WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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All around Britain, you will find this:
tactile paving.

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It’s to help blind and partially sighted
people find their way around.

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And here is the clever part,

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and the part that almost everyone who is fully
sighted will never have noticed:

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there are different patterns for different
situations.

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Very few people see nothing at all.

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That’s important to say. Only about 3%.

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Some people have light perception, some people
have a bit more vision.

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Some people have a limited field of vision.

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Some people have poor central vision but good
peripheral vision.

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Essentially, you think of partially sighted
people with enough vision

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to be able to get around safely and independently,

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blind being below that threshold.

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Dots in a grid, like this, mean a dropped
kerb for crossing the road.

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If it’s red, or at least, if it’s supposed
to be red,

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it’s a crossing with lights or something
else to stop traffic:

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these designs are for partially sighted people
too,

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so bright contrasting colours are a good idea.

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There is a small amount of tactile paving
here, used as a marker,

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to flag up where the crossing is.

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And then near the road, it’s for the full
length of the crossing,

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so you can work out where it is.

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And it’s important to balance marking the
crossing

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against not using too much tactile paving:

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because someone with arthritis can find surfaces
like this painful to cross.

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Navigating around an unfamiliar area is always
a bit scary, to be honest.

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Because, obviously, traditional visual clues,
landmarks etc, aren't there.

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It helps a lot if clues are consistent,

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so confusion can certainly occur when that
isn’t the case.

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It’s very, very important that these adaptations
that are there to help us

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are actually there to help us

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and are actually there in the way that we
expect to see them.

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But there are other patterns too.

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Offset dots mean there’s a train platform
ahead, a big chasm you could fall into.

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Lozenge shapes mean a tram platform,

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something closer to street level that could
run you over.

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Stripes across the path mean there’s some
steps ahead,

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or a couple of other things that could trip
you up.

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Stripes along the path mean a safe route to
follow.

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And if there’s a path that’s half for
foot traffic, and half for bicycles?

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Well, the direction of the stripes tells you
which side is which.

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Boroughs in London, councils outside of London,

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seem to be moving more towards
aesthetic considerations,

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i.e. they’re changing the colour to darker
greys so it blends in more.

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By definition if it blends in more,

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it’s harder for partially sighted people
such as myself to actually see.

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Or obviously, in a more dire situation,

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people can find themselves in the road, not
knowing they’re in the road,

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simply because those essential clues aren’t
there.

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And sure, all this is tricky to get right.

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The design standards for how this is laid
down are literally a hundred pages long.

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But so are the design standards for everything
about public infrastructure:

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having reliable rules that everyone understands
is important

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when there are tons of metal speeding past
you.

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Thank you very much to the team from the
Royal National Institute of Blind People for all their help!

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You can check out their YouTube channel here,

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and yes, I have linked the full hundred-page design
document in the description!