Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he has made of the accessibility of travel information and journey planning websites suggested as alternatives after the closure of Transport Direct.

The alternative sites have been found to offer equivalent functionality to that available on Transport Direct although the user interfaces are not identical. We assessed the accessibility of the public transport sites using screen reader software. This found that the Google journey planner, which is part a highly visual maps-based interface, is not accessible to screen reader users. Traveline South East was found to be accessible but with room for improvement. Traveline.info was not assessed since their new journey planner had not been launched at the time of testing. We are continuing to work with Traveline and other travel information providers to ensure that their user interfaces are made increasingly accessible.