
Death by Tactile Paving - misnamed
http://99percentinvisible.org/article/death-tactile-paving-chinas-precarious-paths-visually-impaired/
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tominous
Not to take away from the specific challenges of blind people, but this is a
broad problem whenever there is a mismatch between the _map_ and the
_territory_. The mismatch can come from sloppy work or just from the way the
world changes over time and the map doesn't keep up.

I've seen plenty of cases in IT systems where bad documentation is much worse
than no documentation. For example, there are the ubiquitous handover docs
(demanded by project managers everywhere) filled with pages of cable
connectivity, MAC addresses, WWNs, LUNs, etc in Word tables or manually-edited
spreadsheets. They should all read "For historical purposes only" because you
will inevitably trip over reality if you rely on them for live systems.

Similarly, there are those that insist on beautiful, meaningful patterns for
naming all components. This works great until the pattern can no longer
continue, or someone is sloppy, and then the pattern is just a tactile strip
leading to a hole in the ground.

The solution I've settled on is live, automatic documentation in the form of
scripts that generate a bunch of CSVs (or populate a table somewhere to drive
a dashboard). CSVs are nice because they are easy to generate and version. I
guess JSON would be more trendy these days.

I avoid manually-edited living documents and put clear warnings on any
historical documents. And as much as possible I avoid patterns in naming and
numbering, although that's a hard sell for a few clients.

Taking it back to the tactile indicators, I'm reminded of the (apocryphal?)
story of what one university did when they landscaped their campus. In the
first year they didn't put any paving down. In the second year they paved the
worn-down paths in the grass. If only there were some universal way to "grow"
tactile strips based on the actual movements of pedestrians.

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lizzard
Another thing to look out for in cities (and get people to correct if you can
- report to the city, building owners, and so on): Things that stick out at
head level that have no indication of their existence at ground level. Cane
users would not feel an interruption and so would have no warning before
getting cold-cocked right in the face. I notice this a lot where there are
dramatic stairways that you can walk underneath. Best to have some sort of
railing there.

~~~
Turing_Machine
This may be naive, but that sounds like a good use case for a head-mounted
collision-avoidance system (like the ones in self-driving cars). I bet you
could fit such a thing in a fairly light-weight headband nowadays.

~~~
atomwaffel
On the contrary: it's not naïve, it's far too advanced. This isn't a problem
that needs to be solved with technology and by forcing people to wear a
beeping device on their heads. You can just install a railing and make the
environment safe for everyone.

I suppose your solution would work as a stopgap, but it seems like poor design
to make people adapt to human-made environments rather than building the
environments in a way that works for everyone.

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tudorw
while I agree that the best solution is a better environment, you could fit
the sensor to the obstacle, and have it beep when something comes close :P

~~~
vacri
I would not want to live/work/sit near such a thing.

~~~
pc86
Great, now we're going to see random beeping devices places around SF where
people don't want the homeless to congregate.

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jzwinck
I live somewhere not mentioned in the article but we have tactile paving too.
I have never once seen a blind person using it (no, I am not blind myself). On
the other hand I did see construction workers installing it, and it seems to
take quite a bit of extra effort.

So I wonder: are these things useful to people other than the tile makers, for
whom government mandated special tiles are undoubtedly a fantastic revenue
stream?

~~~
ndarilek
Haven't read the article, but as a blind person myself, nope. Much of the
infrastructure designed to "help" us is so inconsistent, non-intuitive or
broken that I don't bother using it, far preferring my own skills and
knowledge of my surroundings.

For instance, I have an audible signal near my house. Sometimes it works.
Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes one side of the street works, and which side
that is varies from day to day. In Austin, we have a variety of signal designs
with no standard placement and, in some cases, a non-intuitive pattern of
beeps which you can only learn by listening to the traffic patterns and
correlating them with the sounds. So, in short, if I walk up and press a
button, I have no indication whether that button will give me an audible
signal, and historically giving me a signal is no indicator of getting one in
the future. I feel truly sorry for anyone who actually needs the things. For
my part, traffic never lies unless you get a bad driver, in which case an
audible signal wouldn't save you anyway.

Thanks for reading my mini-rant on the fucked-up state of shit to "help" blind
folks. :P

~~~
ooqr
Are you an engineer? I ask because you're on Hacker News.

I've long been curious what the day to day workflow is for a blind engineer.
Particularly if there are any folks doing software development.

I'd be tempted to believe the kind of pseudo-visual thinking required for
software design is exercised more in someone who has to construct their
surroundings without visual input.

I'd also be happy to be told I'm wrong. I seek to understand.

~~~
lizzard
Here's a fairly recent post (or two) about being blind and a developer.

[https://www.parhamdoustdar.com/2016/04/03/tools-of-blind-
pro...](https://www.parhamdoustdar.com/2016/04/03/tools-of-blind-programmer/)

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lizzard
I noticed this in Beijing in 2007 (I'm a wheelchair user, so I'm looking at
the sidewalk a lot). Here's a photo of one of those bumpy yellow paths leading
straight to a steep flight of stairs under Tiananmnen Square! I've always
thought back to it as a perfect example of things people try to implement in
order to help disabled people but that have the opposite effect of help.
Anyway, a good example of a well-meant but bad user interface!

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/1571135450/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/1571135450/)

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delinka
Caption from a photo: "Tactile paving used to create decorative patterns or
zigzag routes."

Zigzag routes. That sounds terrible. I'm having a hard time articulating my
reaction here, but can you imagine a moderate crowd on the sidewalk, most of
them seeing, and a blind person attempting to zig and zag through the crowd?

~~~
aylons
Believe me, the decorative pattern is even worse. It consists of an
alternating horseshoe-like pattern, only square, so anyone following it would
not only zig-zag, but alternate back and forth.

Of course, blind people are not robots and would soon realize the nonsense,
but surely it can't help anyone.

~~~
21
The decorative pattern could be interpreted as a "fuck you blind people" sign.

Of course, incompetence is more likely, maybe the worker installing them had
no idea what to do with the yellow tiles.

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MayeulC
I've been wondering if there was a reason for those tiles to be yellow. Sure,
it allows non-blind people to spot mistakes more easily, but it also seems
that those wouldn't have been used as a decoration in the first place if they
had been available in different colors (that said, never underestimate human
dumbness).

I've also been wondering at the material those are made of. I am used to
white, plastic dots, and I find them slippery when it rains, which is a bit
dangerous, since they indicate danger area (they can get especially
slippery/dangerous with roller blades, but that's not a great idea when it
rains, altogether).

~~~
arrrg
Most blind people can still see something.

~~~
jcranmer
It depends on your definition of blindness.

About 10-20% of the US population self-report vision problems. About 20-30% of
them reach the definition of legal blindness, which is vision that cannot be
corrected to above 20/200 in at least one eye. About 20% of that population
are totally blind, which is to say that they cannot even perceive someone
shining a light in their eye. In the US, that amounts to about 200,000 people.

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lizzard
By the way, the point of tactile paving is usually to indicate a change (like
a slope or a step) about to happen, warning of an edge, not a path that you
are supposed to follow.

~~~
kijin
Dots indicate change or hazard. Parallel lines, on the other hand, are meant
to be followed.

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CaliforniaKarl
I've wondered what the yellow raised line down the middle of Palo Alto Transit
Center was supposed to mean!

Unfortunately, I think it stops around the time it reaches the steps to the
train station.

On the other hand, San Jose Diridon doesn't have tactile paving, but it does
have some sort of "talking sign for the blind" things telling you which paths
to take, and where to stand!

