A new app to make life easier for people with a disability to travel on Greater Anglia trains has been launched after the company worked with comedian and disability rights campaigner Tanyalee Davis.

Norfolk-based Ms Davis travels around the country by train and had highlighted problems on different rail companies.

Now she has worked with the rail company to help them develop an Uber-style app to enable direct communication with railway staff.

The Canadian-born performer said: “Now it’s really happening, they are pushing forward something that definitely needs to be done.

“It’s not just words – they are actually taking action. The app is going to open up our world and be life-changing for disabled people.”

Kerri Worrall from Greater Anglia, said: “The app makes communication much more immediate by sending an alert to all station staff.

“It is an industry-wide development recognising some of the problems people like Tanya have experienced,

“We think it will be a real step change compared to the current system – it should make it so much easier.

“Currently train companies ask customers to book through a number of channels including by phone or online, where customers provide contact details and specify the assistance they need every time.

“Staff at stations then receive a printed list of booked assistance each morning, which means when plans change, for example if trains are delayed or the customer misses their booked train, there is no way to update the list and staff can sometimes end up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Anyone interested in trialling the app on journeys around the Greater Anglia network in Suffolk and Norfolk for 12 weeks from the end of 2018 should email Rebecca.Richardson@greateranglia.co.uk

The company hopes the production version of the app will be rolled out in Autumn 2019, once a staff version of the app has been introduced in April next year.

It has been developed in collaboration with disability charities including Scope, RNIB, Disability Rights UK, Civil Service Pensioners’ Alliance, Blind Veterans UK and Anxiety UK, and includes accessible features, such as the ability to change colour themes, fonts and text sizes within the app.