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ID 115137
Author
Inagaki, Tomoyuki Nihon University
Takahashi, Kazuya NPO Growing People's Will
Ikeda, Norihiro Kictec
Takeuchi, Kiyohito Kictec
Ogino, Hiroshi Kictec
Kobayakawa, Satoru Nihon University
Keywords
Visually impaired
Road crossing
Orientation block
Linear protrusions
Walking experiment
Optimal layout
Content Type
Journal Article
Description
For people with visual impairments who face difficulties when crossing the road, in urban areas of Japan the infrastructure designed to provide an indication of crossing direction and the curbstones at sidewalk-roadway boundaries often varies in reliability from one crossing to another. If anything, this promotes stress for users and is an issue for which improvement is urgently needed. The authors have proposed new orientation blocks to be installed at crosswalk entrances as a means of more accurately indicating to people with visual impairments the trajectory to follow when crossing the road, and in prior research have derived desirable specifications for the profile of these blocks and their position relative to tactile walking surface indicators (TWSI).
For this paper, in order to examine in greater detail the desirable position of orientation blocks relative to TWSI, the authors conducted an experiment using totally blind subjects to evaluate conditions on a 10 m walk that simulated an actual crossing. The results, based on observations of the trajectories walked by participants in the experiment and interviews eliciting their subjective evaluations, showed that separating orientation blocks and blister tactile blocks by about 8–12 cm is effective in constraining lateral deviation at a point 5 m from the start of crossing and that an 8 cm separation was desirable in order to maintain an effective reduction of mental stress while crossing.
Journal Title
IATSS Research
ISSN
03861112
NCID
AA00231155
Publisher
International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences|Elsevier
Volume
41
Issue
2
Start Page
82
End Page
88
Published Date
2017-07-14
Rights
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
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DOI (Published Version)
URL ( Publisher's Version )
FullText File
language
eng
TextVersion
Publisher
departments
Science and Technology