Accessibility Awareness

About our Client

Auckland Transport (AT) is responsible for the planning, construction, and management of the transportation network in Auckland. They manage buses, trains, ferries, and cycling infrastructure to help Aucklanders move around the city efficiently and sustainably. AT aims to make their transportation network accessible to everyone, including those with different accessibility needs.

‍

Their Brief

AT aims to operate and maintain all transport services in such a way that all customers can use them safely, and with ease and dignity.  

AT needed a learning solution for their people that would extend awareness around the variety of accessible needs, build empathy and prompt them to consider what impact their decisions could have upon customers and their peers with accessible needs.

‍

Our Role

Our first step was meeting with the Public Transport Accessibility Group (PTAG) during the scoping stage of the project to determine a representative range of various accessibility needs of public transport users and how accessibility needs impact their journeys using public transport. We then used these discussions to influence the accessibility of the learning to ensure those needs were also met for the users. During this consultation we liaised closely with members of the PTAG with a range of accessibility needs from blind low vision, physical accessibility needs and neurodiverse accessibility needs.

We then crafted animated scenarios to tell the stories of public transport users and introduce the principles of AT’s public transport accessibility action plan.

Throughout the learning scenarios, AT staff select options that impact the journeys of their customers affecting their ‘happiness meter’. The happiness meter gives instant visual and audio feedback. At the end of the journey the decisions are recounted and the customer tells the learner what they enjoyed as a result of their decisions and what could have been done better.

To meet accessibility requirements, the learning solution was developed with built in subtitles and alt text descriptors that are screen reader compatible.

‍

Their Results

AT are now better able to:

• identify accessible needs among their customers
• respond to customers with accessible needs with empathy and understanding
• provide transport services in a way that enables all customers to use them with ease

‍