

A similar art exhibition has been unveiled at Norwich railway station, with another due to be opened at Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, in the near future.