Outside the central station of Uppsala, as well as between most bus stops and the road, there are paths of tiles that are grooved as opposed to the regular flat tiles. Those are made for blind people so that they can find their way around easier.
I was there to try them out, and for me it was quite easy to feel the difference between the grooved tiles and flat tiles through my shoes. The grooved tiles was also slightly lower than the flat tiles, which helped a lot as well. Since the grooves are directional it is also fairly easy to figure out which direction they go.
Of course, since these tiles are meant for blind people, one naturally has to try them without looking to fully experience how effective they are. With my eyes closed, it is very hard for me to keep track of where I am. I believe that this would be less of a problem for people who are actually blind, since they have much more experience, but I would imagine that it would still be quite difficult, since you’re essentially just walking along a very long straight path in the open with nothing to reference against. Even if you were to be able to use echolocation, it probably wouldn’t be of much use since everything is so open. Also, If you were to leave the path, it would probably be a bit hard to find it again, since it’s a big place and you very little to use as reference. While it’s quite easy to feel the difference between grooved and flat tiles, it’s not exceedingly easy, and the paths are quite thin, so if you don’t know where the path is, you could easily miss it.
When I was there, there wasn’t many people around, but even then I felt very uneasy walking around with my eyes closed. If you’re blind and looking for a thrilling / terrifying experience, walking around the station at rush hour seems like a good choice.
While most people have probably noticed these paths, I wouldn’t think most people have paid much, if any, attention to them. When people walk around, they walk along them or across them like if they weren’t there, and they don’t stick out particular much. Therefor, I don’t think people would pay attention to if someone followed the paths and just think that it’s a seeing person, unless that person has white cane. Even then, I wonder if people would connect it to the paths.
Speaking of canes, I would imagine that swiping your cane over the ground would be an effective way of finding these paths. Doesn’t sound very healthy for the cane though.
— Andreas Wennerberg
Non-excluding Design 