Vibrating wrist band to help bus passengers with sight and hearing impairments

24 April 2015

A regular issue raised at our twice-yearly Transport Focus accessibility forum is the information available to passengers who have sight or hearing impairments.

Transport Minister Baroness Kramer announced last month that Daria Buszta, aged 17 from Nottingham, has won a competition to improve bus journeys for people with sight and hearing impairments. 

The wrist band is low-cost and links to the driver’s ticket machine to vibrate and alert the person wearing it that their stop is approaching.

Daria has been awarded £1,000 and will be given the opportunity to develop her design with local businesses into a working prototype. This will include using funding worth £100,000 from the Transport Systems Catapult, one of seven technology and innovation centres established and overseen by the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK

Baroness Kramer, head judge for the All Aboard competition, said:
“Disabled people have the same rights as anyone else to access public transport, but there remain obstacles. This competition, driven by the lack of audio-visual for the deaf and blind, was a fantastic opportunity to make buses more user-friendly for all of the passengers who rely on them.”