Proceedings of: Workshop on Improving Building Design for Persons with Low Vision

Issue 18: What design guidance on accessibility through contrast and signage attributes can be provided in the short term for persons with low vision?

Comment by Greg Knoop (Moderator): Thank you Roberta. And from the clinical corner here – I hear a lot of positive “Hmms” – because this is the appropriate use of an aesthetic. Do you remember “The Joy Luck Club” and that stainless-steel-on-stainless-steel kitchen that the mother walks in and is, like, you know, shocked? I mean, that’s what we’re seeing as a common aesthetic. So here’s a more appropriate aesthetic for our population.

Lighting Contrast and Conceptual Design

Comment by Vijay Gupta: I wanted to [continue] discussing [the] earliest availability of standards or [guidelines] which are already on hand. So your panel has done a good job. There are a lot of issues on contrast.

I want to give you a real example. I work in a building that three of us here – Kate and Tom – : [The GSA Headquarters] Building. It’s a historical building, 1917. It’s a very bad building. I’m in the office of the chief architect. So [I had an old ] space. It was old design.

In February of 2002, we moved into the new office of the chief architect. It’s [on a corridor of a wing] and was 50-foot-wide [with the core running] east and west. And the whole [interior is] all white, clear white, everything white – the ceiling, the floor, the floor tiles, the wall, the columns, the furniture. Even the signs are so little – all white, all white.

Comment by Greg Knoop: We can show you that. It’s in that synopsis presentation [slide 8].

And the chairs – somebody brought in the chairs with the leather. The chairs were leather. And the only thing which was shining was the [frame, which was] chrome. The good news was they had plants at every column. So [I did not] bump into the columns.

The conference room [had glare as furnishings were all] white – chairs white. And especially if the sun is shining, you got a lot of sun.

Okay, to conclude. My eyesight was a little bit better than now. So I could navigate with the green plants and with some other [visual cues]. I [relied on] them that way for several years. But I had to go into this [new space]. But they got rid of the plants.

Comment by [Participant]: [The design of this space] was influenced by Richard Meier. I think Ed Feiner had gone to Meier’s office and, you know, he liked that and so they hired some designers to do this all-white scene where everything’s white.

Comment by [Participant]: But it was good because it got Vijay so angry that he convened us.

Comment by [Participant]: We certainly [don’t] want that to be the representative of what makes American architecture great. That really is a horrible statement.

Signage

Comment and Question by Tom Williams: Along with the discussion about wayfinding and signage, it brings out the issue of contrast and tactile signs and so on. One of the things that we don’t do much here in the States is use pictograms. Wouldn’t it seem logical to use that on a more regular basis? And I understand that there are people out there that, these things just don’t register.

And I happen to be married to one of them who can’t translate a pictogram, but I think some of it is a learned skill and that, in addition to the fact that it’s easier to make the contrast, it’s also a more universal signage that doesn’t rely on knowing the English language. Is that something that we could build into these guidelines?

Response by Erin Schambureck: The only pictogram requirements that I recall being in ADA – and Marsha, maybe you could verify that – is really just that handicap image – the person in the wheelchair. The international symbol of accessibility.

Response by Marsha Mazz: Actually, there’s four, in terms of the ADA and ABA standards – one for assisted lifting, one for volume control – off the top of my head, I’m forgetting the fourth one. But anyway, we don’t require pictograms except for the international symbol of accessibility. The others we require only if you provide those features.

Question by Tom Williams: Well, the question really is, would that be an easier way to provide guidance?

Response by Marsha Mazz: Probably not for people with vision impairments because oftentimes, if you’re looking for the restroom, you know what the word “restroom” looks like as a whole. It’s a Gestalt – or “ladies” or “women’s” – you know all those. And so you have a sense of that form and how much real estate it takes up.

But pictograms – they get expanded and shrunk and they get, you know, decorated and all kinds of other things, which may – if you only use a pictogram – may be a problem. But I think you’re onto something in terms of, you know, trying to get at people using multiple methods. Some people are going to find a pictogram easier to spot and easier to understand, and particularly people with cognitive disabilities who may not read at all.

Comment by [Participant]: Perhaps incorporating those pictograms into the wayfinding to get you to those place, not just the sign identifying to the stair or the restroom.

Response by Marsha Mazz: My argument would be for redundancy with the use of the pictogram, not to have the pictogram totally supplant the word. In fact, when you use a pictogram to identify a restroom, for example, you are required – it’s in the ADA and ABA standards – to provide the equivalent verbal descriptor in raised letters or Braille.

Comment by [Participant]: And I think, also, those pictograms should be informed by human factors or something because I found out I’m not the only person in the elevator who cannot identify which of those triangles is – and I never want to push it because I’m sure I’m going to be pushing “close door” on somebody who’s trying to come in.

Response by Marsha Mazz: That’s a very good point. Most of the pictograms we use are not ISO standards and so they haven’t been tested through any kind of [a consensus process]. Just because we invent a pictogram doesn’t make it a good one.

Question by [Participant]: Is there a requirement for size in our standard – the size of the sign?

Response by Marsha Mazz: We’ve declined to try to describe the minimum size of a pictogram itself because, where do measure on a glyph? So what we did was, we prescribed that the field in which that pictogram sits has to be a minimum of six inches tall. So we’ve trusted the graphic designers to not put a postage stamp in a six-inch field. But legally, they could.

Question by [Participant]: But what is that six inches based on?

Response by Marsha Mazz: The six inches is just a typical plaque size that you will find for most signage. And we know that six inches is going to be installed anywhere between 48 and 60 inches on the latch side of the door because that’s required. So it’s going to be at eye level and it’s going to be at least six inches tall.

Comment by Fred Krimgold: One thing that I’ve noticed that is kind of interesting is, just taking airports and gate numbers around the world, they vary tremendously.

Response by Marsha Mazz: It’s a huge problem, and we haven’t regulated them as clearly –

Other Contrast Attributes

Comment and Question by Jim Woods: [This] picks up on what Fred was saying, but I heard something that is just blowing my mind. It’s confusing me and I want to get some understanding. Several of you used “contrast” in ways that I’m not used to considering contrast – contrast of texture, contrast of some of the other attributes. But do you see contrast in a different way than “light and dim”?

And that’s a big issue, I think, as far as us trying to get into a common vocabulary. I’d just like to hear you express, for example, when you talk about texture contrast, how do you [measure and] perceive that differently than you do color contrast?

Responses by [three Participants]: Change. It’s a change in light. It’s an obvious change.

Response by [fourth Participant]: For example, in our doorways in our center, we use wood-carpet-wood, and it’s a whiter color. And we have carpet and it’s all butted-up so there’s no step down or anything. But it’s a change in texture so a person who’s visually impaired or blind, they would know – they’ve got the texture – but they’ve got both [cues].

Response by [fifth Participant]: There’s a change in resiliency between carpet and wood, and that change in resiliency is a good cue because it’s also, often, an auditory cue if you’re using a cane or it’s an underfoot cue if you’re not using a cane.

Question by Jim Woods: Okay, but if we were to go color-neutral, [what are some of the other aspect of contrast?

Response by [Participant]: You’re going to feel the difference between the smooth surface and a soft surface or a textured surface. You feel that because it’s a difference in the friction, basically.

Response by [Participant]: When we did our [consensus review], we had huge discussions going on for hours because the lighting designer would use [“contrast”] one way and the interior designer would use it another way. And I mean, I had a lot of terms, and we could pull out some of those terms.

Question by [Participant]: So, how would you measure contrast in a non-visual way?

Response by [Participant]: We say obvious change.

Comment by Vijay Gupta: [This] is that experience from that obvious place I had. So I complained to the director of the office that very problem and a few days later, in that lobby, I saw some black leather chairs I say, they listened to me. Later, I came back – the chairs were gone. So I asked – I went back to the director and I said, what happened? Oh, Jesus, somebody made a mistake and delivered the wrong chairs.

Question by [Participant]: [What about surface changes?] – the old bumps, you know, in the road that they have. That seems to be the thing that you do, too, for low-vision people or blind people, because they stand up. But they’re really hard for older people with low vision because they’re hard to walk on. Your walkers get stuck in them and things like that.

Response by Marsha Mazz: Actually, we’ve researched that, and I know people say that, but the research doesn’t support that claim. So I will tell you that there is a constituency of people who have fought that requirement forever and they are the successors to the constituency of people who fought installing curb ramps on the basis that their belief that curb ramps would be dangerous to blind people.

And now they’re saying that you can’t put warnings on curb ramps or you’re dangerous to walking people. If you walk, you don’t have to use the curb ramp. In fact, most older people, including older people who use walkers, prefer not to use a sloped surface, not because of a detectable warning, but because it’s easier to step down off a six-inch curb than it is to lift your feet and walk down a slope. And this is why we had such competition over the issue.

Comment by [Participant]: [Maintaining] balance --

Response by Marsha Mazz: Right – exactly right because your walker is not on a slope. We have a constituency of people who like stairs and don’t like ramps for disabilityrelated reasons. But [others have] been using these detectable warnings on interior locations and to aid in wayfinding. We’ve participated in international forums on this subject. In some foreign countries, they do use a variety of detectable warnings – or [as] they call them in Japan: “taki blocks” – to aid in wayfinding.

And some of them are herringbone patterns and all kinds of other patterns, most of which people who have vision impairments can’t really distinguish one pattern from the other. They just know that they’re on a pattern. And so we find that the research, again, doesn’t support their use for wayfinding, most importantly because detectable warnings have a single purpose.

Like a stop sign, the detectable warning signifies to an individual who is blind or has low vision, stop here; don’t proceed further because you’re about to enter a vehicular area. So if we start proliferating these things all over the environment and putting them at drinking fountains and putting them here and putting them there, they lose their utility as a warning. They will no longer serve as a warning. We selected that pattern and that particular design because it was not readily available in the environment. Corduroy actually tested better for detectability but didn’t serve as a warning.