To date, most attention and compliance to the ADA mandates for equal access to transportation has been focused on the non-ambulatory/wheelchair bound traveller. These modification costs have been tremendous. Buses and trains have had to be refitted or new equipment purchased to provide wheelchair lifts and designated seating areas. Much transit infrastructure has been totally rebuilt to allow for elevators to bypass stairs, level access boarding and other costly structural modifications. Not so subtle grumbling is heard when few wheelchair users are seen in these facilities or on the expensive retrofitted buses. The blind and visually impaired, in this country, represent a significantly large group of disabled persons who also need help with transportation modifications. The good news, uncovered in this survey, is that their needs do not seem to require anywhere near the massive outlays required by the adaptations for wheelchair users. What we found was that the blind and visually impaired do not need many physical adaptations to existing equipment and infrastructure. Travelling for visually impaired people means moving through a world lacking many or all of the visual cues that sighted travellers, and many transit providers, take for granted. The absence of visual cues such as bus stop signs, bus numbers and street signs are the main barriers to equal access to transportation reported in this study. This group's main need is simply more and better information: 1) The single most important characteristic of public transit use for blind and vision impaired people is not related to hardware improvement but rather to improving access to information; 2) The type of information most needed consists of: (a) Brailled or large print timetables and schedules, produced in a usable format; (b) Larger signs on transit vehicles to identify their routes; (c) Information at transit stops regarding whether or not a vehicle has just passed and wait time for next vehicle; most prefer some type of auditory message; d) Clearer PA systems in terminals and on board vehicles; (e) Announcements of stops - either mechanical or verbal; (f) Auditory messages and signals at lights when change of vehicle or route necessitates crossing the street; (g) Talking Signs on transit vehicles and in terminals, accessed by sonic or radar receivers; (h) Joint auditory/tactile information in terminals (e.g., talking tactual maps on devices such as NOMAD); and (i) Transit hot lines with human operators, not touch-tone access to pre-recorded messages, voice-mail, or computerized query systems: the latter are universally disliked; 3) Survey results indicate that improving information access should relieve many of the frustrations blind and vision impaired people experience when having to use public transit; 4) Auditory messages are needed to complement the abundance of visual messages currently available to sighted travellers; 5) For relatively little outlay, it may be possible to improve the attractiveness of public transit for this group; 6) Since many members of the disabled population travel free, economic factors and standard economic reasoning about travel mode is largely irrelevant; 7) Our respondents indicated that they needed more information about services for disabled travellers, that transit information was not always easy to obtain and that it was not always easy to understand and use; 8) Some of these needs can be addressed simply with better enforcement of existing procedures. Our respondents heaped praise on the local bus drivers for their assistance with their required stops, but a common theme was that bus stops and streets were not always announced, leading to missed stops and confusion. Also mentioned was the poor quality of announcements at the hub terminal. Both of these concerns could be addressed with stricter enforcement of existing regulations, or if needed, a taped announcement, either manual or automatic; 9) Another problem that is easily addressed is that seats reserved for disabled, located near the door and the driver, were not always available for their intended patrons. Again stricter enforcement of existing rules would alleviate this problem. Our blind and visually impaired travellers also rated the telephone hot-line, with human operators, as very valuable. Some travellers, however, were not aware of this service; 10) When asked to rate difficulties when using transit the problems were not with entering or exiting, paying the fare or other design issues. The most difficulty was rated for lack of information issues like knowing which bus to enter, knowing their location on a moving bus and dealing with transfers and crossing the street. More easily provided information was shown by their desire for timetables in suitable format, large print or Braille, available onboard. The few technological helps they desired are certainly not as costly as infrastructure or equipment retrofitting. They showed a preference for auditory prompts at terminals and bus stops giving bus numbers and times of arrival of the next bus. Given the inability of many in the general public to read or understand transit schedules, these investments in auditory information systems would likely increase rider ship in the total population. High preference was also shown for "talking signs," identifying output from a bus or sign that is transmitted to a hand held auditory device. They also indicated concern when crossing streets and therefore requested auditory traffic signals. These requests are the only technological aid requested that would be used only by the visually impaired.
Samenvatting