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Issues Related to the Physical Environment


Traveling through the built environment can be a daunting challenge for a person who is blind or who has low vision, especially if the environment is new and the person is in crisis.  Things that sighted people take for granted can become life-threatening hazards. You might want to enlist the aid of a person who is blind or who has low vision ahead of time to conduct an accessibility audit to identify areas that will be problematic for survivors with sight limitations.

Without a guided practice orientation, clear signage, adequate lighting, maps in alternate formats, and high color contrasts, the survivor may find it difficult to:

  • Locate where counters begin and end, the edges of steps, or where declines/inclines begin;
  • Find the elevator;
  • Find rooms;
  • Find exits and escape routes;
  • Escape in an emergency;
  • Protect themselves from collisions with objects like chairs, tables, and plants;
  • Find known objects when moved from expected locations;
  • Find the path of travel because of a lack of consistency in orientation cues along the path or the removal of known cues (like familiar scents or objects a cane user will remember)
  • See because of glare from shiny floors or shiny reflective objects
  • See because of sudden light changes from darkness to brightness or brightness to darkness
  • See during the night when dim or no lighting is provided
  • Control eye movements. This affects focus, but also eye-hand coordination.

Examples of Problems

  • One survivor’s eyes hurt from the sudden burst of light when she enters a stairway with bright sunshine. She is temporarily blinded and trips on the first stair. She cannot tell the depth of the stairs or find their edges. A missing handrail makes her even more anxious as she tries to negotiate the stairs.
  • A woman becomes extremely frustrated while cooking because she does not understand the labels on unfamiliar food packages, and she cannot read the digital oven controls because they are not brightly lit enough. She doesn’t realize how poor her sight actually is. She has been warned once already for not serving food at the shelter on time.
  • The children in the shelter move the furniture around for fun.  A survivor with one eye damaged in an assault finds herself often tripping over it.

Suggested Solutions

  • One of the first tasks of providers should be to orient the person to the geographic location of features of the site. This can happen on a micro level of giving them cues for inside the building to the macro level of what the key features of the neighborhood are. This should be done with precise language.
  • Routes of travel should also be described precisely. Preferably they should be traveled with a guide so that the individual can locate cues that will help them to navigate independently. These cues may include the smell of biscuits cooking as one passes the kitchen or a draft from a badly insulated door or chimes that hang outside in the yard.
  • There should be color contrast in waiting areas between furniture and floor/wall colors. If the waiting area is used to give out brochures, then keep them all in one location. Organize them by type of information. Make sure the most important information is not mixed with third-party brochures. Keep different language information separate (e.g. English and Spanish documents should not be mixed). Do not place brochures and postings of information above a comfortable reaching height. Some should also be placed in a lower location for people who might be in wheelchairs or of small stature.
  • Shelters are good at creating organized spaces like kitchens and art supply areas so that they function well through resident turnovers. For the person with a sight limitation, color-code items according to where they are stored by using color-coded stickers or containers. Refrigerator items, like leftovers, should have large labels on them. Putting things away in predictable locations can be facilitated by using clear labels on cabinets and drawers. Art supplies that are stuffed away need to be easily visible and reachable when drawers are opened. Provide flashlights in all rooms for viewing into drawers and cabinets. In all building areas, where drawers are not made of plastic, durable extender slides can be used to make a drawer pull out completely.
  • On outside doors, make the door locks and the doorbells highly visible. Either add directed lighting or get a self-lit doorbell from a hardware store.
  • You want to make the entire pathway to the home well-lit. Visibility and easy orientation decreases most people’s anxiety when arriving to a location. It is especially important for people with decreasing vision. Avoid having the light directed in a way that it glares directlyh into the eyes.  It also is important to maintain even illumination along the pathway itself. Sudden light changes are disorienting because it takes time for eyes to adjust.
  • Indoors, bright natural light from windows and non-glare artificial light fixtures provide even intensity in lighting and is idea.  However, when preserving the safety and privacy of your clients, you may need to work with a lighting specialist to create even illumination indoors.
  • Floor tiles of a contrasting color can be used to indicate safe travel paths to exits or to elevators. Color contrasts or even textural differences between walls and floor can be used to help people distinguish walls and edges from travel paths.
  • Tape down or remove rugs, remove electrical cords from pathways or tape them down, avoid upholstery and floor coverings that have patterns and stripes.
  • Provide visual clues to steps. Paint treads and risers in contrasting colors, or add a strip of paint on the edge of each step. Change the texture or change the material of the steps to be different from the surrounding area.
  • Level changes with one to two steps can cause tripping accidents because they are easy not to notice. Add a railing for one to two step areas. Make sure the steps are well lit.
  • In the kitchen and dining area, use light-colored tableware for dark countertops or vice versa.
  • Use slide-out shelving to slide out groups of items for easier viewing. Pull-down shelves to view contents in cabinets above. Use roll-out shelves and slide-out baskets for lower cabinets for easier viewing and reach of what is stored in them. Pull-down shelves slide contents of an upper cabinet out and down towards you.
  • Controls should be high contrast, simple in function and supply information through redundant means. Microwave ovens, for example, should have high contrast visible functions. Clearly indicated individual buttons work best for someone with limited vision or a cognitive impairment.  You can also buy stick on tactile ‘dots’ to indicate the location of a function on a flat panel appliance.
  • Look for easy to see hot surfaces. Halogen cooktop burners, for example, glow red even at lower temperatures.
  • In the bathroom, mark the pressure valve with visible and clear temperature directions.
  • Glass-enclosures can create problems for those with vision impairments. If you have a shower with glass doors, add decals at eye level.