The Survey of Specific Requirements to Access Public Facilities and the Ergonomic Evaluation of Tactile Symbols for the Visually Impaired People

• Main Authors: Yun-Yen Lu, 呂昀諺
• Other Authors: Cheng-Lung Lee
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2002
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/86179384088338139640

碩士 === 朝陽科技大學 === 工業工程與管理系碩士班 === 90 === Abstract Tactile maps, one of the navigation aids for visually impaired people, are quite helpful to the visually impaired in terms of orientation and mobility. There are many foreign literatures on tactile symbols and maps so far, however, there are few facilities as well as studies in Taiwan. Therefore, the purposes of this study are to explore the visually impaired people's demand for public facilities and to test and then evaluate their reaction to tactile symbols as well. Through a questionnaire survey to some visually impaired communities, this study researches into the visually impaired's demand for public facilities. The survey based on forty-six effective cases shows that hospitals, bus stops, railway stations, post offices and parks are more essential public facilities to the visually impaired. Besides, the locations they like to identify in such facilities are also included in this survey. As for the experiment on tactile symbols, the senior and junior high school students at National Taichung School for the Visually Impaired are tested in two phases. In the first phase of the experiment, seventy-nine students are required to touch individually ten sets of areal symbols, each containing five graphs. After analyzing the subjects' reaction by way of the confusion matrix, ten best symbols are found then. In the second phase, the ten areal symbols obtained before and ten line symbols obtained from other researches are shown to seventy-seven subjects in order to explore at which symbols they are confused easilier. Thus, the survey of the visually impaired people's demand for public facilities and the experiment of their reflection upon tactile symbols are analyzed in this study. This result may act as a reference when the authorities of our country are designing tactile maps for the visually impaired in the future.