Persons living with a visual impairment encounter several problems in life as a result of their inability to clearly visualize the environment that they are in. More specifically, they do encounter various problems in the public transport sector as they go about their duties. In definition, visual impairment is the decreased ability to see, and the problem is not easily fixable through methods such as contact lenses or glasses. The leading causes of this disorder are refractive error, cataract and glaucoma. This literature review seeks to establish the causes of visual impairment, the challenges visually impaired encounter when using public transport systems and possible solution.
Causes of Visual Impairment
Visual impairment is sometimes referred to as vision loss, a disorder that involves decrease ability to see clearly. Key factors responsible for this condition include physical injury to the eyes, inheritance from birth, and an infection in the eyes, cataract, amblyopia, eyes cancer, and macular degeneration as a result of advance in age. In a study conducted among the Chinese, Tang et al. (2015) established factors responsible for the increased incidences of visual loss. In their findings, Tang et al. (2015) reported that blindness and low vision among the Chinese adults results from cataracts and myopic macular degeneration. By comparison, when establishing the prevalence and causes of blindness among children aged 7 years in Iran, Ghaderi (2018) discovered that amblyopia and astigmatism were the leading causes for the disorder.
Challenges Encountered when Using Public Transportation
According to Riazi, Riazi, Yoosfi " Bahmeei (2016), many visually impaired people encounter challenges when outdoors. One area where they struggle to access services is the public transportation as seen in the case study of Iran (Riazi et al., 2016). Through the semi-structured interviews, Riazi et al discovered that the blind find it difficult to cross the roads. A person living with visual disability will have to use pedestrian crossings in his day-to-day movements. These pedestrian crossings have a high risk to persons living with visual impairments. In a related study, Azenkot et al. (2011) observe that while people with normal vision are guided by the tactile pavements that are laid out in the shape of an L to show where it is safe to cross the road, it is very difficult for the visually impaired to identify a pedestrian crossing section unaided. People with ordinary vision also have the push button that allows them to press for a pedestrian cross phase thus enabling the pedestrian to cross, the road safely (Azenkot et al., 2011). In the cases where there are no press buttons for crossing the road, there are traffic lights that do indicate when to cross the road and when not to. In both cases, persons with visual problems are disadvantaged as they cannot clearly see that traffic lights.
Equally important, the visually impaired find it tricky to use the public service vehicles (Strumillo, 2010). The problems include the problem in finding the right bus for the right route. Most of the times, the visually impaired do find themselves in a bus that is headed for the wrong route than the one they intend to use. Another challenge for them is alighting at the desired stage. Unless the conductor is conversant with the route and therefore offers to help the visually impaired to alight at the required stage, that person will end up finding himself or herself alighting at a wrong stage (Strumilo, 2010).
Furthermore, Korbel, Skulimowski, Wasilewski " Warwzyniak ( 2013) reveal that bicycles on the sidewalk expose the visually impaired to great dangers walking Bicycles ridden without headlights during the rain or at night are very difficult to be spotted by the blind and semi-blind and therefore are likely to cause physical injury to this group (Korbel et al., 2013). On the same note, bicycles that are left unattended on the streets also risk the life of persons living with visual impairment. These bicycles are normally left unattended on sidewalks, verandas, in front of shops, near stations and other places frequented by people. Persons with visual disability would find it extremely difficult to navigate their way through these obstructing bicycles. In the end, these bicycles are likely to cause an accident to these persons with visual impairment.
According to Korbel et al. (2013), visual impaired people have a great difficulty walking on uneven sidewalks. Uneven sidewalks include those sidewalks that are imbalanced, the sidewalks that have uncovered manholes et al. These sidewalks are also very risky to the visually impaired. They are not in position to clearly see an imbalance or a manhole on a sidewalk. Therefore, there are great chances that they may miss their steps while walking on the sidewalk thus resulting to falling down. A misstep into an uncovered manhole is extremely dangerous as it may lead to breakage of legs.
Solutions
Several solutions can enable the visually impaired to have a flawless encounter with the public transport experience. In the case of difficulty in road crossing, numerous remedies can be put in place to ensure the safety of the visually impaired. Korbel et al. (2013) suggest that an audible sound system should be placed at the crossing area to announce to the pedestrians on the time fit to cross the road and the time when a pedestrian should observe the flow of the traffic. It should also be noted that motorists must be made aware that any disregard of the traffic sound system will be heavily punished by the traffic department. Besides, assistive technologies should be applied to guide the visually impaired in making their movements (Gallagher, O’Brein, Hart, Stevenson " Jackson, 2011).
Then, Gallagher et al. (2011) propose use of auto-audio recordings in the vehicle announcing the name of every stage that the bus makes a stopover. Buses must also be compelled to ensure the safe arrival of the visually impaired passenger. There is also a need to have audio systems in the vehicle-stopping stages to announce the designation of every arriving vehicle. By that announcement, the visually impaired will be in a great position to correctly board a vehicle that is headed to his or her direction of choice (Gallagher et al., 2011).
Moreover, Hersh " Johnson (2010) state that incidences of illegal, obstruction and nonsensical parking of vehicles and bicycles that bring challenges to the movement of the visually impaired in public can be eliminated the government coming up with clear by-laws and regulations that severely punishes anyone found parking vehicles against the provisions of the law. By coming up with these laws, the vision impaired will be greatly saved from the accidents attributed to illegal parking.
Conclusion
The literature review shows that visual impaired people find it difficult to cross roads, board and alight from vehicles and use sidewalks. Regardless of these challenges, little has been done to help them. Few of the reviewed studies suggest use of mobile applications and assistive technologies to aid in movement of the blind as they use the road. Besides, public service vehicles should have a system to announce to the visually impaired and alert them when the vehicle is moving or nearing their destination.
References
Azenkot, S., Prasain, S., Borning, A., Fortuna, E., Ladner, R. E., " Wobbrock, J. O. (2011, May). Enhancing independence and safety for blind and deaf-blind public transit riders. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems (pp. 3247-3256). ACM.
Ghaderi, S., Hashemi, H., Jafarzadehpur, E., Yekta, A., Ostadimoghaddam, H., Mirzajani, A., " Khabazkhoob, M. (2018). The prevalence and causes of visual impairment in seven‐year‐old children. Clinical and Experimental Optometry, 101(3), 380-385.
Gallagher, B. A., Hart, P. M., O'Brien, C., Stevenson, M. R., " Jackson, A. J. (2011). Mobility and access to transport issues as experienced by people with vision impairment living in urban and rural Ireland. Disability and rehabilitation, 33(12), 979-988.
Hersh, M., " Johnson, M. A. (Eds.). (2010). Assistive technology for visually impaired and blind people. Springer Science " Business Media.
Korbel, P., Skulimowski, P., Wasilewski, P., " Wawrzyniak, P. (2013, September). Mobile applications aiding the visually impaired in travelling with public transport. In Computer Science and Information Systems (FedCSIS), 2013 Federated Conference on (pp. 825-828). IEEE.
Riazi, A., Riazi, F., Yoosfi, R., " Bahmeei, F. (2016). Outdoor difficulties experienced by a group of visually impaired Iranian people. Journal of current ophthalmology, 28(2), 85-90.
Strumillo, P. (2010, May). Electronic interfaces aiding the visually impaired in environmental access, mobility and navigation. In Human system interactions (HSI), 2010 3rd conference on (pp. 17-24). IEEE.
Tang, Y., Wang, X., Wang, J., Huang, W., Gao, Y., Luo, Y., " Lu, Y. (2015). Prevalence and causes of visual impairment in a Chinese adult population: the Taizhou Eye Study. Ophthalmology, 122(7), 1480-1488.
