Basic study on the sign for the visually impaired person in a beach institution

Abstract

In recent Japan, signs have been introduced, particularly for transport facilities but also in such public spaces as commercial facilities and streets, to improve mobility. However, not many signs have been introduced for the visually disabled and hardly any such signs are provided at beaches. Under this study, knowledge on easily recognisable signs by the visually disabled was obtained and desirable audible signs were investigated to identify easily recognisable signs for such people at beach facilities. A questionnaire survey and an interview survey were conducted to clarify the feelings towards beaches among the visually disabled, the state of sign installation at beach facilities, the assessment results of existing signs and the inconvenience felt by the visually disabled. Additional surveys were also conducted on the degree of understanding of audible signs used in public spaces and on the images of sounds heard at beaches. These surveys found that the recognition of sounds is related to information on the place. At beaches where such place information is scarce, sounds inducing images of a beach were found to be one factor for easily recognisable audible signs