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

Fixed Surfaces

To show where vertical and horizontal surfaces meet is very important. To show edges is very important. And one place where this is really important, even though you’re no longer allowed to run carpeting up to become a baseboard because of cleaning or health issues, a lot of times the baseboard will be painted the same color as the flooring.

And when you do that, even if they have pretty darn good vision, [people have] the feeling that that wall, which they may be leaning toward or using to help them become stable isn’t where they think it is. So [through] peripheral vision, it [appears to be in] a different place.

So it’s really important to make that definition of where the change is, not from partway up and then make the change. And so very often you’ll see a handrail that’s darker than the wall, and then they’ll make the baseboard darker than the wall too. But then it matches the value on the floor. So it causes a problem.

Furniture and open spaces

There are so many cases of dark furniture on dark carpeting or on patterned floors, and also white leather furniture on white or very light floors. And those are very difficult to see. Even if you’re looking down and expecting to have to look for a clear path, those are very hard to see, because they’re quite low. A lot of those benches are knee height or below. And that to me is the same as having something stick up from the floor. But quite often they’re open underneath, so you can fix that easily, though, by putting contrasting colors.

This is inside our museum gallery (slide 10). [When] they want to show off the art work, they often make all the finishes the same. So the walls and the floor and the ceilings and even the stands the things are on are all similar. But some of them do have a good shadow where that little darker wood base is. Some of them don’t.

But what you often see when you go into galleries or even office buildings is, if they have a hazard there, they’ll put four [posts] and then they’ll put a rope. Well, it’s not only hard to see it, but a cane goes right underneath the rope, and so people get embarrassed more than hurt, because they usually stop by the time they walk into the rope, and then all these metal posts are falling over. And that’s really common today.

Even though you want the art to show up, this space should have been a different value, a darker value in the floor and then the bases [a lighter value]. But you need a change there.