Executive summary

Scope and Purpose

The Inclusive Kerbs Phase 3 research project gathered data from a representative example of kerbs within The City of Edinburgh to understand what kerbs are present in the city and how people with various impairments use them. The study was conducted by Mott MacDonald and Edinburgh Napier University’s Transport Research Institute. It was commissioned by Transport Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Road Research Board (SRRB) and the Department for Transport (DfT).  

Phase 1 of the project looked at existing research and found that there are few studies on inclusive kerbs considering both engineering and human factors.  

Phase 2 gathered data and tried out selected methods to learn more about how people use kerbs. The study considered how kerbs are used for navigating along a street and for crossing the street.  

Phase 3 collected data from eleven people with severe to moderate impairments through further online interviews and site visits with volunteer participants. The information gathered from the interviews and site visits are compared against the survey data to identify any patterns in experience. 

Methodology

Phase 3 assesses the interaction of user groups against the Phase 2 selected kerb types, heights and interfaces in real world situations.

In order to do this, five locations were identified and presented to eleven participants with various functional impairments in online interviews. Then five participants volunteered to take part with the site visits: two wheelchair users, one person with a hearing impairment, one person with a visual impairment and one person with visual and hearing impairments with a guide dog. The online interviews focused on the reflective lived experiences of the volunteer participants which followed the same methodology as the Phase 2 interviews. The site visits took the participants to specific site locations to give verbal commentaries of crossings and wayfinding at a representative selection of the surveyed site locations.

Findings

The Phase 3 study focused on gathering data from both online interviews and site visits in preparation for lab-based research during Phase 4. From the data collected from both the online interviews and site visits, it was found that;

• Creating conspicuous edges is deemed essential to address the challenge of navigation for visually impaired users.
• A prevalent theme that cuts across user groups, including cane users, guide dog users and wheelchair users, was the necessity for specialised training in how to navigate newer styles of design. Enhancing training, to include ways to best navigate inclusive design to help participants understand evolving styles in placemaking.
• Ensuring that crossings are strategically located is crucial and standardised layouts will enable users to identify and engage with them in a positive manner.
• Varied designs of kerbs and raised table arrangements impacted users’ ability to differentiate spaces or ability to cross safely dependant on kerb heights. Continuity in how kerbing and other road elements were provided was a challenge for participants, especially newer styles which they were not as familiar with.

Recommendations

The next stage of this study (Phase 4) will assess, in controlled conditions, the interaction of user groups against the selected kerb types, heights and interfaces. Controlled conditions allow a wider range of impairment conditions to be considered in a safer environment. This will be done through lab-based experimentation with functionally impaired volunteer participants utilising a specialised test rig. Information gathered from these tests and interviews will be compared against the findings from Phase 3 to identify any patterns in experience and inform a range of heights that is most suitable for the varying impairment types.