Copy of a letter to Euston soundings office

• AS Jane Austen would say, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a transport hub in need of designing signage for an ever-aging public must be in want of signs that only tall, fully-sighted, people can read.

As you can see from my address below, I live in what HS2 refers to as The Euston Throat (in reality, I live in Camden, on the border of Regent’s Park).

I’ve just had the Euston Newsletter, spring 2022, delivered to my door.

I am partially sighted and in neuropathic pain and have worked from home for more than 10 years before the bill for “phase 1” was introduced to parliament
(I hold two assurances from HS2 regarding noise insulation).

I am also only 5ft tall. My primary concern regarding of Euston station is that your planners need above all else to bear in mind that it is a railway station – not a shopping mall.

Approximately one in three adults will develop age-related macular deterioration from age 70 onwards. That’s 30 per cent of the adult population who will become partially sighted; who will most likely not be able to drive and therefore need to use a railway station more than other adults.

Yet your signage, from the glossy photo on page 2 of your newsletter, is readable only by people who are a) tall and b) fully- sighted.

In short, your signs design is too small. I will not be able to read those signs, even with my monocular telescope, because the designer of the telescope (how foolish!) did not factor in that I am not as tall as a giraffe.

A few other million people like me will not be able to read those small signs. And it will be time-consuming for your station staff to give us platform information.

Heathrow Terminal 5, Stansted and Copenhagen airports are all places where I have nearly missed flights because the signage was so bad. Please do not therefore follow their example.

CLAIRE LAZENBY
Mornington Terrace, NW1