No-go areas for the blind

Many blind people are finding that pedestrianised streets are becoming no-go areas. Totally blind people will use a long cane to follow the walls and buildings along a normal street, hearing the moving traffic on one side and the reflected sound from the other.

Pavements of shopping streets are now increasingly obstructed with signs, displays and goods for sale, so it is often easier to follow along the kerbside.

As pedestrianisation usually involves the removal of both traffic and kerbs, with the creation of large open areas with no tactile surface markings, and with visually interesting obstructions in random positions, blind people increasingly avoid such areas.

However, it would be simple and inexpensive to make such pedestrian areas navigable to blind people by replacing kerb lines with "blind tracks". These could be laid in the same way as white or yellow road lines except that they would be slightly raised and have a shallow groove running down the middle into which the blind person could locate the tip of their long cane for guidance.

These tracks could form a feature of the design of the block paving in new pedestrian areas and become an integral visual part of the modern urban streetscape, as knobbly brick pedestrian crossing indicators have become in recent years.

David M Bates, Chair, National Federation of the Blind WM Branch, Tipton Road, Dudley.