Providing legible pedestrian wayfinding information with braille and tactile features is critical to ensure routes are clearly defined and easily understood. This enables people to be confident of finding their way around.
City of Sydney Council has Australia’s most comprehensive tactile network of street signs, helping people who are blind or have low vision to navigate the city.
Every signalised pedestrian crossing in the city has braille and raised letter signs next to the push button detailing street names and building numbers.
Eventually the network will contain more than 2100 braille and raised letter tactile aluminium panels as part of the council’s legible wayfinding system that also includes pedestrian-friendly maps, information pylons, new signs and digital technology.
Guide Dogs NSW/ACT estimates that there are around 100,000 people with uncorrectable vision loss in NSW, and that number is predicted to increase by more than 20 per cent by 2020.