[MD-Sligo] {Spam?} {Disarmed} Fwd: First of Its Kind Street Design Guide to Improve Accessibility for People with Vision Disabilities Now Available from Montgomery County

Fri Oct 15 15:41:43 UTC 2021

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From: Press Release - Montgomery County, MD <mcg-pio at public.govdelivery.com>
Date: Fri, Oct 15, 2021 at 10:58 AM
Subject: First of Its Kind Street Design Guide to Improve Accessibility for
People with Vision Disabilities Now Available from Montgomery County
To: <yasmin81065 at gmail.com>

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For Immediate Release: Friday, Oct. 15, 2021
First of Its Kind Street Design Guide to Improve Accessibility for People
with Vision Disabilities Now Available from Montgomery County

The Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) now has
available a first-of-its-kind design guide titled Planning and Designing
Streets to be Safer and More Accessible for People with Vision
Disabilities. The guide will facilitate accessibility for people who are
blind or have low vision by outlining optimized strategies for public
engagement, staff training and improved pedestrian walkway design.

The guide involved extensive input from residents, service providers and
organizations supporting people with vision disabilities.

“Montgomery County is leading the nation with this guide on inclusive
infrastructure design,” said Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich.
“Throughout COVID-19, our residents have enjoyed spending more time
outdoors and walking. It is imperative that safe and accessible walkways
and gathering spaces are built with everyone in mind.”

The work was funded through assistance from the Metropolitan Washington
Council of Government’s (MWCOG) Transportation Land Use Connections (TLC)
Program, and while the project was conceived and overseen by Montgomery
County, it is intended to serve as a useful resource for the entire
metropolitan region.

In addition to supporting safer and more consistent design approaches in
the region, the toolkit will serve as a model for national guidance to
bring global best practices in design for people with vision disabilities
to the United States.

The guide incorporates feedback from the visually disabled community,
service providers and caregivers. Engagement included a virtual community
meeting in January of 2021, online surveys, in-person site visits and
access to tactile graphics. Specifically, the project team observed how
people with vision disabilities navigated Downtown Silver Spring and
provided updates and sought feedback throughout the study process to the
Montgomery County Commission on People with Disabilities.

“MCDOT aims to make our urban environment and transit centers accessible
and safe for everyone,” said MCDOT Director Chris Conklin. “The guide was
developed through a process of extensive community involvement, feedback
and corresponding technical adjustments. Implementation of these
recommendations will undoubtedly improve the lives of our residents and
will set an example to support improvements on a national level.”

The toolkit can help planners and designers understand the unique needs of
people with vision disabilities. It introduces strategies for effective
engagement with this community and design tools that make it easier and
safer for people with vision disabilities to navigate. Understanding how
different types of vision disabilities impact the ability of people to
navigate safely is critical to improving designs. The guide also includes
an overview of the approaches taken, and lessons learned, from communities
around the world.

For example, the toolkit offers guidance on creating tactile graphics so
that people who cannot read paper plans are still able to be engaged in the
planning process by access to plans that allow understanding of information
through touch. Montgomery County used tactile graphics as part of the
process of developing the toolkit and is already using tactile graphics
with a project currently going through the planning process as a pilot to
refine this form of outreach.

The design guide highlights three types of Tactile Walking Surface
Indicators that can be used to guide blind and low-vision pedestrians. One
of these is already used extensively in the United States and is required
by the Americans with Disabilities Act. Known as the Detectable Warning
Surface, the walkway inserts with truncated domes appear at the ends of
crosswalks and train platforms or other areas where pedestrians may
encounter conflicting traffic.

The guide introduces two additional tools that are not as common in the
United States, but are used internationally. The first is the Detectable
Guidance Surface, which is comprised of a walkway insert with linear
surface of ridges and valleys (similar to Detectable Warning Surface, but
with different shape and pattern) that people with vision disabilities can
follow to navigate to key areas, such as the Accessible Pedestrian Signal
push button, to cross wide-open spaces or to find transit stops. The second
new design recommendation is use of the Detectable Delineator Surface,
which can be used to delineate areas where pedestrians should not cross,
but which may not be readily apparent to people with vision disabilities.

MCDOT is already working to put the toolkit to work.

“Within the next several months, we will be constructing a testing and
training facility to use temporary materials to construct mock-ups of
proposed designs so that blind and low-vision pedestrians can test out the
designs in person and at real scale to determine whether additional changes
are needed to improve accessibility,” said Matt Johnson, a capital project
manager for MCDOT.

Following the development of the testing and training facility, and based
on the feedback received there, the County will start work to apply the
guide-recommended treatments at two pilot intersections in Downtown Silver
Spring.

For details, to sign up for email updates about this project and to view
the toolkit visit,
https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/DOT/Projects/TLCVision/
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For more information on MCDOT’s programs visit, montgomerycountymd.gov/dot
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