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https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27432/critical-issues-in-transportation-for-2024-and-beyond

Blind People Testing the Tactility of Different Surfaces in Experimental and Real Environments

Swedish legislation stipulates that public spaces must be designed so that they are accessible to people with mobility and orientation disabilities. In order to meet the needs of this group, it is of crucial importance to acquire better knowledge of how various details in the pedestrian environment as well as in those environments where pedestrians meet other road users should be designed. The overall purpose of this study is to identify structures for guidance surfaces and stop warning surfaces that help blind people who use long white canes to navigate and orient themselves, i.e. orientation is defined as both static as a direction and dynamic as way finding. In a first step, 15 test routes were built outdoors in an experimental area representing the combinations of surface structures most frequently used for guidance and warning. In a second step, the combinations of warning structures that turned out to be the best ones in the evaluation of Step 1 were further tested in real traffic environments in a defined area in the city of Borlänge in the middle of Sweden. Fourteen different assessment points for warning surfaces were evaluated, including four different tactile tiles from Sweden, England, Denmark and Japan. The warning surfaces were placed at two depths - about 1,000 mm and about 1,500 mm, with and without a curb, and the test person was guided to these warning surfaces after having used natural guiding surfaces for orientation. To ensure that it was the tactility of the surfaces that was tested, all the test persons in both steps were completely blind, i.e. they had no light perception. A sample of 14 persons in the first step and 8 persons in the second step participated in the study. The method used in both steps was test person observation, where a structured form was used to register how the person used and detected the various design combinations. As a complement to this, the test person was asked to “think aloud” during the observation sessions. In addition, a semi-structured interview was conducted with the respondent. In summary, the test person observations from Step 1 showed that differences between guidance surfaces and warning surfaces are difficult to identify and also that blister surfaces are unreliable as warnings at the end of guidance surfaces. However, warning surfaces with sharply chamfered edges turned out to be easier to detect due to the fact that the long white cane gets stuck. In the same way, the preliminary result from the test person observations in Step two also showed that warning surfaces with sharply chamfered edges where the white cane got stuck were more easily detected than the others in real traffic environments. In the interviews, the test persons claimed that they detected the warning structure with the long white cane more often than with their feet. Furthermore, there is an indication that a depth of 1,000 mm is sufficient after following natural guidelines. The experiences gleaned in this study will subsequently be implemented and evaluated in an on-going collaborative project between the municipality of Borlänge, the National Road Administration and Lund University

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Media Type: CD-ROM
  • Features: Photos; References; Tables;
  • Pagination: 9p
  • Monograph Title: Transed 2007. Benchmarking, Evaluation and Vision for the Future

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01130349
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Files: TRIS
  • Created Date: Jun 19 2009 9:28AM