Navigating with sound and light

By Jill White

Jill White CMLI is a landscape architect with particular interest in community spaces and creating accessible and inclusive landscapes.

Landscape practitioners are increasingly aware of the benefits of designing with sound and light, but the importance of working with people with sight and hearing loss should be at the heart of this work, argue Rory Heap and Bunty Levene.

I fell down a kerb recently and, as I lay sprawled in the road, I thought that I should have seen it. It made me wonder – how do people navigate the streets if they are not using sight or hearing as their main inputs? I asked Rory Heap, who has been completely blind since birth, and Bunty Levene, who has long experience of hearing loss in her work and life, what helps them to access and enjoy the environment in urban and rural settings and at heritage sites.

© Connie Heap

Rory Heap has spent much of his career improving inclusiveness for disabled people. He worked extensively on the development of the British Standard ISO 29138 User Accessibility Needs. (1)

RH: Urban landscapes have a dominant visual content, but I can “sense” some of these elements. For example, if I walk along a colonnade or series of pillars, I will notice this through hearing the sound. The atmospheric pressure and humidity seem to affect my ability to sense obstacles, too.

JW: So, do landscape features such as water features affect this?

RH Yes, definitely. Water features often make so much noise that I can’t hear the edge. However, I can judge where a water’s edge is in a lake or pond, for instance, by tiny sound differentiations like ripples. I can also gauge roughly how far down the water is using this method.

JW: Does environmental and artificial noise get in the way of this interpretation then, sometimes?

RH Well, actually a certain amount of traffic noise is good because the sound reverberates and gives me all kinds of information. For example, the width of streets, the direction of traffic or the massing of the buildings. Also, different shops use varying kinds of air-conditioning units, so they act as handy navigation beacons in a street that I’m familiar with, because I can tell where I am. When I lived in North London, I was a keen aircraft enthusiast and I knew all the approach routes into Heathrow, so I could use this to tell which direction I was headed when walking about there and used it broadly to navigate routes. The COVID lockdowns have really brought this home to me, as it has been so quiet everywhere with less traffic and people. It’s actually been harder to navigate my way around because of this!

JW: Do different building materials have any bearing on the sound you use?

RH: Yes, on a good day I can tell if I’m next to a wooden fence, or brick wall or hedge, by gauging the sound reverberation. If I’m walking along a long run of the same material, like a long wall or hedge, it’s reassuring because I can know what’s around me and this takes some of the stress out of negotiating the street. That’s good for a transitioning experience, but if it’s a site I’m there to explore then making an environment more varied, through the use of differentiated tactile materials, is very interesting for me.

JW: How do you use sound in rural environments?

RH: Trees are amazing! I can hear the canopy and can get a strong sense of their presence. I do have to filter out natural sounds in the countryside though, when I’m walking down a lane. I cannot hear electric cars or bicycles at all on a windy day, so that can be very stressful. I enjoy distant sounds in the landscape and have used sound markers like roads to navigate. I can also really appreciate any feeling of openness in the landscape. I am able to “sense” overlooking or openness, and will be much more likely to use a bench if I get that feeling of overlooking something, like a lake for example. Because of the sound of foliage, I’ll also use benches more which are set into a hedge or planting.

JW: What is your experience when you visit organised landscapes, such as heritage sites or formal gardens?

RH: Formal gardens are often poor for blind people as they have little large foliage and no trees, usually. With heritage sites, it’s very organisationally complex to visit. For example, are there any audio-guides? If so, have these actually been designed for blind people? How easy is the device to operate and use? Are the buttons easy to find and differentiate? I did have a superb experience at Stonehenge recently, mainly due to a very good human guide provided by the site. She asked if I could “sense” the stones’ density and proximity (yes) or work out the layout (no). She was intuitively able to quickly work out that she needed to walk me around the site and perimeter to appreciate the arrangement and massing, and get me to touch certain permitted stones. In an environment like that, a human guide who understands the user’s needs is vital. Some sites have Braille interpretation boards, which is good if you can actually locate them in the first place!

JW: So, what would you say are your top three sounds for experiencing the environment?

RH: I would say traffic, foliage and the sound of a consistent surface (i.e. a long run of walling, fencing or hedging).

© Julia Conway

Bunty Levene is a hearing therapist and has worked for many years to improve the experience of people with hearing loss. She co-authored the book “Managing your hearing loss: Impairment to Empowerment”. (2)

BL: Environmental or man-made sound, such as traffic noise, makes it particularly difficult for those using hearing aids. Especially sudden, unexpected noise. Standing under a flyover, I can “tune out” the constant roar, but on a road with traffic right next to me it is really much harder to deal with it. This makes a big difference to where a person with a hearing impairment will choose to sit on a bench, because they will seek to avoid one close to mechanical noise (like a road or an extractor fan). I would like to see much more use of tables in public areas. Round tables are particularly good as you can see and potentially lip-read everyone who is talking. If it’s against a wall, so much the better, as you don’t have to worry about what is happening behind you and there would be less competing background noise. Green space away from traffic is especially important for people with hearing loss and the kind of layout matters too. With shared space for instance, although a profoundly deaf person may be able to see the road arrangement, they still cannot hear the revving sounds of engines and so cannot gauge the speed of a vehicle so accurately, so they have much less warning of vehicles and the drivers may not realise that.

JW: Do you think people with a hearing loss use visual clues to a much greater extent?

BL: Yes, and lighting is very important for this. The old sodium lighting was much better than the LEDs which are more common now. Although LEDs are very bright, they are always used with a much narrower beam and so don’t provide the broad “wash” of light over an area. This reduces confidence, because a deaf person cannot hear any warning sounds around them and is relying more on vision to gather what is around them, and if the lit area is very restricted, it creates problems. One thing that is really good for deaf people is mirrors. You can’t have enough of them! Olympic Park was a fantastic example of this. They had a huge mirror wall and many people with hearing loss loved it. You can see exactly what’s going on all around and behind you, so you can’t be taken by surprise and that makes for a much more relaxing use of a space. Mirrors are really underused. Many people with a hearing loss will constantly look at reflections in the glass of shop windows and doors to check what’s going on around them.

JW: So the ability to perceive warnings and avoid the unexpected is an important factor?

BL: Yes, definitely. It reduces anxiety. Hearing is not just used directly for chatting and direct needs like that, all of us use it for gauging what’s happening around us and whether danger is present or something is about to happen. The incidental background sounds we take for granted, like a clock ticking, wind in the trees or birdsong are equally important, they provide an auditory background which is fundamental to our need to feel connected to our environment. Many people with hearing loss will hear low frequency sound but cannot hear high pitched frequency, such as birdsong or wood-sawing. Without warning sounds you can be taken by surprise and it is unsettling and frightening. It would be really useful if there was some kind of internationally standard signage that warned people that they might experience difficulty understanding speech because of the degraded quality of sound, caused by it reverberating off the hard surfaces – in swimming pools, for example.

© Evan White

JW: Do the same factors apply if you’re in a rural environment?

BL: Well, hearing aid users would be OK negotiating a country lane. But someone who is profoundly deaf could find a very badly or low-lit environment extremely disorientating, to the extent that it would affect their gait. They would not be alerted by footstep sounds that the ground is becoming uneven, nor would they see it if they are concentrating on lip-reading. In a rural area, the visual enjoyment is heightened and it’s easy to judge where you are. In the winter, when there isn’t much foliage, you can see further and so you can tell what’s going on outside of your direct area of vision, which is pleasant and reduces anxiety. Signage is important too – you can’t ask the way because you worry that you’re not going to be able to hear and understand the answer. It is important to have a high contrast colour scheme to help users see the information clearly.

JW: What affects people with hearing loss if they visit a heritage site?

BL: Deaf people may be concerned that they are not going to enjoy the visit because of poor communication access, such as no subtitles on video screens. Outside guided tours are better, as inside a building there may be less room to move to the front of the group to facilitate lip-reading and there is more echo. Hearing aid users may not be satisfied with the sound on audio-guides because they end up with double the amplification. Staff training is vital on heritage sites, such as a Deaf Awareness course.

JW: What would be your top three most useful factors for experiencing the environment?

BL: Signage – plenty of it and using a high contrast colour scheme; good broad-beam lighting; and good acoustics, through absorbent surfaces that don’t echo or reverberate too much.

Some useful points have been made in these conversations that landscape practitioners should carefully consider, notably:

– The siting of benches and shape of tables and use of a variety of settings to suit a range of potential users is critical, for example, with an outlook, set in a planted area, or against a wall and away from the roadside

– How lighting is used makes a huge difference; don’t restrict the beam area narrowly, where this is avoidable. Include reflective surfaces in designs

– A range of surfaces on sites with multiple users is very beneficial; less sound-reflective surfaces in one area will suit people using hearing aids whilst an increase in tactile surfaces will be appreciated by those with sight loss

– A good amount of clearly legible signage is invaluable. If Braille is used, make sure that a blind user can actually locate the board, don’t put it out of easy reach somewhere inaccessible

– Providing properly trained guides on heritage sites is key to interpretation planning

– Predominant use of deciduous trees in plantings is welcomed

– Maintaining as long a run as possible of a single boundary material along the length of key routes can offer simple, but effective, assistance to navigation

Rory Heap attended special schools from age 3 to 19, and obtained a degree from the University of Bath. He has specialised in community development, particularly in Liverpool, national training and development in local government, with an emphasis on accessibility, and has worked in the probation and prison services as a disability specialist. Rory has also worked extensively with the British Standards Institute on national and international accessibility projects.

Bunty Levene trained as a hearing therapist in 1979 at the CityLit in London. She was responsible for developing the service in two London hospitals, then organised the training course from 1989 – 2000. Bunty is currently working for the charity Deaf Plus as a course tutor.

Resources

British Standard ISO 29138 User Needs – initially aimed at information technology, it offers any designer 11 principles or goals of accessibility which are applicable in a great variety of contexts, including usability, legibility and understandability.

Managing your hearing loss: Impairment to Empowerment, Bunty Levene and Val Tait (2005) Hearing Concern -now Hearing Link UK hearinglink.org ISBN 13: 978-0- 9551365-0-4

British Standard ISO Standard 20071-2015 Guidance on Audiodescription – extremely useful for those dealing with site interpretation.

RNID – have conducted research into noise in the environment in relation to hearing loss and also advocate for good communication rnid.org.uk

DeafBlindUK – for information and advice relating to people with both sight and hearing loss deafblind.org.uk