Great Western Coffee Shop

The recent mention of "word salad" in the thread about the new warning lights at Stonehouse triggered again a thought I have had occasionally about a group about whom we hear very little, and I cannot recall a thread on the subject on this forum, namely those who cannot read.

In my commuting days I would occasionally be surprised to be asked by someone on the platform - usually at Reading or Guildford - either where the next train was going, where the next train to the destination of the one I was waiting for would leave from or whether it was stopping at a named station, even though there was a sign or signs nearby with all this information nearby, or that they would have had to have passed to get to the point we were both at.

This would I guess probably happen once or twice a year. My inquisitor was usually not someone whose dress indicated a white collar worker on their way to work, but otherwise could be of any age or gender.

After one such encounter it suddenly dawned on me - they cannot read!

I have checked, and it appears that the UK claims a 99% literacy rate, but this still means there must be about 600,000 - 700,000 who cannot read, and I would guess that proportionally more of these might be dependant upon public transport than the population as a whole. I am happy to be corrected on that if any forum member knows better.

It has occurred to me too that all public transport has probably become a more difficult environment for them in recent years. The reduction in announcements at stations, disappearance of manned stations, move to encourage us to get electronic tickets on-line (how do they cope with the on-line world?) all must make life more difficult. And those defective on-board announcements we moan about periodically must be a nightmare for them.

Shouldn't their needs be moved up towards the top of the priority list when looking at overcoming the barriers to rail travel?

I would say there are more announcements than ever.  Not all of them useful of course, but I know of loads of smaller stations that never used to have a public address system which now have them.

A very serious issue.  Noting also those who's native tongue isn't English - isn't even the same character set.  I have struggled to help a passenger at Melksham Station with Chinese characters for station names on his phone, and to this day I'm helping people with the structure of their letters as they write English.  And these are bright people.

And for those of us who reed and right the kweenz Ingish - to what level?  Big words, long sentences, rare words - things need to be written for their audience.  From https://readabilityformulas.com/freetests/six-readability-formulas.php on a post here.


Fine for the Coffee Shop - probably not so good for platform signage at Piling or wherever.