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

Absence of visual clues

As that visual experience lessens, so does our ability to negotiate the world around us. And so, any lack of clarity in that environment, such as a stair here; a simple stair, which we think is quite elegant looking but here when it’s actually purposefully blurry – my father was very clever in putting that together – this is how he sees the stair (slide 3). Now as that stair becomes less elegant and more scary, it becomes less of a design feature and more of a safety hazard and yet the stair is supposed to egress us and take us to safety. So are we doing right? Have we done wrong? No, but we can do better. We can do better. People are not here just to do no wrong. We’re not here to point fingers; we’re here to point the way.

Buildings do not intrinsically accommodate Persons with Low Vision

This Workshop started as an idea when Vijay and other leaders amongst us, including my father, were gathered in a post-occupancy evaluation workshop looking at courts buildings a year after their construction. These buildings are large, very glamorous, done by our very best architects. These are well-published buildings by well-published architects and so they’re works of art in their own sense (slide 4).

At least two members of that team suffered from low vision and they experienced great discomfort traveling through these buildings at various points along the way and became acutely aware that there was a distinct flaw in the built environment that we are building as a society for our society. Our inclusive society, our government was unable to address this issue. Now, was that by fault? No, but I think we can do better and that’s what we’re here to learn to do better.

So we accommodate for people who are not sighted, but we’re not accommodating people who aren’t fully sighted. These buildings use all the latest technologies and maybe [the designers] get carried away with those technologies because they provide us with incredible opportunities but perhaps desensitize us from the opportunity to service the client, to service the need of our people.

Accessibility is not a new Subject but Low Vision is not addressed

Obviously, this is not a new subject (slide 5). In 1961, the American National Standards Institute published ANSI A117.1, making buildings accessible and useful for physically handicapped. In 1968, Congress passed the Architectural Barriers Act. In 1984, we had several federal agencies putting the UFAS standard together. And then of course, in the ’90s, the ADA came into play and brought us standards which are incredible improvements, but again, possibly incomplete.

Comment by Tom Williams: Greg, I want to amend the 1984, our agency should be on that list and it’s not.

Response by Greg Knoop: Okay. I apologize. So GSA should be on there.

In 1995, the Rural National Institute for the Blind in the U.K. published Building Sight: A Handbook of Building and Interior Design Solutions to include the needs of visually impaired persons. The authors Peter Baker, Jon Barrick and Rod Wilson were not designers. One of them is a mechanical engineer. But the Building Sight was a guideline made by non-designers. It’s still just a guideline, not a standard. To our knowledge, no such standard or guideline exists in the United States.

Low vision affects about 10 million Americans who suffer from age-related macular degeneration, according to the AMD Institute. So we have a growing concern, a growing need to address a population. There’s a true demand.

Glare and Low Contrast

Many modern buildings are capable of doing incredible things. We have beautiful windowscapes that are incredible to us but here you’ll see the difference between how perhaps the designer or the photographer for the awards ceremony sees it and how a person with macular degeneration may experience that same space (slide 6). Our light, we use a lot of artificial lighting throughout our buildings. It’s of course a need and requirement, but often, as we experienced earlier today, could you please move that light? Sometimes, the answer is no, that’s a fixed light and you’re workstation’s stuck there (slide 7). It takes several months until actually you can get to a new workstation. These issues can create discomfort and yet we’re trying to provide light to provide comfort and use.

Many of our newer buildings and contemporary buildings try to do things with sleek, monochromatic interior design (slide 8). It looks cool, especially in some photographs in nice books, but often many people experience it this way and that is an environment that’s extremely difficult to negotiate.

Now, we have some experts here who are going to talk about the various pathologies that impair vision, but we’re here to also provide guidance for the built environment. So design for daylight and non-glare spaces that are not uncomfortable to be in, is that just an issue for people who have eyesight loss? It’s actually a universal issue. I think we all find comfort.

Have you ever walked down a stair and found that you’re seeing at the top of the fixture as you’re negotiating the stair and I have perfectly fine vision, although it’s beginning to fail a little bit as well. And I have to deal with the same issues, and light shining, glaring in your eyes. It’s location, location, location. It just was not located correctly and it creates a problem for us. Is that just a small issue for only a small population or is it an issue for all of us? And spaces like this: can all of us find our way around that? Do we know where the elevator core is without some intense signage or are there architectural clues here to get us around? That’s a space where maybe all of us could be lost.

Question by [Participant]: Where’s that site?

Response by [Participant]: GSA’s architect.

Response by Greg Knoop: Office of the Chief Architect. Office of the GSA.

Actually, later in this conference, I’ll have one of my panels – I’ll show areas where we’ve made mistakes as well. So we’re all here to learn, see our mistakes and learn from them.

Siting of Buildings

We’ll talk about a few issues that are important here to guide this workshop. Siting buildings – these are old principles. We site to improve and reduce glare but we also site to harvest and make best use of natural daylight (slide 9). We have urban design issues to deal with, but we can use tools in the building’s configuration, details and siting to take best advantage of solar orientation to make that building effective as a building as well as it’s beautiful in its architecture and construction.

So we look to control light. We look to integrate the indoor and outdoor spaces so that the pathways – and I think one of us, we were talking about this earlier – the pathways, as you come to an entrance, as you negotiate the site, aren’t weird or clever, but they’re actually somewhat obvious. The building should identify its entrance, should celebrate its entrance and should make the entrance and the experience and going to the entrance something that is celebrated.

Exterior Design (slide 10)

We need to develop transitional spaces that take us from the interior to exterior so that the eye can adjust as you go in and out of buildings so that you’re not going from complete brightness to complete darkness. Here’s an example where that’s nicely done and you can see that the light transitions across that space (slide 10). But stairs and ramps and all these things have to be negotiable. So we have to have attention to how they’re detailed, colored, textured and configured in a way that they are easily negotiated by all populations.

Interior Layout and Design

Interior layouts need to be logical. They shouldn’t be so clever that they’re hard to negotiate or find your way around. I think we were talking about that again earlier. You shouldn’t need to have – they need to be logically laid out buildings and then architecturally defined in ways that are elegant. In this case though (slides 11 and 12), we see some nice examples of transitions between the daylighting, the day-lit exterior into the interior through various architectural means. So there are some positives to see here.

Definition of doorways and escalators and stairways and elevators – these need to be things that are not lost in the blur of white or monochromatic architecture but are actually easily found and identified by all persons. This includes reception, windows, assembly and meeting rooms. All these things should be easily found by the person who negotiates these spaces.

Now, this may seem a silly thing to think about, but if you blurred your vision, you might wonder what you’re aiming at (slide 13). We must use electrical lighting. It’s a need, but we have tremendous tools available to us to control that light and control the quality, configuration (slide 14). We’re going to hear from experts throughout this workshop on just that subject and what the things we can do.

Interior design. Perhaps if we look at finishes: floors, ceilings, color, value, contrast, furniture and arrangement and configurations of spaces, we can actually read and understand some of these spaces. Here’s a central [corridor] space (slide 15) [in which] and you may see positives and negatives. Let’s look at what we’re doing in interior design finishes, colors and textures, reflection and we have tools now available to us to actually study those things. Revit [computer aided design] allows us to look at light interaction and surfaces in order to study and provide effective design for these spaces.