Objective China attaches great importance to the development of programs for the disabled, and pays close attention to the maintenance of the health of the disabled in the context of the “Healthy China” strategy. A large number of researches have confirmed that the experience of urban park landscape can help mobilize multiple senses of the human body to promote physical and mental health, especially for the disabled population. Although the number of researches on park landscape experience and health effects thereof has increased, few of them involve the visually impaired. Therefore, it is necessary and important to explore how the visually impaired perceive and experience landscape in urban parks and to understand the way they appreciate and interpret such landscape.
Methods This research selects Yuntai Garden in Guangzhou as the experimental site mainly because of the rich landscape resources and good accessibility thereof. The research organizes some visually impaired people (mainly blind people and people with low vision) to walk through Yuntai Garden and experience the landscape therein. Under the guidance of the landscape perception theory, the research determines the pathways and contents of landscape perception and experience by the aforesaid visually impaired people in combination with their physiological characteristics and the landscape elements of Yuntai Garden. In addition, the research adopts the behavior observation method and the questionnaire survey method to record and investigate the behavior characteristics of the visually impaired people in Yuntai Garden. Specifically, the behavior observation method is used to record their behaviors, with relevant observations being recorded in the textual form of qualitative description; the questionnaire survey method involves the evaluation on the perception and experience of the visually impaired people involved. According to their behavior modes, perception and experience, the research finally adopts the grading method and the semantic differential method to score and analyze their behaviors, characteristics and emotions.
Results Relevant research findings are as follows. 1) In terms of behavioral characteristics, different visually impaired people show different behaviors that are associated with their respective impairment degrees. Totally blind people move slowly relying on blind cane or companion traction. To facilitate companion traction, they need to put one or two hands on the shoulder or elbow of others or hand in hand with their companions. In the process of sightseeing, they judge by the sense of foot touch, surrounding sound, walking experience and companion guidance, and rely more on the guidance of normal people. Compared with totally blind people, people with low vision behave more like normal people. They rely on the guidance of large areas of color blocks and object outlines, and can move more independently during sightseeing. 2) In terms of landscape perception, the visually impaired are highly sensitive to hearing, touching and smelling. Depending on their age, eyesight, vision loss time and original visual experience, they present different landscape perception characteristics and needs. The landscape perception process of the visually impaired is represented as “landscape symbols − experience perception − psychological representation − self imagination”. With their landscape emotion being more prominent than normal people, the visually impaired can achieve the progression of object image, perception, imagination and emotion through the landscape experience process of traveling, feeling and thinking. 3) The visually impaired can experience a sense of pleasure in the process of landscape perception and experience. They can experience pleasant sound, comfortable touch, good smell and other sensory stimuli at the perception level, and they typically have strong emotions about memories and future visions, which endows them with prominent landscape emotion. What they perceive, observe and comprehend in landscape elements can be reflected by their spatial behaviors and emotions.
Conclusion This research investigates the landscape elements of Yuntai Garden, and constructs the relationship between landscape, perception and experience for the visually impaired. As we know, the visually impaired lack the most important visual sense, which entails landscape designers to understand their perception and experience mechanism and the way they perceive landscape elements and make corresponding landscape responses. Designers should not only improve the design based on visual perception, such as landscape outline and color, but also improve the design based on visual compensation such as scale control, security, accessibility and identifiability. The research through the aforesaid experiment, lay a sound foundation for park landscape design targeting the visually impaired from the perspective of landscape perception for the improved construction level of barrier-free environments. However, long-term, in-depth and meticulous observations are needed to explore the way of landscape perception by the visually impaired. Therefore, in the future, we need to continuously expand the breadth and depth of research and practice regarding the visually impaired, so as to develop a park environment that gives consideration to both normal people and visually impaired groups in the context of healthy city.
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