The textured paths for the benefit of blind and partially sighted people on Sheffield's £15m Fargate renovations lead walkers into sign posts and lamp poles. The Star speaks to blind man Brian Campbell about his experience navigating the city centre.
00:00It's been two months since the Fargate renovations in Chapel City Centre opened
00:03for the public at a cost of £15 million to the taxpayer. If you're blind and
00:07partially sighted you might be navigating the City Centre using these textured
00:10paths like the one behind me but there's been one problem with that. If you were
00:14to try and use those paths you might find yourself walking into a bit of trouble.
00:18Despite the months of planning the £15 million investment and the two years it
00:23took to complete the renovations, if you were to try and navigate the City
00:26Centre using these textured paths they lead you directly into the path of
00:31several black signposts and lamp posts. It's an incongruence in design that now
00:36it's set in stone and the renovations are complete will cost tens of thousands of
00:39pounds to rectify. The star came out of Sheffield City Centre to meet Brian
00:42Campbell a 77 year old blind man living in the city and his experience trying to
00:46navigate Fargate. Now the renovations are complete. In my experience is that I've
00:52really found these when I've been with my wife so it's not been an issue for me but
00:57you know I do come down here on my own sometimes because I've been made aware of it. I do know.
01:04But the issue that we notice is that this texture failure here is meant to guide you straight into the entrance to Norfolk Road.
01:13That's where this bit finishes. And if you're walking quite fast along this thinking that it's going to be all clear and then suddenly you've come up
01:23and slapped up against a big post like this. You know you could do yourself a nasty injury.
01:30It's a bit like lots of things in society like developing computer systems and you say to people
01:37well have you thought about buying people and they say well we set the system up but we do it afterwards.
01:42And you know that's not an attitude that works. And there could be something about nothing.
01:48I don't know what happened in the family stages but they might have thought get the texture paper in
01:54and get the services in and you know we'll tweak it afterwards. Well it's probably a huge issue to tweak it.
02:02What can planners do to avoid these kind of mishaps in the future? It seems they planned one thing and the other
02:07and didn't think about how the two of them work together. Is there a matter of consulting with different groups
02:11or is it better just awareness? Yes. There used to be an access group in Sheppard which I've never been on
02:19but a very good friend of mine was on it and she's now not ready to be on it. So I don't know whether that exists.
02:26I mean I think one thing that would be useful for you to do is I think filter with Sheppard and our society for buying.
02:34Because you know they would report to more people's experience perhaps. That might be a useful way forward really.
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