Accessibility to Public Transport Experiment (APEX)

APEX set out to establish a means to evaluate accessibility for disabled people in reaching and using the public transport system.

Two views of disability:
 

Medical:	an infirmity, impairment etc. which means that a person cannot breach a barrier.
Social:	barriers are designed in such a way that some people cannot breach them.

There are three types of barrier to consider when thinking about accessibility:

Physical	Sensory	Cognitive
Distance	Legibility	Clarity
Widths	Tactile Surfaces	Simplicity
Gaps	Audibility	Ease of understanding

To design these barriers so that more people can use public transport independently, we have to understand how the barriers act on different people. The APEX research studied a group of people in East London in order to formulate an approach to the assessment of accessibility. This broadened previous research in this field.

For example:

• In previous research, 20% of stick users could not walk more than 180 m without stopping.
• Very few of our sample could walk more than 200 m and in all cases rests had to be taken. Compare this with the 400 m London Transport's standard (straight line) distance between bus routes and homes.
• The ability to see, read and understand printed information is difficult for some people. The text below illustrates how changing the font size can make it easier to read (the text size as displayed on your screen is browser-dependent so it may not actually be displayed at the font size implied in the text).

• Reducing the horizontal gap between a bus and a bus stop from 200 mm to 50 mm helps many wheelchair users to travel independently on buses (see EXCALIBUR project).
• Being able to travel with the minimum of assistance is an important element of independent accessibility, whether the assistance is technical (e.g. a wheelchair or hearing aid) or personal. We are interested in the number of people who could be included in society as a result of the removal or redesign of barriers and thus in the improvements to their accessibility. The APEX approach examines different levels of independence in breaching a barrier so that different types of barrier can be compared - who will be affected, how many, in what way and why. This can be seen in the following figure:

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• Technical Assistance: a mechanical or electronic device (e.g.wheelchair, hearing aid).
• Personal Assistance: assistance provided by a person. Users felt that this provides less independence than reliance on technical assistance

An improvement in accessibility could enable someone to find travelling easier or to move from one category of assistance to another and so increase their independence as well.

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Research Team: Natasha Brown, Farzaneh Bitarafen, Martha Caiaffa, Nick Tyler

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