Evaluation of some ongoing projects within the city of Milan and proposal for a practical test on mobility and orientation of people with visual impairments (2003).

Following several accidents involving pedestrians, and many requests for an improvement of mobility also of people with physical-perceptive disabilities, the Urban Furniture department of the Municipality of Milan has actively tried to improve the quality of some pedestrian routes.

First of all, an evaluation of the state-of-the-art has been done, on the themes of regenerations of some areas and the existing problems in terms of usability, by checking the requirements that guarantee accessibility, comfort and pedestrian safety in the projects of six sample squares, some new, some in the process of being built and some still at planning level.
In order to evaluate the usability by people with sensorial or cognitive problems, a new environmental requirement has been added: environmental communicativeness, that can be defined – in analogy with accessibility – as the “attitude of a spatial element or of a typological unit to be perceptible by everybody and, in particular, by people with sensorial or cognitive problems”.

Some solutions have been put forward, aimed at conducting tests with real final users, as well as some tricks to be used for orientation and some tactile pathways to be built with different tools: by using prefabricated elements that can be found on the market, by properly processing materials that are usually utilised; by applying integrative elements on existing materials (for historical environments).

The project has been illustrated in several articles and conferences, among which: “Quality of the environment: usability and safety of urban pedestrian routes”, VIII SIE National Conference: " Ergonomics between innovation and planning, working systems and life styles ", Milan, 9 - 10 February 2006, available in the Conference papers; “Test Study in Milan”, Conference “Accessibility of public routes within the city. Floor signals as a perceptive indicator in particular for people with sensorial disabilities”, Hotel Laguna Palace, Mestre, 27 September 2003.

Conference papers of the VIII SIE National Conference ›