Live Audio System We  continually work to improve our walking tour experience. We introduced an audio system onto Tour No. 2 and Tour No. 3 in 2017. Both tours go through very noisy parts of Birmingham and also visit some quiet locations. How it works The guide wears a microphone and transmitter and guests are given a receiver. The tour is live, but instead of the guide having to shout in noisy places or whisper in quiet locations we can communicate with everyone as if we are right next to them. We encourage ‘tourists’ to bring their own earphones but can supply a new pair which you keep at the end of the tour (£1/£2  donation). Other benefits We piloted our audio system in Autumn 2017 and we had a favourable response with unexpected benefits including: • Hearing impaired guests really appreciated the audio system. One person told us they expected to hear very little of the tour, but replacing their hearing aid with our earbuds they had to put up with the whole commentary! • When people wander off we can keep in contact - a family decided to go to a doughnut shop recently but we could keep in touch! • Keen photographers often move away from the tour group to get interesting shots - now they can do this and still hear the full tour commentary. Translation into another language By using two channels on our audio system we have got technology and expertise which enables us to present our tours in English and then immediate translation into a second language. This is ideal for overseas groups with a single primary language. On occasions we can also provide this service when we have mixed English and a second language on tour with us. For example 20 German students and their teachers hear the tour directly in English and they get a German translation. We use different systems at the moment as we fine tune this with Travis Touch being for us a clear way forward.