Brighton station has become the pioneer in using cutting-edge Bluetooth technology to broadcast station announcements.

Train operators Southern, Thameslink, and Gatwick Express (GTR), which operate services from Brighton, recently demonstrated the UK’s first permanent installation of cutting-edge Bluetooth technology at a railway station.

Brighton was especially appropriate for the first installation, as the acoustics in the 185-year-old Grade II* listed station building are very poor.

The system uses Auracast to broadcast station announcements directly to hearing aids, earbuds, and headphones. The innovation is seen as one way in which public ownership is benefiting passengers during the railway’s transition towards Great British Railways.

Auracast is a standard feature in the latest smartphones and hearing devices and doesn’t require a special app. It works by using Bluetooth LE Audio technology to broadcast announcements from the station’s public address system to compatible hearing aids and can also be used by anyone with compatible headphones or earbuds.

Jenny Sarling heads Brighton & Hove Hearing Loss. Said that as a person with severe hearing loss, it’s a complete game-changer. It’s the difference between hearing and not hearing, and is the difference between feeling isolated on the station and worried about your journey and being able to relax knowing that if anything changes, you will hear it.

In March, Hull Trains partnered with Hull & East Yorkshire Centre for the Deaf on World Hearing Day to launch a film promoting empathy and inclusion for people living with hearing loss. In May, publicly owned train operators used Deaf Awareness Week to commit to better collaboration to help those with hearing loss.

We are really excited about the potential of Auracast and are delighted to see it being installed in Brighton Railway Station. Public transport is an essential service, enabling people to live, work, and participate fully in everyday life. However, for the 18 million people in the UK who are deaf or have hearing loss, announcements can remain a major barrier. Places like stations often have high levels of reverberation and background noise making important information hard to understand. We hope this will encourage more places across public transport, education, healthcare, performing arts and places of worship, to adopt Auracast and help make public spaces accessible for deaf people and people with hearing loss.”

Alastair Moore, Technology Lead at the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID)“