[Iabs-talk] Evaluation of Click and Go Maps

[Kelly Pierce]

Hello,

The Chicago Transit Authority is considering providing written
descriptions on its website for each of its 144 subway or elevated
train stations.  Officials asked disability community leaders to
evaluate Click and Go Maps as a possible vendor or model.  The six
locations mapped by Click and Go are on its website at:

www.clickandgomaps.com/ -

I check it out this past week and discovered that this is nothing more
than route travel dressed up in 21st century technology.  As many of
us know, the Federation does support familiarizing blind people to
entire environments rather than teaching specific pre-defined routes
in that environment.  My evaluation is below.

Kelly

I have been able to review text descriptions of the six locations from
Click and Go Maps.  The service proposed by CTA largely uses
pre-defined routes of travel.  This method of blind independent cane
travel is advocated and advanced by the Association for Education and
Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired, an organization of
orientation and Mobility Specialists and other professionals in the
blindness field. Association members are certified by the Academy for
Certification of Vision Rehabilitation and Education Professionals.
The Academy will not certify someone who is blind to teach travel
skills.  Most sighted persons, unless thoroughly trained under
sleepshades, often assume a blind person cannot successfully traverse
the many unfamiliar situations encountered daily.  These low
expectations about the travel capacities of blind people manifest
themselves in a number of different ways.  These ways include the
belief blind people cannot visit a swimming pool without falling into
the water, obtaining food from a cafeteria unassisted, or board a
train without sighted help. Another belief is that blind people need
highly detailed directions using carefully calibrated pre-defined
routes. By contrast the approach used by self-confident blind
travelers uses the entire environment to remain oriented, or when
confused reorient.  We expect drivers of automobiles to have problem
solving skills in navigating the roads. Simply because someone is
blind does not mean that these skills are suddenly absent.  Blind
people have problem solving skills as well, and much of the
information from Click and Go Maps fails to recognize this capacity.
An example of this is the description below of the Arlington Heights
Metra station:

“There is a shuttle service between the Arlington Park Metra rail
station and the Schaumburg Renaissance Hotel and Convention Center.
Pick up and drop off points at the Renaissance can be made at any of
the 3 main entrances to the hotel, ballroom and convention center. The
pick-up location at the rail station is at the station bus stop,
located just outside of the only ticket office. To get to that ticket
office from the shuttle stop, exit the van on the passenger side, walk
five feet into the sidewalk and turn left. Ten feet to your left are
stairs leading up to the office. Ascend this one short flight of
stairs, and walk forward. In ten feet a solid brick building edge
begins and in 60 feet you will reach the first set of doors on the
right. Enter these doors and the ticket window is 20 feet ahead at
twelve o'clock. To reach the shuttle stop from the ticket window,
place your back to the ticket counter, walk 20 feet to the double
doors and exit left. Walk 75 feet and there will be a short flight of
steps down. At the base of these steps, the shuttle stop is a few feet
to the right at the curb.”

The description assumes the blind traveler will trail a wall to the
ticket window.  There is no information regarding the environment as a
whole.  Where do people board and exit trains?  If the shuttle bus
doesn’t come, are pay telephones available? Does the station have a
restroom and how might it be found?

Similarly, rather than describe the entire lobby environment of the
Schaumburg Marriott Hotel and Convention Center, enabling blind people
to understand the spatial relationships between different items and
locations in the lobby, elaborate text descriptions are given for
something as simple as “enter the hotel turn right and walk 50 yards
to reach elevators.”  This information would likely be provided by a
hotel attendant greeting all guests at the front entrance.  The
complex description is below:

“Starting landmark: Hotel main entrance. Destination landmark: Hotel
elevators first floor
There are 3 directional steps to go from Hotel main entrance to Hotel
elevators first floor.

“1. The hotel main entrance has a revolving door with 2 manual doors 6
feet to the right and left of this revolving door. This entrance leads
you to the first of 2 interior foyers. Enter through either manual
door and you will be in the first foyer, a circular space 60 feet in
diameter. Walk towards 12:00, and 75 feet away are automatic double
doors.

“2. Pass through these double doors, and you enter a 30 foot long and
8 foot wide hallway bringing you to the hotel main foyer area. As you
walk to and then through these automatic doors, you will enter a 30
foot long and 8 foot wide hallway leading to the main hotel foyer
area. You will notice the sound of escalators 20 feet away at 11 and
1:00. Here, turn 90 degrees to the right and walk straight. The tile
changes to carpet in 10 feet, and this begins a 20 foot wide hallway
with a solid glass wall and columns on the ride side.

“3.Trailing the right side, you will pass 3 large columns, and will
find double exit doors on the right side 150 feet ahead. After that
3rd column, and at these double doors, turn left and you will be
facing the elevator bay 25 feet ahead. There are 3 elevators on each
side, with the call button between the first and second elevators on
the left, and between the second and third elevators on the right.”

Blind travelers are directed to trail a wall as the only navigation
method. Click and Go Maps fails to recognize changes in sound and
other cues.  Intrinsic in the directions is the assumption that blind
people cannot walk in a straight line. This low expectation
necessitates directing blind people to trail a wall. Additionally, a
few steps beyond the elevators is the hotel’s fitness center with
treadmills, weight machines, free weights and a swimming pool. By
focusing on routes rather than orienting to environments, blind people
using click and Go Maps would likely not be aware of this important
resource. The opportunity and potential for people with disabilities
is virtually limitless. Route travel limits opportunity and is
restrictive to independence.

Since the settlement of the lawsuit Access Living versus Chicago
Transit Authority in 2001, CTA station attendants have been
encouraging and supportive in the travel of blind people in open
spaces and helping them explore unfamiliar stations in uncovering
significant environmental cues.  As a blind passenger, I am regularly
asked by Station attendance if assistance is desired. When it is, the
station attendants are helpful and respectful. I have not heard about
problems with this assistance.  If it is not broken, why replace it?

It appears the CTA is regressing and jumping on the bandwagon of
encouraging route travel.  We have two completely different
philosophical positions in how blind people travel and learn to travel
in our world.  Rather than enter into this highly charged political
debate and hire a consultant who clearly believes in and has built his
business around only one of these points of view, the CTA might better
spend its time and resources in a way valuable to people with
disabilities as well as with legally required accessibility.  After
all, staff time and financial resources are not limitless. Who decided
that route descriptions for blind people were an access priority of
people with disabilities or blind people in particular?  This is
especially so considering the approach used by Click and Go Maps,
which is a flashpoint of political controversy among blind people.
The CTA is an agency that hasn’t yet even provided an orientation to
its fare card machines for non-Braille readers, which it could easily
do on its website,  as well as other service-related information. Yet,
somehow text-based descriptions in and out of stations are more
important.

While additional efforts of accessibility and usability of CTA
services, such as text descriptions of defined routes, will
undoubtedly be of some help in lieu of nothing at all, the
solicitation for evaluative feedback offers a false choice.  People
with disabilities are only being asked about this approach and this
enhancement. The request for evaluation circumvents existing
mechanisms for identifying transit accessibility needs and priorities
of blind people and those with disabilities.  The CTA currently has an
ADA advisory committee.  Equip for Equality meets twice a year with
the blind community to learn about emerging issues, community needs
and barriers to access.  I would encourage CTA officials to use these
forums as well as working with organizations of blind people
themselves in deciding upon new projects rather than offering the
false choice of a flawed travel model or nothing at all.

Further, the CTA seems to be interested in spending time and resources
on developing pre-defined routes at rail stations when new services
are being introduced that are not accessible by the blind.
Specifically, CTA is expanding its train tracker system.  Part of this
system displays the time when a train is expected to next arrive at a
station using a video monitor.  This video information is not
available in audio for the blind.  Recently I have learned that the
CTA bus tracker system is being deployed at bus shelters with
telescreens displaying when the next bus will arrive.  A Freedom of
Information Act request about the deployment of CTA Bus Tracker at bus
shelters is currently pending.  I requested details on February 7
about CTA’s accessibility plans at these shelters from CTA ADA
Compliance Officer Cara Levinson and I am awaiting her reply.

In summary, I strongly encourage the Authority to interactively engage
people with disabilities, their organizations and existing forums to
learn about the accessibility barriers currently being experienced and
apply time and resources to those concerns.  This includes access to
new and emerging services that the agency is offering as well as gaps
in existing service.

Kelly Pierce

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