Figure 10.7. Poor d´ecor and design for a public library reading seat

•Floors and floor coverings should be plain and have a colour contrast to the wall colour.

•Uncovered floors should not have a gloss finish to reduce glare.

•To help the uniform distribution of lighting, ceilings should be in pale tones.

•Doors should contrast with the walls and door handles and locks should be colour contrasted with the door colour. These colour contrasts make it easier for visually impaired people to find, open, lock and unlock doors.

•Sockets, switches, handles and similar small items should be colour contrasted to their background so that they can be found easily.

•Chairs, cushions and sofas should be colour contrasted to the colours of the floor and wall, for instance by using a much darker shade of the same colour, to make them easier to locate.

•The use of mirrors and glass panels to give the impression of more space should be avoided. This discrepancy between appearance and reality could be hazardous to visually impaired people, who might try to walk through the panels or mirrors into the apparent space beyond.

10.3.4 Signs and Notices

Signs and notices can be classified in a number of different ways, including the following:

•The sensory modality used, for example, visual, audio, tactile or a combination of these.

•The type of technology used in the sign, such as, infrared, mechanical (‘lowtech’), Bluetooth or visible light.

As far as possible, all signage information should be presented in visual, audio and tactile format, with the visual content including both high contrast clear lettering and symbols or pictures. For instance, the sign for a lift should have Braille embossing as well as the word ‘LIFT’ in large high contrast lettering. In some cases, this will involve the use of separate signs for the different sensory modalities.

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This section will consider mechanical low-tech signs, which are generally visual and/or tactile. Audio and ‘high-tech’ tactile and visual signs will be discussed in the subsequent sections. The visual part of the sign should include symbols or pictures as well as high contrast clear lettering. The message should be short, simple, easily understood and unambiguous. This is always important, but particular care needs to be taken to ensure that there is no ambiguity in any messages with safety connotations.

The following recommendations, with added italicised comments by the authors, resulted from research by the RNIB on legibility (Barker et al. 1995):

•White lettering on a dark background generally improves legibility for people with a visual impairment. However, some people can find that this colour combination causes glare and prefer dark lettering on a white background.

•The majority of letters should be lower case, as it is generally easier to read than upper case lettering.

•Signs should be positioned at eye level with easy access for close-up viewing.

However, the RNIB suggestion of an appropriate eye level of 1.4–1.6 m is most satisfactory for standard size adults and less so for wheelchair users, small or very tall adults and children.

•Care should be taken to ensure signs are not obscured by environmental or building features or furnishings.

•Glare from signs should be reduced by using matt surfaces and avoiding glass cases.

Standardisation of the position of commonly used types of signs, such as street names would be helpful. Currently street name signs in some cities or parts of cities are fastened to buildings at adult eye level, whereas in other places they are located on short poles about 0.5 m above the ground. A standardised location would make it easier to know where to look for the street name sign. Signs should also be located close to the facility they are indicating. For instance, lift signs should be located close to the lift call button to enable blind people to access the tactile content of the sign and the lift call button together. Both the sign and the lift call button should be at an appropriate height to be accessed by wheelchair users.

Signs with tactile markings need to be located at an appropriate height to be touched easily, including by blind wheelchair users and small blind adults and children. This will mean that signs with both visual and tactile information should be located at a height of about 0.6–0.8 m and therefore considerably below eye level. To avoid taller adults having to bend down to reach the sign, two sets of tactile signs at different heights would be useful. This is particularly important in the case of Braille, where signs that are too low down will appear upside down. Grade 1 Braille can be used for single words, but grade 2 Braille should be used for longer expressions to reduce the size of the sign. Embossing is easier to feel than engraving and an appropriate tactile height for embossing letters and symbols is 1–1.5 mm.

Table 10.2. Sign colour contrast guidelines

The preferred colour contrasts for typical sign location backgrounds are shown in Table 10.2.

10.3.5 Interior Building Services

Good design is required to ensure that door entry and exit systems, lifts (elevators), escalators, moving pavements (travelators) and emergency call systems can be easily used by visually impaired and blind people and are not a source of potential hazard.

Entry and exit systems

Many modern buildings use mechanical and electronic door release systems to increase building security. There are a number of different means of operating the door release systems, including plastic cards with a magnetic strip, a system of coded push buttons, often in combination with a magnetic strip card, and metal key systems. The systems need to be easy to locate and use. Therefore, the system should be positioned at about 1.0–1.2 m with a tactile strip from a height of about 1.4 m downwards to lead blind and visually impaired people to the keypad and card system. Key pads should have the numerals 1, 2 and 3 on the top row and a small bump on the button for the numeral 5. The keypad buttons should be of a good size with large high colour contrast lettering and the buttons should have a high colour contrast with the door. New systems should be designed so that the card can be inserted in any direction and orientation. When this is not the case, the card orientation should be indicated by visual and tactile markings. Visual and tactile markings may also make it easier to locate the slot for inserting the card and indicating the direction of insertion.

Particular care should be taken with the design of emergency exit doors, the controls of which have become increasingly complex. In many cases, electronic pads and bush buttons are used to work the emergency door release mechanism and an appropriate location and high contrast highlighting are required to make them easier to detect and use. In the case of corridors with handrails, the electronic release mechanism should be located close to the handrail next to the emergency exit door.

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Emergency call systems

Emergency call systems are now present in a wide range of building facilities, including lifts, toilets, staff rooms and escalators. As with other facilities, they should have a sensible location, clear identification and ease of use. This requires a high contrast colour to the background, a large push pad area and easy operation with a minimum level of pressure.

Accessible lift (elevator) example

The guidelines presented in this section on d´ecor, lighting and signage will be illustrated by the application of the comprehensive assistive technology (CAT) model of an accessible lift. This is found in Table 10.3 which should be self explanatory.

Escalators and moving pavements (travelators)

Moving pavements (travelators) are horizontal escalators and therefore similar principles of accessible design can be applied to both escalators and travelators. Escalators are used in a wide range of different types of locations, including airport buildings, department stores, shopping centres and multistorey office buildings, whereas moving pavements are mainly used in airports and some railway stations. In some countries, such as the Czech Republic, guide dogs are trained to assist blind people in using escalators, whereas in others, such as the UK they are not. Consequently, blind people who use guide dogs may find escalators difficult or impossible to use. There is always a stationary avenue alongside a travelator to allow people to walk or to travel in the small carts provided by the airport. Therefore visually impaired and blind people and their guides (whether human or canine) can use these alternatives. However, it should be noted that the travelator has the advantage of allowing faster mobility than the stationary avenue and that the alerting sounds and lights of airport carts can make them unuseable by some travellers, as well as increasing the stress experienced by these travellers when they are in the vicinity. Escalators also cause difficulties for wheelchair users. Therefore, as far as possible, alternatives to escalators in the form of lifts and ramps should be provided, though this may be difficult in older buildings due to the lack of space.

Tactile floor markings should be used to direct blind and visually impaired people to escalators and travelators and their start should be indicated by a combination of tactile warning pads and high contrast large lettering notices. Many travelators have localised audio alerts to indicate that their end is approaching, but this is not the case for escalators. In both cases, a tactile indication, such as a very light vibration of the floor, would be useful, though escalator, but not travelator, users experience a physical sensation of the steps levelling out. High-contrast white or yellow strips should be used to mark the pavement edges of travelators and the sides of escalator steps. The escalator and travelator system should be well illuminated and their entry and exit areas should be clear from obstructions, including litterbins and advertisement hoardings. There may be a need for an improved design to ensure a smooth transition from the escalator or travelator to the stationary floor.

Table 10.3. CAT model for accessible lift