Brutal bus predicament leaves Aussie woman, 25, sobbing: 'I'm freaking out'
The young woman is speaking out in the hope a simple change could help others struggling with this huge public transport problem.
An Aussie woman left “freaking out" and suffering a bout of anxiety over a horror public transport incident has shared how her disability affects her movements every day. Due to her 30 per cent vision Chanelle Morris can’t see bus numbers until the driver has already been hailed down, often with negative consequences.
Morris was born with a visual impairment which affects her daily life, from reading signs and menus to catching buses, Ubers and navigating shops or restaurants and she said asking for help often angered others or made her feel like an “inconvenience”.
Explaining the incident, the 25-year-old told Yahoo News Australia her bus stop only catered for two routes and she’d checked the time of her bus which was running late due to roadworks.
She was unable to read the numbers on the buses as they neared the bus stop so was forced to hail down two, which were both the wrong ones, while the second driver talked to her like she was “stupid”.
“People say that there is public transport for people with disabilities so we shouldn’t rely on government funding,” Morris said in a video shared online.
“This is one of the worst things I have done with my low vision. I got on the wrong bus twice because I can’t read the numbers. I got on the second bus and the guy was like really angry that I had hailed him down, but what am I supposed to do?
“You get on the wrong one, you upset people. People get mad at you. It’s not that hard to make the bus numbers bigger so I can actually get places.”
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Aussie 'basically had a breakdown' over horror bus experience
The Gold Coast woman, who shares Instagram posts showing her snowboarding, playing golf and travelling, told Yahoo News Australia: “I got off the bus and basically had a breakdown. I had to build up the strength to try again. I was in tears."
"It was the worst experience ever. It took me a 40-minute bus drive to calm down. Society is the biggest barrier we face, it’s not inclusive. We live in a world not set up for disability. The anxiety gets overwhelming, it can be exhausting.”
While she could print a sign with the bus number, Morris said she’d “get honked” or yelled at, plus this put the onus back onto the disabled person to fix the problem, rather than society becoming more inclusive.
Changes needed to make life easier for Aussies with disabilities
The latest ABS figures show that 5.5 million Aussies have a disability, while Vision Australia said 453,000 people have a visual impairment — this is expected to rise to 564,000 by 2030.
A Translink spokesperson, which operates Queensland's bus network, told Yahoo News it was looking at ways to help people with impaired vision to catch their buses, including a system of digital hailing.
“In addition to future plans, we have installed Near-field Communication (NFC) tags at all urban bus stops state-wide. The NFC tags link directly to the specific bus stop webpage which includes service disruption and real-time arrival information,” they said.
“The Translink website and app are compatible with screen readers which provide audio descriptions of the onscreen content. Real-time arrival information allows customers to identify when their bus is approaching their stop.”
Translink's Vision Impairment Travel Pass provides free public transport for eligible customers and the company has since reached out to Morris to see what support they can offer her.
In the comments on her recent video many fellow Aussies sympathised with Morris' situation.
“Bigger bus numbers, and a speaker at the shelter that announces the coming bus number as they drive close to the bus stop,” one suggested.
“I don’t have low vision and find it hard to know the number sometimes. Can’t imagine the struggle,” another added.
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