How about all railway public-facing staff to learn a bit of sign language or at least carry something capable of displaying text messages? It'll be about 40 years too late but maybe at least something good can come from this!
I’m certainly not an expert, but I do work at a deaf college, so just one or two observations:
- many signs are quite similar and do require looking at the lips (which would be impossible with a mask) and context (which wouldn’t)
- these days, many deaf people have cochlear implants, which mean they can hear
something to a range of just mumbled tones to almost perfect clarity. Lip reading helps their understanding.
- deaf people may think they are speaking clearly, but sometimes aren’t, in which case the guard would be assisted by looking at their lips
- some deaf people do not speak at all. However, younger ones would be able to rattle off a text very quickly and show it the guard if necessary
- from the original quote: sign language is like any other - the older you get, the harder it is to learn! However, our college has done things like courses with the fire brigade so they can sign questions like ‘is anybody else here?’, ‘are you hurt?’ etc.