PICTURES: Safety hazards for visually-impaired people in Inverness city centre highlighted in campaign by Inspire Highland
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Safety hazards and challenges encountered by visually-impaired people in Inverness city centre have been highlighted in an awareness-raising campaign.
Street furniture, difficulties in crossing busy roads and the lack of accessible menus are among the issues raised.
Concerns have also been voiced about the potential dangers of a new link road at the city’s bus station.
Inspire Highland, a group of young people with diverse disabilities, highlighted their experiences during an event, Eye Am Vibrantly Visible.
Emma Thomas, who works for Inspiring Young Voices – formerly Highland Children and Young People’s Forum – is sighted but took up the challenge to wear special glasses which simulate different sight loss conditions, while navigating the centre and carrying out various tasks.
“It was quite a nerve-racking experience,” she said afterwards. “I was quite shaky a lot of the time.
“It was quite difficult in the city centre because, while I was being guided by someone and someone was telling me it was OK, I couldn’t sense that.”
The first problem encountered was that a mechanism to help people with sight loss use a pedestrian crossing outside the rail station was not working. She then encountered dozens of bollards in High Street.
“I am not sure why they are there,” she said. “They don’t appear to serve any particular purpose.”
Sandwich boards were a problem, too.
“The other thing I found was people walking towards me – 99 per cent of the time people moved out of the way but it felt very last minute. I didn’t know they were going to move. A couple of times people walked into my cane and it gave me a shock.”
The lack of accessible menus in cafés was another issue.
“All these cafés need to do is have an audio menu with a QR code which people can click on to with their telephone, or they could put the menu on their website so people know in advance,” she said.
Before the event, Ms Thomas checked out a new link road for buses and taxis between the bus station and Rose Street.
“I was very surprised and concerned to see there was no demarcation at all between the path and road which is going to have buses,” she said.
“There is a fairly indistinct white line and it is quite patchy in places. If someone has a visual impairment there is no way they can tell the difference between the path and the road.”
Read more: Street furniture and inaccessible menus among challenges for people with sight loss
