All around Britain, you will find this:
tactile paving. It’s to help blind and partially sighted
people find their way around. And here is the clever part, and the part that almost everyone who is fully
sighted will never have noticed: there are different patterns for different
situations. Very few people see nothing at all. That’s important to say. Only about 3%. Some people have light perception, some people
have a bit more vision. Some people have a limited field of vision. Some people have poor central vision but good
peripheral vision. Essentially, you think of partially sighted
people with enough vision to be able to get around safely and independently, blind being below that threshold. Dots in a grid, like this, mean a dropped
kerb for crossing the road. If it’s red, or at least, if it’s supposed
to be red, it’s a crossing with lights or something
else to stop traffic: these designs are for partially sighted people
too, so bright contrasting colours are a good idea. There is a small amount of tactile paving
here, used as a marker, to flag up where the crossing is. And then near the road, it’s for the full
length of the crossing, so you can work out where it is. And it’s important to balance marking the
crossing against not using too much tactile paving: because someone with arthritis can find surfaces
like this painful to cross. Navigating around an unfamiliar area is always
a bit scary, to be honest. Because, obviously, traditional visual clues,
landmarks etc, aren't there. It helps a lot if clues are consistent, so confusion can certainly occur when that
isn’t the case. It’s very, very important that these adaptations
that are there to help us are actually there to help us and are actually there in the way that we
expect to see them. But there are other patterns too. Offset dots mean there’s a train platform
ahead, a big chasm you could fall into. Lozenge shapes mean a tram platform, something closer to street level that could
run you over. Stripes across the path mean there’s some
steps ahead, or a couple of other things that could trip
you up. Stripes along the path mean a safe route to
follow. And if there’s a path that’s half for
foot traffic, and half for bicycles? Well, the direction of the stripes tells you
which side is which. Boroughs in London, councils outside of London, seem to be moving more towards
aesthetic considerations, i.e. they’re changing the colour to darker
greys so it blends in more. By definition if it blends in more, it’s harder for partially sighted people
such as myself to actually see. Or obviously, in a more dire situation, people can find themselves in the road, not
knowing they’re in the road, simply because those essential clues aren’t
there. And sure, all this is tricky to get right. The design standards for how this is laid
down are literally a hundred pages long. But so are the design standards for everything
about public infrastructure: having reliable rules that everyone understands
is important when there are tons of metal speeding past
you. Thank you very much to the team from the
Royal National Institute of Blind People for all their help! You can check out their YouTube channel here, and yes, I have linked the full hundred-page design
document in the description!
Thought he was gonna get hit by the van at the end.
The worst bit is where you can see work has been done and a piece of flooring has been put back the wrong way around, buggering up the tactile road.
Tom can make the most mundane things interesting.
Best you tube personality. Tom is a master at creating engaging and well timed content I'm glad he's bringing his style and advocating for the blind and seeing impaired.
Never really new what that stuff was. I always thought the city trying to kill skateboarders, things are worse than ninja pebbles.
Thought he would have also mentioned the post next to him. There's a knob underneath that spins when it's safe to cross the road this helps people that can't see the "green man" or hear the beeping.
"Having reliable rules that everyone understands is important."
What a British statement. Makes you proud.
Haha, I recognise that road! It was filmed here in London :D
Three minutes ago this picture would have meant absolutely nothing to me. Now I want to hunt down the person who did this and let their parents know they failed at raising a decent human being.
http://i.imgur.com/7WZZyVm.jpg