FHWA Innovative Street Design and Accessibility

National

Project Summary

To ensure that new street designs remain accessible to people with vision disabilities, the Federal Highway Administration asked Toole Design to develop Accessible Shared Streets. Through a series of innovative stakeholder engagement efforts, we sought first-hand input from people with vision disabilities, orientation and mobility specialists, street designers, and others. Accessible Shared Streets provides guidance for accommodating pedestrians with vision disabilities on shared streets. The project also involved assessing gaps in accessible design guidance and making recommendations on research needs and updates to existing guidance.

Accessible Shared Streets: Notable Practices and Considerations for Accommodating Pedestrians with Vision Disabilities is available for review, in both PDF and screen-reader compatible HTML, from the FWHA website. 

Expertise Applied

The guidance provided in Accessible Shared Streets was informed by a robust stakeholder engagement process involving more than 150 people, including people with a range of vision disabilities, orientation and mobility specialists, local officials, the US Access Board, representatives from NACTO, and others.
We created a book with tactile graphics to help stakeholders who had a vision disability understand the innovative street designs that were the focus of the project.
Additional graphics helped sighted participants better understand the spectrum of vision disabilities, and better understand the user experience for people with them.
Accessible Shared Streets is the first federal guidance document to discuss directional indicators, a tactile walking surface that can be used to help people with vision disabilities locate a mid-block crossing or bus stop, navigate a transit station or large open plaza, or follow a pedestrian access route when other cues are insufficient.

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