The Sonic Perception of Visually Impaired People in Urban Parks

Urban parks in a developing country are mostly designed and enjoyed visually. The auditory aspect is ignored by sighted urban designers, and this condition is unfortunate for those who enjoy the surrounding using their auditory senses such as the visually impaired people. The objective of this study is to investigate the possibility of improving urban parks for all city community using the sonic perception of visually impaired people. This study was conducted in several stages consisting of off-site and on-site questionnaire survey with two groups of participants: sighted people (35 participants) and visually impaired people (35 participants). The early stage of the off-site survey exhibits that the visually impaired participants explained the sonic environment with more terminologies than the sighted participants. It indicates the engagement to the sonic environment is higher for the visually impaired participants compared to the sighted participants. Meanwhile, the on-site survey reported in this study shows that the visually impaired perceived the sonic environment of the studied park closer to the commonly held assumption of an ideal park than the sighted subjects. The sighted subjects seemed to confound the sonic perception with the visual perception. In a spot where the primary sound source is a water fountain, both subjects perceived the sonic environment as ‘comfortable’ in general, even when the on-site noise measurement showed a level outside the sonic comfort level.