A 37-year-old blind man has attached his guide dog with a lens to expose the discrimination he faces while travelling around London.
Amit Patel, a former A&E doctor who lost his sight five years ago to keratoconus, said he is constantly pushed out of the way as he navigates around the trains and buses with his guide dog.
He fitted a GoPro camera to his dog Kika’s back to film some of the abuse he suffers on a daily basis.
Travellers were recorded not getting up from their seats as he and Kika stood in train carriages; staff were filmed ignoring his cries for help; and people were even caught hitting him and Kika with their umbrellas and bags.
He said that he decided to film his commute so that his wife Seema can share the clip on social media to bring awareness.
“It all started when people barged me out of the way, they hit (Kika) with umbrellas, bags, I get shoulder charged every day and when my wife looks back at the footage she can see they have done it deliberately. They have loads of space to get past but they seem to think it is fun to barge into a blind person,” he told ITV News.
“Kika always sits to my left hand side so we often block the escalator, and people will hit her with bags and umbrellas to get her to move out of the way. The worst part is the tutting and negative comments behind me. People are so rude and arrogant and assume they can do whatever they want.”
Amit was even reportedly told to apologise for “holding people up” on the escalator.
“One lady even said I should apologise to the people behind her for holding them up. I asked her if I should apologise for being blind and she said ‘yes’.”
He described passengers barging ahead of Kika to get seats on packed Tube trains and others knocking into her while jostling for space.
Kika is so loyal to Patel that she even saved his life when a car jumped a red light at a crossing.
“She saw the car and she got in front of me and took the hit - the car grazed her nose,” Patel said.
However, Patel said the majority of Londoners are “fantastic” towards him. Amit travels almost every day on Southeastern trains to London Bridge, and then on the London Underground.
