I was getting the Luas today and the tactile paving reminded me of the permanent fixtures within our built environment that assist the visually impaired and blind people. As well as that, other people use these surfaces as guides also. They remind us to look up from our phones and pay attention to where we are stepping. Is there anything missing within our built environment that could assist visually impaired people with their journeys to places?
The past few days have been busy trying to get in contact with people and setting up meetings. It's actually quite difficult to get people to respond to you, never mind meeting up for a few minutes so it hasn't been easy.
Luckily enough I was able to get in contact with Francesco Pilla and met him earlier on in the day. He was able to give me some great references and people to contact and overall he is a lovely person to have a chat with, working on some very exciting upcoming things.
Due to my user demographic being visually impaired people and it having been quite difficult for me to get in contact with someone, he advised me to contact Guide Dog associations and to try get in contact with someone from there. Or my design might end up being for Guide Dogs.
What's so great about being at this stage of a project is that I am open to absolutely everything and I might be looking into something now but my design might end up being for someone completely different. And that's not a bad thing. The possibilities are endless!
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