A City That’s Better for the Blind Is Better for Everyone
Complete parity with the sighted may seem like an impossible goal, but maybe the only thing holding us back is a lack of imagination.
By David W. Stoesz
Anyone who walks in a city knows the common annoyances — sidewalks closed to make way for construction equipment, cars turning right into the pedestrian right-of-way, signals that only change if you hit a button, people with golf umbrellas, etc. But what if you can’t see? We’ve explored before how anyone who has trouble getting around for any reason holds the key to better design for everyone. Keeping that in mind, I set out to discover what the most challenging things are about getting around if you’re blind. I put the question to a number of blind and low-vision people, accessibility advocates, and mobility coaches.
Enemy № 1: Share bikes
The answer from staff members at The Lighthouse for the Blind comes back in a chorus: “Bikes!” This answer, which came during an open house for the Lighthouse — a not-for-profit social enterprise providing employment and training for people who are blind, DeafBlind, and blind with other disabilities — refers specifically to share bikes, which are prone to being abandoned in the middle of city sidewalks. Bikes are heavy, irregularly shaped objects, perfect for tripping, poking, and ensnaring canes.
Anna Zivarts seconds the challenges with bike share bikes. Zivarts is the program director at Rooted in Rights, an advocacy group dedicated to telling “authentic, accessible stories to challenge stigma and redefine narratives around disability, mental health, and chronic illness.” Zivarts, who’s low-vision but not blind, also calls out “sandwich boards and all the other random junk that gets left in the pedestrian right of way.”
Steven Feher is a sighted orientation and mobility specialist at The Lighthouse for the Blind. He likewise talks about share bikes, as well as “distracted walkers staring into a glowing rectangle.” But Feher cautions against generalizing the experiences of all blind people. “When you’ve met one blind person, you’ve met one blind person.”
This theme is picked up by another mobility instructor, Elizabeth Campos at Society for the Blind in Sacramento: “I’m a 6' tall blind woman. Low-hanging tree branches are my enemy. For a 5'2” woman, problems would be different. It depends on the person.”
Deadly dangers and simple fixes
Keeping in mind that everyone’s needs are different, what are some simple things cities could do to make it easier for people who are blind? A lot comes down to simply crossing the street.
“At intersections they have push buttons for the walk signal that give you either a chirp-chirp or a cuckcoo sound to indicate the direction of the signal. These could instead be audible signals that tell you the street name and direction of the signal,” says Campos. Feher concurs: “We need better implementation of tech at intersections. It’s not consistent. In some areas, there is a cuckoo chirp or machine gun — they mean different things at different times.”
Another inconsistency: Pedestrian signals in Seattle can be timed automatically, or may require pushing the “beg button.” The occurrence and location of this button is likewise inconsistent. Seattle Bicycle Blog has a maddening account of a blind person trying to find the button:
The push button wasn’t on the telephone pole. He figured this out and felt around for a different pole, this one a large metal pole that supports the bus trolley wires. But this pole didn’t have a button either. When he turned back to try the wooden pole again, I got up and went to help . . . That’s when I realized that the whole time he was searching for the button (it was on a third smaller pole closer to the intersection), the traffic signal had been going through its regular cycles for people driving but kept skipping the walk signal.
Zivarts notes that even when you do manage to get a crossing signal, there’s no guarantee you’ll get enough time to cross, and no guarantee that your view of traffic won’t be obstructed. This last issue can be remedied through “daylighting” intersections. “That means leaving a parking spot open closest to the intersection so I can see cars and vice versa.” The ever-present danger of excessive car speed is exacerbated by this lack of visibility.
Inconsistency is a problem across the board in urban design, in ways that may not be foreseen. For example, Zivarts says that the way bike lanes were built flush with the sidewalk in Seattle’s South Lake neighborhood makes it so guide dogs can’t distinguish between the bike lanes and the sidewalk.
There’s one simple trick to avoid these kinds of blunders: “Nothing about us without us.” That’s an expression that’s taken hold in disability and other social justice activist circles, which, from a design perspective, means that representatives of affected groups should be consulted about every decision. Feher mentions an absurdity in Seattle’s Link Light Rail system that would have been avoided if NAUWU had been put into practice: “The Pioneer Square Station has a tactile map inside an elevator. Who wants to ride up and down an elevator while trying to figure out where they are?”
Good for some, good for all
The striking thing about the features of Seattle and other cities, from excessive car speeds to inconsistent pedestrian signals, is that fixing them would improve things for everyone. Campos points out that her idea for a talking pedestrian crossing signal would “help travelers, people with dyslexia, people with learning disabilities — lots of people could benefit from that information.” Same with longer and more consistent pedestrian cross signals — seniors, stroller-pushers, children, and wheelchair users would all benefit. Ditto the benefits of slowing traffic — studies show that reducing a car’s speed from 40 to 30 mph decreases the chance of death in the event of a pedestrian collision from 85 to 45 percent.
Says Campos, “There’s no separation between the blind and sighted, except the barriers we put there. Whether you have vision impairment, have suffered a stroke, or have a learning disability, the world should be a place where things are for you.” As mentioned above, the idea that making things better for those who have the most trouble benefits everyone — sometimes called the curb-cut effect — is something we’ve talked about before on The Slowdown. But I confess to struggling somewhat with how starkly Campos states it. No separation, like, at all? That’s an admirable ideal, but in practice surely it takes a special courage to, for example, cross the street when you can’t see?
Nope, says Campos. “Risk is something everyone has. A driver could be impaired, could not see you, could not stop at all. The sighted don’t know any more about the unknown than we do. Risk is also different, regardless of ability to see or not.” She gently points out that the idea of a “special courage” plays into the two extreme views of the blind in the popular imagination: either a super being who can hear a pin drop a block away, or a helpless object of pity.
Campos carries the idea of absolute parity into how she teaches the vision impaired to get around. She expects her students to do all the things their peers do. “A 25-year-old woman should be able to go to the salon, mall, or university, the same as her peers. We have high expectations for travel — to the grocery store or around the world.”
The idea that everything — everything — in the world could actually be just as accessible to the blind as it is to the sighted may sound like an impossible ideal. But maybe the only thing holding us back is a lack of imagination. Jutta Treviranus, a professor at the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University in Toronto, Canada, has said, “Our notion of disability is that ‘disability’ is a mismatch between the needs of the individual and the service, product, or environment offered. It’s not a personal trait; it’s a relative condition brought about by bad design.”
This a simple idea with radical implications. The word “mismatch” is key. When a task arises — crossing the street safely, for example — and a person is unable to perform that task, this is a mismatch between a design and a person. Treviranus calls on us to not place the responsibility for this mismatch on the person, but rather on the design. In other words, there is no such thing as disability, only bad design. Designers shouldn’t divide people into categories and design things only for some categories and not others. There are no “special needs,” only human needs.
Thinking big: Beyond ADA incrementalism
If I’m hearing them correctly, all my informants share this vision of parity for people of all ability levels. And it’s exactly this big-picture view that is often missing from how cities are designed. Every time accessibility is seen as an obligatory thing to be tacked on after a building or road is already complete, the barrier between people is reestablished.
The Americans with Disabilities Act, passed in 1990, prohibits discrimination based on disability, requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations, and imposes accessibility requirements on public accommodations. While it can be a great tool, by treating “Americans with disabilities” as a separate class, it can also unintentionally reinforce that barrier between the abled and the disabled. For example, Zivarts notes that enforcement is only required if something can be shown to disproportionately affect people with disabilities. So snow removal, for example, isn’t covered because it affects everyone. And it enables an incrementalism so slow as to be almost meaningless. Zivarts points to ADA-mandated audible crossing signals as a glaring example. “The city takes the liberty to install them at a glacial pace.” She says that pace is about ten signals a year — in a city with about 1,400 crossings.
Michael Shaw, the ADA Coordinator at Seattle Department of Transportation, says he understands the frustration. “We’re having conversations with Anna and her group, and will have subsequent conversations. We’re going to do our best to listen and see what we can do differently.” As for snow removal, Shaw says, “Seattle is not a snow community. But I do understand her point and the circumstances are worth additional conversations.” He adds that the number of audible crossings added per year is closer to 40 — ten is only what his own department installs.
Instead of conversations about piecemeal improvements, Zivarts calls for “major, comprehensive redesign of streets to accommodate what’s already there and what’s coming — delivery robots, e-scooters, self-driving cars.”
The simple power of empathy
A revolution in urban design that embraces the “no disabilities, only bad design” credo may not be coming to Seattle — or any city — any time soon. But putting into practice the larger principle — that there are no barriers between us except those we create — is accessible to all of us, right now. Campos says, “Be kind. Interact. Greet me! Don’t feel awkward. I would like to be able to walk into a store and not have [people] stand 20 feet away. Say, ‘How are you, what are you in the market for?’ Not freeze up like, ‘Oh, she’s blind!’”
Feher points out that a blind person’s day can involve a lot of trust. “For the most part, people are helpful. But some may grab a shoulder, grab a wrist, or even grab the cane like a leash and try to lead the person.” Feher suggests that the person receiving assistance holds on, thus giving back control. “If the helper smells like alcohol or is raving about a conspiracy theory, they can let go any time. Agency is restored.”
Even if you wouldn’t engage in rude and dehumanizing behavior, you might not be sure what to do when you meet a blind person, whether they require assistance or not. And that’s OK. You can always ask. As Campos says, imperfection is something we all have to deal with. “I wish all gardeners would cut branches out of my way. But that’s not going to happen. I want to get around. I’m not waiting for the world to be perfect. We — all of us, blind or sighted — need to explore it the way it is.”
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