Designing for Inclusion

This research was commissioned by Guide Dogs in response to concerns expressed by blind and vision-impaired people about accessibility to particular elements of infrastructure in the public realm. The research focuses on bus stops and footways which have been designed to accommodate cycle lanes and the associated element of continuous footways, where sometimes the distinction between being on a footway and being in a roadway could be blurred. People should not be denied access to the activities of daily living by impositions of inaccessible barriers, whether these are economic, social, or infrastructural. The Public Sector Equality Duty (Sections 149 to 157 of the Equality Act 2010) requires local authorities to pay due regard to the needs of people with protected characteristics, set out in Section 149(7) (age; disability; gender reassignment; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; sexual orientation). This research looks at “disability”, which includes blind and vision-impaired people and other groups of disabled people. For this research, when we refer to ‘blind’ people, we mean people with no residual vision. The duty means that public authorities must pay due regard to the need to advance equality of opportunities for disabled people (as well as those with other protected characteristics).