About Accessible Design for the Blind

Accessible Design for the Blind is committed to making travel safer for pedestrians with disabilities through research, consultation, education and advocacy. Its principals have a long history of teaching safe travel and street crossing techniques to pedestrians who are blind or visually impaired, many of whom also have cognitive, mobility or hearing impairments. Building on this direct service background, they have undertaken an extensive research program designed to make the built environment more accessible to pedestrians with disabilities.

The principals of ADB, Billie Louise (Beezy) Bentzen and Janet Barlow, are Certified Orientation and Mobility Specialists who authored the Syntheses on Accessible Pedestrian Signals and on Detectable Warnings for the U.S. Access Board. These two publications provide the most comprehensive review of these topics. ADB is currently revising the APS synthesis as part of NCHRP 3-62.

The principals are also involved with standards development as members of the National Committee on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, the American National Standards Institute Committee A117, On Accessible And Usable Environments, the Public Rights Of Way Access Advisory Committee, and The International Organization For Standards (ISO).

Current projects involve research and the development of guidelines and instructional materials on the use of Accessible Pedestrian Signals, research on Detectable Warnings and wayfinding technologies, and creation of pedestrian guides and training. These projects include work for National Institutes of Health / National Eye Institute, National Cooperative Highway Research Program, Veterans Administration Research and Development Center, Project ACTION, The Access Board, and The National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research.

Dr. Bentzen and Ms. Barlow regularly present sessions and seminars on access issues for pedestrians who are blind or visually impaired at the conferences of the Transportation Research Board, Institute of Transportation Engineers, American Council of the Blind, and the Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired and have written extensively on the topic. They have met with engineers, planners and manufacturers in Sweden, Denmark, Japan and Australia, countries that have lengthy histories of making public rights-of-way accessible to people with visual impairments. Each has over twenty-five years of committed experience in teaching, training, presentation, writing, and researching safe travel for pedestrians with disabilities.