Here's a new crossing i found in france.

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John Haynes

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May 17, 2026, 6:01:52 AMMay 17
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Hi guys, 

Those of you who have the WhatsApp group will know that I have just come back from a trip to France. During my trip I made a number of audio recordings which I put on the WhatsApp group. For those of you not on whatsApp, here is a taste as this one shows a new type of crossing. Of course, it may not be New, it's just this is the first time I've seen or heard of it. I made this recording while walking from my hotel to Gardener Austerlitz, which is on the Southbank of the sin. The road which had this particular talking crossing was located just outside the Gardener Leon station which some of you may know is one of the busiest stations in P

I'd be interested to know what you think. The file is an attachment so you should be able to open it using drawers. Cheers, enjoy and please come back with your comments.


John Haynes

20260515 Gare de Lyon road crossing.m4a

Sophia Chandler

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May 17, 2026, 6:39:33 AMMay 17
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Hello John
I have been following on WhatsApp your audio recordings and adventures. I found them very interesting and I believe you are a very brave man. Well done! Regarding this talking crossing it is interesting but the ultimate word you mentioned is… Walking straight. Okay, walking on a straight line might be perhaps easier for somebody with some level of sight. Ho However, people with no site at all are as a rule not walking on a straight line even if we think we are!
Best wishes
Sophia
Sent from my iPhone

On 17 May 2026, at 11:01, 'John Haynes' via AVIP <avip...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Hi guys, 

Those of you who have the WhatsApp group will know that I have just come back from a trip to France. During my trip I made a number of audio recordings which I put on the WhatsApp group. For those of you not on whatsApp, here is a taste as this one shows a new type of crossing. Of course, it may not be New, it's just this is the first time I've seen or heard of it. I made this recording while walking from my hotel to Gardener Austerlitz, which is on the Southbank of the sin. The road which had this particular talking crossing was located just outside the Gardener Leon station which some of you may know is one of the busiest stations in P

I'd be interested to know what you think. The file is an attachment so you should be able to open it using drawers. Cheers, enjoy and please come back with your comments.


John Haynes

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<20260515 Gare de Lyon road crossing.m4a>

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ano...@ntlworld.com

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May 17, 2026, 7:01:37 AMMay 17
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Hi John,

 

Thanks for this audio recording, I found it most interesting that in France, they have someone talking whilst you wait to cross, before the little jingle kicks in.

 

Regarding walking straight, well, I can struggle, especially when walking in open space, plus the fact that as I don’t hear on my left side, I’m only hearing sound to my right and in front of me, although I can walk fairly straight, as I tend to walk briskly across roads.

 

When we were in Dublin in 2014, I really liked their crossings, with the slow clicking sound whilst you waited to cross, which then changed into a more rapid clicking sound at the point when it was safe to cross.

 

I believe there are similar crossing to that in Dublin, in other parts of Europe.

 

Paul.

karl.f...@btinternet.com

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May 17, 2026, 8:11:01 AMMay 17
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Hello John

 

That’s an interesting little recording you attached.  Would you mind if I shared it with NFBUK people?

 

How are you and how is Laura?  I like to think that your travelling implies that things are looking up.  I am still struggling on in NFBUK. The Federation is like a coat of many colours: some good, some bad.  Something enjoyable: last Friday I attended a conference delivered by London Living Streets with Sarah Gayton.  The conference was part of a walking festival and there were several workshops and discussions with speakers.  The theme is walking but, with Living Streets largely dominated by cycling interests, the aim is to talk up how well walking is catered for in the London cycling schemes.  In fact, it is not very well catered for and, with the mobility of the average blind person being quite low, the danger in crossing cycle tracks encourages most blind people to stay at home.  On Friday, I enjoyed the discussion and linking up with other people.

 

So I’ve said a lot more to you than I intended to say.  My regards to Laura.

 

Regards

 

Karl Farrell

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Colin Howard

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May 17, 2026, 8:51:25 AMMay 17
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Greetings,
 
John, similar to crossings I have used in The Netherlands back in April 2013 when as a group from Open Sight, some twenty of us visited Volendam and Amsterdam, amongst other places over three days, but it their case, we had a locator on the opasit kurb hence easy to find one's way, but the road I crossed did not sound so busy as yours.
 
Peter, I suggest you put this on TeckTalk, if you are unable to play .mp4 files, let me know and I will convert to .mp3.
 
Colin Howard, living in Southern England.
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Sent: Sunday, May 17, 2026 11:01 AM
Subject: [avip] Here's a new crossing i found in france.

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chris biles

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May 17, 2026, 3:34:24 PMMay 17
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Hi folkks.

 

This has certainly been an interesting thread. I would like perhaps to mention a few things about audible street crossings, based mainly on my copious visits to Germany stretching back to the late 1980s. At the risk of being on the lengthy side, I hope the following proves to be of interest.

 

What might be worth emphasising from the outset is that in Germany, considerable reliance is placed on pedestrian crossings working in relation to road traffic signals, meaning that it is particularly crucial to know when the right of way is in your favour before proceeding. Walking against a red pedestrian signal, even when there's no traffic in evidence, is very much frowned upon in Germany in ways less obvious in the UK, possibly because of the German tendency to look at rules and regulations as overriding the temptation to do things more pragmatically. As a slight aside, I would say that even in the UK nowadays, any temptation to wing things at crossings when you think the coast is clear, should be avoided at all costs, given the proliferation of electric vehicles nowadays, whose acoustic footprint would be harder to discern compared to traditional internal combustion engines.

 

Returning to the German situation, the fact I found myself spending an overseas year of study in a medium sized university town called Marburg, which has various connections with the German blind welfare sector, gave me the benefit of experiencing exceptional levels of acoustic support when navigating traffic junctions. Put another way, the range and coverage of acoustic signals, both at traffic light junctions as well as pedestrian control crossings, was something of an exception compared to what prevailed in most German cities I happened to visit at the time.

 

So for instance, whenever you came across what we might call a complex junction, where traffic would be flowing in multiple directions, the sound effect for the pedestrian phases in Marburg would vary significantly, depending on which part of the junction you were navigating. So for instance, you might be crossing one section where the sound might resemble a muted representation of a submarine claxon, but where the next section you'd be navigating, might feature an alternating 2 tone sound effect similar to an old school emergency vehicle siren. Then, another intersect, pardon the Americanism,

In the road junction complex, might have a constant single tone for the duration of the pedestrian phase.

 

The fact the system in Marburg was set up in such a way, dating back some considerable time before my time of residence there, highlighted how a local solution had been found to ensure pedestrians knew which part of the junction had switched to the pedestrian phase, thus avoiding unnecessary confusion. It was interesting for me that during this period in Germany, the UK solution for avoiding such ambiguities through the use of tactile cones at the base of the signal box to replace the traditional bleep tone, was only just starting to emerge. While the pros and cons of cones, pardon the slight pun, is not a debate I wish to engage with during this post, it is interesting to see how with the example of Marburg, a different approach has been taken for dealing with this issue.

 

Although I have not returned to Marburg since the late 1980s, with the exception of a half day visit during the late 90s, I was able to many years to keep abreast of many blindness and similar access issues pertaining to Germany, by virtue of a few magazine style publications from various parts of the German speaking world. One thing I learned from such information sources, was that a number of pilot schemes were conducted around the mid 1990s in a scattering of German cities, to evaluate whether a more comprehensive system of user friendly crossings could be rolled out over and beyond what was happening in places like Marburg. It is only in recent years, that a nationwide pattern of accessible crossings from a V I perspective is starting to emerge in Germany, something I'll return to shortly.

 

In the mean time, it might be worth mentioning that while talking street crossings have not been that much in evidence in Germany, there was one interesting example among the 1990s pilot projects, which focussed on the south western university town of Tuebingen. While there would be a series of very short pulse tones at roughly second long intervals while the traffic had right of way, once the pedestrian phase had started, a series of more prominent bleep tones would be followed by a recorded voice sample, a sequence repeated a sufficient number of times until the phase was stood down, which would in effect instruct the user which relevant intersection had the pedestrian right of way.

 

While it is hard to replicate in more detail what the messages would sound like, an approximate translation, if deployed in a UK context, might sound like:: "Pedestrians! Princes Street, Buchanan Street, Clear". Obviously, such information advisories would assume the user would have a reasonable awareness of the local street layout, but still, this seemed an interesting way of fine tuning the instructions so a visually impaired pedestrian would know when to proceed.

 

Bringing things up to date, a trip I took to the Eastern part of Germany as recently as last September, featuring cities like Leipzig and Weimar, not to mention half a day in Berlin, enabled me to experience an increasing level of uniformity in the provision of audio support features on street crossings, particularly those managed from the traffic light network. What seems to happen as a rule of thumb, is that when road traffic has the right of way, you encounter the very short pulse tone signals emitted at second long intervals, which evolves into a Dublin style rapid fire succession of Cicada like pulsations during the pedestrian phase, until this crossing phase is over.

 

Apologies if the above is rather on the detailed side. However, it is my hope that what I've mentioned in the foregoing has helped paint a picture about my experiences of interacting with street crossings in an environment outside the UK, which by the way has included several visits to Ireland along with other countries in mainland Europe, but where my memory of using street crossing facilities is far less extensive.

 

Regards, Chris b.

 

---Original Message---

From: anorack via AVIP <avip...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: 2026-05-17 11:01:38

To: avip...@googlegroups.com

Subject: RE: [avip] Here's a new crossing I found in France.

 

Hi John,

 

 

Thanks for this audio recording, I found it most interesting that in France, they have someone talking whilst you wait to cross, before the little jingle kicks in.

 

 

Regarding walking straight, well, I can struggle, especially when walking in open space, plus the fact that as I dont hear on my left side, Im only hearing sound to my right and in front of me, although I can walk fairly straight, as I tend to walk briskly across roads.

 

 

When we were in Dublin in 2014, I really liked their crossings, with the slow clicking sound whilst you waited to cross, which then changed into a more rapid clicking sound at the point when it was safe to cross.

 

 

I believe there are similar crossing to that in Dublin, in other parts of Europe.

 

 

Paul.

 

 

From: 'Sophia Chandler' via AVIP <avip...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: 17 May 2026 11:39

To: avip...@googlegroups.com

Cc: AVIP GROUP <avip...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: [avip] Here's a new crossing i found in france.

 

 

Hello John

 

I have been following on WhatsApp your audio recordings and adventures. I found them very interesting and I believe you are a very brave man. Well done! Regarding this talking crossing it is interesting but the ultimate word you mentioned is… Walking straight. Okay, walking on a straight line might be perhaps easier for somebody with some level of sight. Ho However, people with no site at all are as a rule not walking on a straight line even if we think we are!

 

Best wishes

 

Sophia

 

Sent from my iPhone

 

 

 

 

 

On 17 May 2026, at 11:01, 'John Haynes' via AVIP <avip...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 

&#-257;Higuys,

 

 

Those of you who have the WhatsApp group will know that I have just come back from a trip to France. During my trip I made a number of audio recordings which I put on the WhatsApp group. For those of you not on whatsApp, here is a taste as this one shows a new type of crossing. Of course, it may not be New, it's just this is the first time I've seen or heard of it. I made this recording while walking from my hotel to Gardener Austerlitz, which is on the Southbank of the sin. The road which had this particular talking crossing was located just outside the Gardener Leon station which some of you may know is one of the busiest stations in P

 

 

I'd be interested to know what you think. The file is an attachment so you should be able to open it using drawers. Cheers, enjoy and please come back with your comments.

 

 

 

John Haynes

 

 

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Original7ea511c1ab..html

John Haynes

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May 21, 2026, 2:55:38 PM (13 days ago) May 21
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Hi Karl,
You are very welcome to share that with NFB. On that point I have been looking at Podcasts and wonder whether NFB could have a podcast. I've been looking into it with the idea of putting interlink on as a podcast rather than having people muck about copying CDs and putting it in different cloud basis. To be honest, between you and me, Colin is becoming a pain in the arse and we need to ditch him quietly.

With a podcast you have a host. In most cases, if your podcast is free  you do not have to pay the host.  Once you have uploaded your podcast to the host, the host will then publish your podcast on the normal podcast issuing apps such as iPlayer Apple Podcast player Spotify etc.  What do you think of the idea?

I was thinking a podcast could easily have an interview with El Presidente! And possibly with people like Sarah who would then be talking about what they are doing.

using Zoom, we could also have interviews with other members an interest articles, such as the one about the crossing would also make the podcast more interesting. Just an idea and if we can get it off the ground, I would be interested in getting involved in it once I am retired in September.

As regards, Laura there is no change. She is still in a lot of pain. She will need to go to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham next month for an operation. She will be in hospital for about a week. Luckily, I have friends in Worcester, yes, I do have friends! And they will put me up while Laura is in hospital.

I am putting my name forward as editor for interlink next year. As, with the change in the constitution, the interlink editor will no longer automatically be an exec member. This means that an officer can also be editor of interlink. Once I have done this, I would at sometime like to do an interview with you about your experience with your heat pump and octopus. I don't mean octopus the fish I mean your supplier.

All the best take care

John

Colin Howard

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May 21, 2026, 5:57:36 PM (12 days ago) May 21
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Greetings,
 
John, I take strong exception to your comment:
 
into it with the idea of putting interlink on as a podcast rather than having people muck about copying CDs and putting it in different cloud basis. To be honest, between you and me, Colin is becoming a pain in the arse and we need to ditch him quietly.

Well, you are entitled to your opinion but it ought to have been expressed privately to Karl and not given on a group be it email or WatsApp open to any member who wants contact, I welcome anybody else's views.
 
I agree a podcast is good, but we still have a few such as Meg and Sylvia, Barbara Hart, Alan and Joice, Chris Thorogood, Penny Wenham, Chris Biles who may still need discs or in C.B's case, memory stick.  It is totally unfair to exclude these people, encourage them to become familiar with using podcasts first before launching this.
 
As for your desire to become editor next year, no problem, I believe a contest might be a good thing.
 
John,
 
I saw your second post and will listen to any attachment and probably will come back.
 
Colin Howard, living in Southern England.

John Haynes

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May 22, 2026, 9:04:06 AM (12 days ago) May 22
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Hi all,
Firstly an apology is due here as they response to Karl was not supposed to go out on AVIP world. I thought Karl had emailed me personally and not via AVIP. My error and this is not something I would normally have done.

 Colin apologies for any distress. My comments caused you. They were not meant for your ears.

In respect to what I said I stand by most of what was written. I do feel that as editor of interlink the editor should be using all resources available to them including cloud drives and Google. Whether we like it or not, Google is a major player on the world stage and offers resources which are available to all.


Many thanks and let’s get back to the point of the idea rather than the unfortunate use of the group for sending what I thought was a private message.

Thanks. 
John haynes

On 21 May 2026, at 22:57, Colin Howard <colinho...@gmail.com> wrote:



Colin Howard

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May 22, 2026, 9:36:40 AM (12 days ago) May 22
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Greetings,
 
Apologies accepted, if Karl did write to the group, I don't recall seeing any posts from him, must now be for at least a couple of months!
 
John, you still did not say anything about those receiving the magazine, such as Meg and Sylvia, Alan and Joice, Barbara Hart, Chris Biles Etc. who receive it other than via download.

John Haynes

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May 22, 2026, 10:23:15 AM (12 days ago) May 22
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Hi guys,

I believe I have covered this issue either in the WhatsApp conversations or somewhere else. Of course, there will always be someone who cannot receive a podcast and therefore I do notrule out entirely the need for either a download or the odd CD. This is about the masses! If the majority of members take a podcast, it saves time on copying or issuing links et cetera. 
John haynes

karl.f...@btinternet.com

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May 22, 2026, 10:31:44 AM (12 days ago) May 22
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Hello everyone

 

I am joining this discussion, but this time intentionally.  I began this rather revealing thread by my carelessness.  I chose the reply button when I read John’s email about the crossings.  I forgot that replying meant that my response went back to the list and straight out to everyone.

 

Sorry John and sorry Colin and everyone.  We all do have to be thoughtful in our replying and we all have to keep in mind the worth of our colleagues.

 

Have a good weekend everybody.  My greetings will arrive with you warm because, if nothing else, they will be warmed up by the south of England weather!

 

Karl Farrell

chris biles

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May 22, 2026, 10:37:23 AM (12 days ago) May 22
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This is indeed an interesting discussion.

 

As what is being proposed is a fairly radical change from current practice, can I suggest that any migration to podcasting as the primary platform for distributing Interlink, become a measure for full implementation, subject to a proposal being moved to such effect at next year's A G M.

 

If a trial implementation were to take place ahead of next year's A G M, this would at least demonstrate proof of concept. However, I still think full implementation of such a practice should be subject to the relevant processes, in the hope full implementation can take place once the relevant mandate has been given.

 

Thanks.

 

Chris b

 

Original7ea516f1c18..html

ano...@ntlworld.com

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May 22, 2026, 7:34:38 PM (11 days ago) May 22
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Hi John,

 

Thanks for that.

 

These things happen from time to time.

 

Paul.

 

From: 'John Haynes' via AVIP <avip...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: 22 May 2026 14:04
To: avip...@googlegroups.com
Cc: avip...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [avip] Here's a new crossing i found in france. Hi guys, firstly an apology is due.

 

Hi all,

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