On March 13, 2009, our volunteers visited Mr. Li, visually impaired, who accidentally fell down from a platform Kowloon Bay MTR station. During the visit, we learned more about how the accident happened and the state of Mr Li’s injury. We also explained to him in what way he could claim his rights. After the visit, Help Actually volunteers followed up Mr Li’s case and provided assistance of necessary. Mr Li, 48-year-old, was a masseur. When he was at a younger age, he had glaucoma which led to a loss of 90% of eyesight. The accident happened around 1 pm on March 4, 2009. Mr. Li was to get off the train and change to another line. Due to his weak eyesight, Mr Li could only get directions with a walking stick.

Mr Li was trying to find the elevator after he got off the train, however, he didn’t get any help from working staff at the station. In addition of that, there are no screen doors at the station, so that Mr Li took a wrong way and unfortunately fell down to the railway. Thankfully, there were no trains pulling into the platforms at that moment, and luckily two by-standers pulled him away. Mr Li only hurt his muscles and slightly injured. And after checking up in the hospital, he wasn’t suffering from too much impact.

Although the accident didn’t cause any major injuries for the victim, this shows that the chance of the blind people being hurt during taking MTR without setting screen doors is very high. However, some related departments haven’t set screen doors to prevent such accidents. For the vision-disabled, the lack of screen doors is obviously an enviable death trap.

To prevent similar things from happening, Help Actually appealed to the Government with the Association for the blind so that they can look at this matter and improve their way of handling such matter. We hope they can efficiently respond to such matters.