Greater Anglia are aiming to help people travel with confidence through an online virtual tour of Ipswich station.
This hopes to support journey planning, helping those with disabilities know how to access the station and reduce anxiety when moving around.
Those using the station tour can locate the all public areas of the station such as the toilets, making quick change overs easier.
360 degree photography has been used to map the station and show the distance between public areas to allow people to navigate ahead of time.
Greater Anglia's Accessibility Panel, who are a panel of disabled customers who met with the operator to provide feedback on the project while it was being developed.
The tour provides both manual and autopilot options for navigation and shows an aerial view of the car park area.
The tour can be found at https://www.greateranglia.co.uk/travel-information/your-journey/virtual-tours
Highlighted on the map are tactile paving and assisted travel meeting points, which can be easily located through a drop down menu.
The station tour was provided by The Virtual Tour company with accessibility as a first thought.
The tour also has a spoken guide with closed captions on the home page with different options to help make the tour accessible to everyone, such as the ability to change font size.
The tour will gain future developments, such as incorporating sign language.
Other 360 tours are also available at the following stations: Bishop's Stortford, Broxbourne, Cambridge, Chelmsford, Colchester, Harlow Town, Ingatestone, Ipswich, Norwich, Shenfield, Southend Victoria and Stansted Airport.
Greater Anglia's Accessibility Manager, Rebecca Richardson, said, “The idea was to create a tool for customers to assist them with their journey planning and reduce the anxiety about whether the station would create any accessibility barriers. We want to give people who may not have travelled by rail for a while or maybe not at all, to do so with confidence.
“We are committed to making rail more accessible and providing quality information to enable more informed journey planning.
Neil Henderson, Managing Director of Virtual Tour Experts, said, “We've really enjoyed working on this project to create a number of industry firsts. The world of VR is developing fast but until now that development has not given due consideration to online accessibility.
“This tour is the World's first to incorporate an accessibility widget, guided tours, subtitled scene guides and there is much more to come. The user-first attitude of the team at Greater Anglia provided the perfect base for development and will ensure the platform continues to evolve.”
