London 2012 blog

I am a Family Service Assistant at the Royal National Institute of Blind People and a guide dog user. My wonderful guide dog is called Nadia.

I live in London and use public transport a lot to go to work and to other places. I was at Canary Wharf recently and met Mark Todd, who is the Olympic Delivery Authority’s Principal Access & Inclusion Officer. He asked me if I had any suggestions for the Accessible Transport Strategy that was being developed for the London 2012 Games.

This was a great opportunity to give my ideas on how to make transport more accessible. I hope that by talking to people who benefit from more accessible transport, London 2012 can help to make improvements for the Games. I had quite a few good ideas about how transport could be made more accessible.

For example, improved signage can help people with visual impairments, and also tourists, find their way around on the Underground. Sometimes I find that the directions are not always easy to understand or there are not enough signs. Transport is also more accessible when trains, buses and other modes run on time because it reduces overcrowding on the platform.

Mark wanted to take photos of disabled people using public transport and include these images in the Accessible Transport Strategy. I took part in this photo shoot because it is important to make people aware of how accessible transport can help everyone to enjoy the 2012 Games, either as a disabled user or a tourist.

The strategy was launched at the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden on Thursday 29 May and it was a great event. Some of the people who took part in the photo shoot turned up, as well as many other people involved in transport. The evening lasted for almost four hours, which gave people a chance to meet new people and find out more about the plans for the 2012 Games.

The museum itself looked really good and I remember seeing some of the old buses that were on display when they were in use and it brought back some memories!

Looking around the museum made it clear that transport in London is changing continuously. I hope in 2012 and in the future we can all see an even more user-friendly transport system and one that is a good representation of the UK.