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Accessibility - can we do better than the Tube Map?

The London Tube Map is an iconic work of design. Every day of the year it probably helps many thousands of visitors to London and some locals as well navigate their way around this incredible and essential piece of transport infrastructure. The map itself has an interesting history - for an overview see wikipedia (yes, wikipedia - sorry to anyone who snubs it but its a formidable place on the 21st century Web infrastructure). It's not a geographical map but a schematic one that 'displays stations etc in relation to each other. Having visited London a few times over the years I, like many infrequent visitors have come to rely on this map for getting me around the city. However the other day I received a very powerful lesson that this iconic map (fantastic as it is and probably appreciated by millions around the world) is not as helpful as it could be to many people. I walked into a station with an idea of where I needed to go but no idea which lines to take to get there so I went over to the nearest map on the station wall. At the map there was a young guy obviously having difficulty trying to find the station that he needed to get to and he was tracing his finger along a number of lines seeking a particular station. A few people behind him were starting to become impatient and were huffing and puffing and making their irritation known. The young guy was visibly starting to get uncomfortable and just wanted to find his station and get out of there as quickly as possible (its a busy place and it wouldn't be long before more people would be milling around the map). He was getting nowhere and in the end turned around past the people who were venting their frustrations and asked someone 'can you tell me what colour this line is, I am colour blind and cannot work out the name of the line. Well, at that the indignant group behind him fell very silent indeed. Someone kindly told him it was red and within two seconds he had located his station and rapldly moved away. The only way of telling the lines from each other on the map are by their colour but two of the lines on the tube map are red and green, which apparently are difficult colours for many colour blind people to discern. The only way of finding Central line is to look up the index where you will see 'Central' next to a red line. Once the guy in the station knew which line was 'Central' he was immediately on his way. Over the years the tube map has changed a bit and it wasn't always just colours that helped identify the lines so there has been some willingness to change it. On the website for 'Transport for London (TfL) there is a black and white version available but we don't always carry a laptop or netbook around with us which we can just open up and browse the Web with at any station. Smaller devices have their own accessibility problems. TfL however does have a commitment to accessibility on their website and has a number of different variations of the map. I guess if you are forewarned the black and white version is there for you and you could print a version off but it is not the same as having nice big maps on the wall in every station that you can just walk up to and browse as you need. Apparently about 7% to 10% of males suffer from some form of red-green colour blindness so I guess every day hundreds (at least) of Underground users are confused by the map. I downloaded a copy of the tube map and modified it in my photo imaging software rendering it in sepia colours. What a difference that made. Instead of seeing colours easily recognisable now most lines were just brown. Looking at the index and then the map made no sense at all. Now I guess I was experiencing a loose approximation of what it might be like not to be able to discern colours. Red and green both looked brown. I was going to post this image on the blog but from what I understand there are some pretty tight controls on making images of it. Anyway, its easy enough for anyone to do for themselves but I can tell you, it makes a big difference. At a presentation on accessibility I once attended the presenter contended that all of us (able bodied, normally sighted etc) suffer from some disability at some point but for most this may only be temporary (eg unable to walk while recovering from a sport injury, age taking its toll on eyesight etc). Seeing someone inconvenienced and embarrassed by an incident such as the one I saw, minor as it may seem in the scheme of things, is an important reminder of the responsibility service providers must have when developing their services, Web, education or otherwise. Being vigilant, we can all learn how to improve our services.

Posted June 30, 2009