The using of urban park as perceived by visually impaired

Abstract

Visually impaired individuals deserve a comfortable outdoor experience. They need to perceive the space in the urban outdoors and act independently in the urban environment. These individuals have multi-sensory perceptual abilities in understanding the formal criteria in accessing and using urban spaces. Subsequently, it is essential to discuss these multiple sensory perceptions within the design and planning of the public spaces. This study aims to understand the sensory references of visually impaired individuals and their perception of landscape and space while they use urban parks. In this context, the focus is on how these individuals take their positions, develop orientations, coordinate movements, and behaviors based on the tactile, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory clues they receive from the environment. For this purpose, we conducted semi-structured one-on-one interviews with 22 visually impaired individuals. As a result of in-depth interviews, we understood visually impaired individuals’ sensory references and their independent mobility in the urban environment. While each individual’s sensory references vary, sometimes different references are collected in one sense, and sometimes a reference was perceived by more than one sense. Developing sensory references in the urban landscape design is useful in providing comfortable space usage for the visually impaired and all other users.