Action Portrait Photography
Guide Dogs and Visually Impaired Testing Balfour Beatty Sightline

A gallery of action portraits shots of visually impaired people and their guide dogs testing the new Balfour Beatty Sightline system

About this gallery

A gallery of action portrait photography featuring visually impaired people and their guide dogs testing the new Balfour Beatty Sightline system in a controlled environment with road works barriers. The shoot took place at the Guide Dogs Training School in Atherton during one of their open day events.

About Sightline

Neilson Reeves Photography were at the heart of a local community event in Atherton, Lancashire as we supported Guide Dogs for the Blind and Balfour Beatty in promoting a new innovation that will change the lives of visually impaired people.

We made the trip to Lancashire to catch up with our partners Balfour Beatty Gas Distribution and test drive ground-breaking technology that will improve the design of pedestrian barrier systems at the company’s streetworks site and provide safe routes past their works for the visually impaired.

Our team was there to capture all the action for the day and get involved in a charity, which is on our Manchester doorstep. There was no better way of trialling this piece of kit than the Guide Dogs’ Annual Fun Day where all members of the local community joined forces to raise awareness of the great work the organisation does and celebrate some of the industry success stories, like sightline.

‘Sightline’, which will hit Balfour Beatty sites in Birmingham next month, consists of a multi-functional combination of both physical, tactile and technological aids that could transform the way we communicate and keep members of the public safe when in contact with our sites.

The innovation comes to Balfour Beatty following a successful internal ‘preventing members of the public incidents’ on the GDSP contract, where colleagues had engaged with Guide Dogs for the Blind for guidance and advice on best practice video.

‘Sightline’ is like no other barrier that we have in the Group, such are its digital capabilities and makeup:

Physically – the barriers hold a mounted sign that provides tactile indicators to a visually impaired person when they encounter it on a barrier placed on as part of a walkway or footway closure;
Tactile – ‘saw tooth’ chevrons with raised tactile beads along the top surface indicate to the user that they are on the correct side of the barrier system;
Technological – By using an APP an operative is able to ‘register’ his/her site including the scale, location and duration of the works up to a cloud based database.

This data is then accessible to the visually impaired through another free to use APP, which provides them with a verbal warning and information as regards to the site including how much if any footway is available and how long the site will be there for. This information is triggered through a beacon imbedded within the barrier sign which is activated when a person with an active APP approaches the site.

This new piece of kit will be trailed at four major work sites with heavy pedestrian traffic during a four week period.

To find out more Contact John English at Balfour Beatty Contact John English