International Journal of

ADVANCED AND APPLIED SCIENCES

EISSN: 2313-3724, Print ISSN: 2313-626X

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 Volume 7, Issue 10 (October 2020), Pages: 86-94

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 Original Research Paper

 Title: Accessibility of the old cities for the Blind-Is Nicosia walled city accessible for the blind?

 Author(s): Semra Sema Uzunoğlu *, Kozan Uzunoğlu

 Affiliation(s):

 Faculty of Architecture and Engineering, Bahçeşehir Cyprus University, Nicosia, Cyprus

  Full Text - PDF          XML

 * Corresponding Author. 

  Corresponding author's ORCID profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6434-9410

 Digital Object Identifier: 

 https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2020.10.009

 Abstract:

The comfortable circulation of the blind and visually impaired individuals in the city is an issue that gains importance day by day. The study aims to examine the historic city of Nicosia, located in the north of the island of Cyprus, in terms of the blind and visually impaired access. The research was carried out in two regions called Zone 1 and Zone 2. Planning principles for barrier-free environments described by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division for Social Policy and Development, were used as criteria for analyzing the streets in both zones. Research findings have been shown that it is impossible for a visually impaired person to move individually without help in Kyrenia Street in Zone 1. Although the necessary arrangements for the comfortable movement of the visually impaired have been partially made in the Zone 2, it is seen that the blind and visually impaired persons are completely ignored because of the shop owners' anxiety to display their products in front of their shops, the desire of cafes and restaurants to create outdoor seating areas, the improper placement of urban furniture, and the cars parking on the pedestrianized area even on the visually impaired pathway. Similar research on the problems of visually impaired persons in city life which has been carried out in five cities in Turkey indicated that Problems such as insufficiency of disabled roads, blocking of disabled paths in front of restaurants, cafes, and shops, and illegal parking of vehicles on the paths seem to be common problems. Our research results underlined the necessary precautions to be taken in order to ensure the circulation of the disabled without problems. The necessity of proper site management and control by the local governments were indicated. The importance of providing technological developments in this area that provide comfortable circulation of the visually impaired was emphasized. 

 © 2020 The Authors. Published by IASE.

 This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

 Keywords: Accessibility of old cities, Accessibility of the blind, North Nicosia walled city, North Cyprus

 Article History: Received 7 March 2020, Received in revised form 31 May 2020, Accepted 2 June 2020

 Acknowledgment:

No Acknowledgment.

 Compliance with ethical standards

 Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

 Citation:

 Uzunoğlu SS and Uzunoğlu K (2020). Accessibility of the old cities for the Blind-Is Nicosia walled city accessible for the blind? International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences, 7(10): 86-94

 Permanent Link to this page

 Figures

 Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 6 

 Tables

 Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 

 Supplementary files

 File 1 File 2 

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