please empty your brain below

Hmm - Disability Discrimination Act. Is there a large type or braille version?
I had one of those for the first time at the weekend. The printer had a fault and was missing out a few lines, which is not that unusual and meant one line of that tiny text was impossible to read.
More to the point, how do visually impaired people fare when ticket offices are closed and they are forced to use ticket machines instead?
Dot matrix printers - something else you'll miss it when its gone (not).
I agree. The new ticket design is awful!
That's memory lane for me. Used to visit my aunt and uncle in Snetterton a lot when I was a child in the 60s and 70s growing up in Stepney. Used to regard visiting Diss as a trip to the big city after a few days of the limited attractions of Snetterton!
Andrew,

Those are fair questions.

1. The DDA was replaced by the Equality Act in 2010 although the latter still requires the provision of "reasonable adjustments" to make facilities and services accessible. I'm not a lawyer but I suspect that the costs involved in producing tickets in alternative formats would not be seen as proportionate or "reasonable" and that the offered adjustment would be to read ticket details for VI people and perhaps to give them a little leeway if they get on the wrong train.

2. Ticket machines are a bit of a personal bugbear of mine as I would far rather save time by collecting my own tickets rather than queuing.at the counter, however I am not aware of any models that provide audio feedback (surely possible in theory given developments in screenreader technology in recent years - I am writing this on an iPhone using VoiceOver). Operators' Disabled Persons' Protection Policies usually provide for the eventuality of ticket offices being closed by explicitly allowing affected disabled customers to purchase a full range of products with their Railcard discount applied (if appropriate) on board the train.

I should stress that these are my personal views/understandings on account of being a visually impaired person myself.
If you have pre-ordered the ticket on line, the relevant conditions etc should (?) have been made clear at the time of ordering, so the small print is really a confirmation of details you have already agreed to.
They are horrible looking things. Really doesn't look like someone's thought it out alt all.

Just look at the spacing on the Valid on line - no gap with the date. And what's with the line spacing for the next line? And why does it have to have a load of random gibberish still in the orange box?

Still at least it's compact. I have an e-ticket for a forthcoming journey to Scotland, where they've managed to fill an entire A4 piece of paper with useless stuff including details of the terms and conditions!
I suspect TOC Revenue Protection staff won't be too thrilled by the small font either - it makes it that much harder to check the date and train validity in a quick glance.
When the guard came round to check our tickets, I don't think he even tried to read the smallprint.
I can only think that the mock ups look so different because some kind of new generation of ticket printers is coming soon, although it'd no doubt take years to roll-out.

Otherwise they're incredibly misleading.

As for the time taken to print, the new tickets should see fewer bits of paper printed, so there *might* be a net time gain, although not for someone like me who often takes a bike where each trip needs two tickets per leg per bike...
'Improvements' Hah! Only for those running the system. Screw the 'customers'. & that's an automatic downgrade from 'passengers'.

At least 'passengers' acknowledges that people are actually trying to get places!
for some reason they print "not refundable. exchangeable for a fee before travel" on all of them. the fee is £10, thus being a redundant statement on 90% of tickets.
More often than not with NR ticket machines, I find that my tickets come with the previous customer's receipt. They could rectify this by printing the receipt first.
No "electronic tickets" on a smartphone then?
I wonder if the large, friendly 'airline ticket' so common for advance travel 15 years ago would have gone away if paper-embedded RFID was more readily available at the time. I always figured these went away so all tickets would be able to be used in the rapidly expanding fleet of automatic magnetic readers.

Surprised to see these new ones don't have the QR codes on them that most of my recent tickets have had.
My local station started issuing these horrors in May. From the quizzical looks from some on-board ticket inspectors on my travels, it seems as if not all rail staff are familiar with the new design.
@ Stephen Bird

But then you'd find your tickets came with the previous customer's RTN ticket...
The trouble is the mock-ups are hard to replicate because of the plethora of different makes of ticket kit (a by-product of the fragmentation of the rail system). Some print more readable tickets in better fonts; others don't.

Also, the plethora of ticket types does not seem to have been taken into account in the initial analysis.

Also, they stuck with the two orange stripes which obscure the text printed on them, rather than abandon these. Why not print on an overall pale colour. Why not print minor detail on the back?

On the continent, reservations are usually met by an airline (ATB) type ticket. Shorter, local journeys by smaller tickets. Horses for courses.

As one poster has observed, we did have the large ATB type at one time (still do for Eurostar) but this was sacrificed in favour of the magcard credit-card size purely for the London gates.

These are now too small for the amount of guff that needs to be crammed on. But the rail system is stuck with that size.

In theory, 2D barcodes (being trialled now on the credit-card size tickets) could mean that the large and readable ATB tickets could return.

Magcard technology could vanish and ticket gates could work off a 2D barcode reader reading large or small card tickets, smartphones and print-at-home (A4 sheet) tickets, and a smartcard reader.
The printing on the bottom orange section does not copy or scan well. It contains information important to TOCs when dealing with any complaints. Makes it very difficult to resolve ticketing issues when dealt with by letter or email.
@Stephen Bird
"They could rectify this by printing the receipt first. "
But then people would only take the receipt and leave the ticket behind
Not quite on topic, but related :-)
Given the number of empty reserved seats that are usually found on the London - Norwich and other services, either passengers are ignoring the seat reservation number and sitting elsewhere, or a lot of people have missed the train for whatever reason.

That is the disadvantage of Advance tickets over turn-up-and-go ones. Advance tickets may be cheap, but a single ticket is ridiculously expensive to buy if you end up getting on a later train.

When on a recent trip to Bournemouth, a nearby passenger found this out to his cost. His advance ticket that he should have used on the previous train cost him £15. He was shocked to be told by the inspector that he now had to fork out £51 for an off-peak single ticket!
Having had to take AGA Liv St-Norwich weekly for a year, I found that usually only coaches B and C are ever reserved (plus first class)

And I always just sat wherever was most convenient for me, which is the front of the train (since the exit at both stations are at the front, and Norwich has no footbridges mid-way down the platforms)
I received one of these style tickets for the first time a couple of months ago.
If you're travelling with a railcard discount the "Adult Standard Class" text near the top-right will have a second line below saying "with 16-25 railcard". Printed straight over the top of the train operator's name; both are completely illegible.

@Rogmi: Mmm, I've seen the same on London - Norwich. I do wonder whether some are from people booking two or three trains far in advance (as it still works out cheaper than a flexible off-peak ticket).
Why would anyone want to return to those massive tickets they used to have about 10 years ago. The small ones can fit inside your wallet safely, or failing that I like the self print ones. although there doesn't seem to be any logic to when you're offered these ones. Even different bookings with the same operator sometimes have machine pickup or pay for postage as the only options.
Can confirm I got a train to The North this weekend and was given the usual old fashioned ticket.

Perhaps the powers-that-be read DG :D










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