Final Transcript

	STATE OF CA-DEPT OF GENERAL SERVICES: The Detectable Warnings Task Force
	February 13, 2019/1:30 p.m. PST 

SPEAKERS

Susan Moe
Ida Claire
Jessica Axtman
Jonathan Adler
Chris Downey
Kaylan Dunlap
Mike Gibbens
Marsha Mazz
Tim McCormick
Vidal Medina
Derek Shaw
Rosa Gomez
Gene Lozano
Kristin Vandersluis
Debbie Wong
Steve Dolim
Rachelle Golden
Jay Griffin

PRESENTATION

Moderator	Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to The Detectable Warnings Task Force.  At this time, all lines will now become fully interactive.  It is recommended that you use your mute button or keep background noise to a minimum during the call.  As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.  Thank you.  

	I would now like to turn the conference over to Susan Moe, and I will be removing the lecture button.  So again, everybody’s lines will be fully interactive for the whole of the call.  Please go ahead.  

Susan	Can you hear me?  This is Susan Moe, Senior Architect at DSA.  And with that, I’m going to turn it over to Ida Claire, and you can all do the introductions and get started with our afternoon session. 

Ida	Welcome.  All of you, thanks for coming to our second meeting.  I’m Ida Claire.  Acting State Architect and Principal Architect.

Jay	Jay Griffin of City of Sacramento.  

Kristin 	Kristin Vandersluis, your facilitator.  

Gene	Gene Lozano.  

Rachelle	Rachelle Golden. 

Rosa	Rosa Gomez, department of Rehabilitation.

Jessica	Jessica Axtman, DSA Analyst

Derek	Derek Shaw, DSA.

Debbie	Good afternoon, Debbie Wong, Division of The State Architect.

Kristin	Thank you.  We’ll now ask our remote participants to take turns introducing themselves.  

Mike 	This is Mike Gibbens.

Kristin	Hi, Mike.

Mike	Hi.  

Tim	Tim [overlapping voices].

Marsha	Marsha.  Go ahead.  

Ida	Chris Downey I heard.  Welcome, Chris.  

Marsha	This is Marsha Mazz.

Kristin	Hi, Marsha.  Thank you.  

Marsha	Hi there.  

Tim	Tim McCormick.  

Kristin	Hi, Tim.

Tim	Hi, everybody.  

Kristin	Do we have anybody else joining us on the phone?

Jonathan	Yes, hi.  It’s Jonathan Adler here, and I’m unable to join the conference through the web interface.  I’m wondering if anyone else had that problem.  It’s asking for a username and password.  

Susan	We’re not looking—I don’t see anybody that—we don’t have any participants.  If you want, I’ll go back to my desk and email everybody the link again.  It should be the link that is in the meeting invitation.

Jonathan	Yes, the February 4th one.  That’s the one I’m trying on a couple of different browsers.  

Marsha	I’m having the same problem.  It’s asking for a password, a username and a password.  

Susan	Okay, let me go—I’ll go back to my desk and send that out to everybody right now.  And then we’ll give that another try.  

Jonathan	And while they’re working on that, does anybody know the mute key command for this conference service?

Susan	For the mute, you can just mute your—if you mute your phone—

Jonathan	The typical way I do that is change this from—well there’s a mute button on the iPhone but typically there’s a star 6.  I’ve tried that and it doesn’t work.  I can see if I can find the mute button on the iPhone screen but I’m not sure I will.  I’ve never found it before.   

Susan	Okay, I’m going to go email that, and send it out to everybody right now.  

Vidal	Hello?

Kristin	Hello there.  Please introduce yourself.

Vidal	This is Vidal Medina from Fresno, California.  

Kristin	Hi, Vidal.  Thank you for joining us.  And we have one more person here in the room that just came in.  

Steve	Hi.  Steve Dolim from Granite Bay here in Sacramento.  

Kristin	Thank you, Steve.  And, Gene, did you have a comment before we move on?

Gene	Yes, I was wondering if there’s any way of changing the tone on the phone so it’s a little higher level because it sounds really dainty and it sounds muffled to me because it’s just hard to hear some of the people.  It’s just really bassy [ph]. 

Jessica	I think it’s based on everyone’s phone and how they’re speaking.  But maybe it’s because it’s on a cell phone, it’s going to come out differently than if they’re on a landline.  

Kristin	However, we can look into that.  Absolutely.  Do we have anyone else that would like to introduce themselves that’s also joining us remotely?  

Kaylan	This is Kaylan Dunlap with Evan Terry Associates.  

Kristin	Hi, Kaylan.  Alright, thank you.  Well I imagine we will have a few other people join us as our time moves on.  Thank you, everybody, for introducing yourselves again.  This is our second task force meeting to discuss detectable warning regulations.  So as with last time, we will be toggling back and forth between our participants that are here in the room in Sacramento and those who are joining us on the phone.  

	While we wait for the information to be sent out for those of you that need some info to join us on the web page, I’m going to go ahead and just share a few housekeeping items before we get started.  As a reminder for those who do have their computers up, you do have the chat function and please feel free to use that at any time.  We do have Jessica here in the room who will be monitoring that.  So that’s one option for you to type in any questions you have.  We’ll be monitoring that here.  Sorry.  We’re laughing in the room because she was surprised.  So that’s my apology.  I assumed she’d monitor it just like last time, but one of us will be looking at this as we move ahead.  

	I wanted to remind everyone of the group agreements that we had come up with last time.  We had mentioned respectful discussions.  Please ask for people further clarification.  Don’t be afraid to ask some of the tough questions.  Of course please stay on topic, turn taking, and succinct comments as much as possible, and our hope is to not repeat each other’s comments.  So while we are interested to know when there is a lot of agreement for our comment, we don’t need to repeat someone else’s.  We can just say I concur with the comments that Gene shared.  

	And then as always, please silence your other electronic devices.  When we do speak today, as a reminder we’ll just ask everyone continue to say their name first.  You obviously don’t have to say your organization, but just for the purposes of the transcript that’s generated from our meeting and also for everyone to know who’s speaking.  And as much as possible, please project your voices so that everybody that’s joining us remotely can hear.

	There are restrooms outside of the room that we’re in.  If people leave the room, the door that they entered into and go to their left, there are women’s and men’s restrooms right there.  We do have a snack here in the room if anybody would like to help themselves to some peanut butter pretzels.  And with that, I’d like to preview our agenda before we dive in.  

	So if we just get that up on the screen, and I know some of you may not be able to see that yet but—

Susan	I think that we fixed it after we got Jonathan and Kaylan, who are – oh and Tim McCormick.  So, everybody, you should have received an email with a new link.  It looks like that’s working because we have three people that have joined so far.

Jonathan	It worked well for me.  Thanks for doing that.  

Susan	Oh your welcome.  I’ll be sure and double check that before the next session to be sure that it’s correct when we send it out again.  

Marsha	I haven’t received it.  

Susan	I’ll send that one again.

Marsha	Oh wait a minute.  There it is.  It finally came.

Susan	Oh good.  

Marsha	Thank you.  

Kristin	So we’re going to spend the bulk of our time today looking at all of the examples that were provided.  There’s images and descriptions of what has worked well but mostly what’s not working.  We’ll spend the bulk of our time talking about the problematic [audio disruption] warning scenarios and then we’ll discuss our next step for our future three meetings after this.  

	We are going to begin by just touching base with everybody about the process.  By that I mean there’s been emails sent out, and the way our last meeting was set up I’m curious if this has been accessible for everybody.  This is the time to check in and just see if everything’s working in terms of audio and directions and emails and just throwing this out to the group.  Has the way information has been shared and the meetings are set up with audio and all of that, is this working for people?  Or, as Gene had a suggestion earlier about the tone, are there any other requests or comments about accessibility with our process?

Marsha	I’m still having trouble with this link.  It’s once again asking for me to turn on a microphone and I don’t see any.  

Ida	You can ignore the microphone.  

Marsha	It won’t let me go any further.  When I click on the link, it says join from a browser, which is what I’m doing, or join session with Blackboard or Blackboard Instructor.  So I click on join from a browser and then it asks for my name, and then I click on join session.  And it says, “It looks like you’ve blocked permission to access your microphone.”  [Overlapping voices].

Susan	Oh now it says that you’ve joined session.  

Ida	Yes, can you see it?

Marsha	But it’s telling me I’ve blocked my microphone, which I don’t even have one.

Susan	Well you don’t need the microphone.  You can just dial in on the teleconference number.

Marsha	Well yes, I’ve done that.  I’m on the phone now.  

Kaylan	Marsha, if you can hit—

Marsha	It’s not offering me an opportunity to—alright.  Now I have it.  I exed out of that notification.

Kaylan	Yes, it’s not very clear. 

Susan	Okay.

Marsha	There’s a tiny little X up in the corner that I have to be 100 times zoomed to see.  Alright.

Susan	I know that Gene wanted to speak with some input about the process.  Gene?

Gene	The emails are working for me, so that’s working fine.

Kristin	Good, thank you.  

Mike	Mine is not working.  

Kristin	And who is this?

Mike	This is Mike Gibbens.  

Kristin	Thank you, Mike.  So tell us more about what’s not working.  

Mike	I just—I haven’t been—you have not sent the forward tag on that yet.  I clicked on the old one and it didn’t go forward.  I haven’t gotten the email yet.  

Susan	Let me go back and double check, and I’ll send it to you one more time.  

Mike	Thank you.  

Susan	You’re welcome.  I’ll be right back.  

Ida	Thanks for your patience, everyone, in getting everyone onboard.  Maybe the next time I think that we all have [audio disruption] and hopefully it will be a lot smoother.

Kristin	Does anybody else want to share requests or input about the process accessibility?  

Jonathan	Yes.  It seemed like someone sent a batch of photos in but there was no text that went along with them.  So I mean that was okay for me but I don’t think it was working for people within limited vision.  

Kristin	Thank you for that input.  And Gene would like to say something.

Gene	I had to get some assistance in my skills but in also computer prompts to get in.  And so, the photographs were there and there was some text but I wasn’t able to understand fully what the issue was.  I had some pictures but I was trying to get some help from somebody to try to put text and we weren’t successful.  So, if the process for those of you who are successful [audio disruption] how do you get so you can put your text underneath it so that each picture has a different text?  I don’t know how to do that’s so if somebody could just send me some instructions.  

Ida	Yes, we can assist you with that, Gene, in Word.  Reach out to us before the next meeting and we can assist you with that—

Gene	Yes, I have some photographs that got taken and I still would like to submit them.  But it’s having to put the text underneath it, that’s the problem we’re having.  

Ida	Okay.  Sure.  We can work with you on that.  This isn’t just a one-time thing, I’m sure that we’re all going to be exploring over the next few months and we’ll add more pictures to the database.  So we will work with you on getting the ones that you have uploaded with text.  

Marsha	I don’t know what database you’re talking about, and I didn’t receive any pictures.  

Kristin	So, Marsha, we are referring to—last meeting when we ended we had invited participants to email in examples of photos that showed scenarios with detectable warnings working well or not working well.  We did say they could email those directly to someone here on the DSA staff.  

Marsha	Correct.  I remember that.  Where are these pictures now?

Kristin	So they’re now on Box website that we all can access.  I know an email was sent out sharing a link.  We can resend that to you.  

Marsha	It’s a Box website?

Kristin	Yes.  

Marsha	Boxnet?  And who sent the email?  

Kristin	It would have come out from Susan Moe.  

Marsha	Okay.  I have all of Susan’s emails that I’ve received right here.  I don’t seem to have it.  I don’t know if it went to junk or—it shouldn’t have.  

Kristin	It has three attachments with it.  

Kaylan	And it went out on February 1st.  

Marsha	February 1st?

Ida	[Indiscernible].

Kristin	Did you just hear that?  That was sent out February 1st.  So, Marsha, we will make sure to resend the link with each—

Marsha	I have a February 1st email from Susan and it has three attachments.  Current task force members, the agenda for the February 13th meeting, then summary notes.  

Susan	Within the body of the email it will have the link to the box.  It’s not a separate attachment.  It’s within the email.  

	And, Mr. Gibbens, I resent that email to you with the link.  Did you get that?  

Mike	No, I have not received it yet.  

Susan	And it’s mgibbens@theaccessguy, correct?

Mike	That’s correct.  Yes, all of Susan’s emails have come before.  But also too, like Marsha, the last email I received was on the 12th.  It didn’t have any attachments or anything to it.

Marsha	Yes, I did find it.  I found the link in the body.  It just took forever to populate, but it’s up now.  It’s in the body of that February 1st.  I was looking at the attachments but I see it in the body.  Yes.  

Jonathon	Go back to February 1st.  

Kristin	So one option that we would like to offer is, Michael, that Jessica could reach out to you even now, call you and help you get online if that would be helpful, just to verbally describe to you the link and talk through any challenges.  Would that be something that would help for today’s meeting?  

Mike	Is there—I just need the link, yes.  I tried the one from last time and it didn’t go through.  

Ida	Yes, we are going to write down the link and share it verbally in just a few minutes.  

Mike	Perfect.

Ida Claire	So that will be coming.  

Susan	Well actually it’s a pretty lengthy link.   

Mike	I have a pen.  

Marsha	Mike, I can forward you the email.  

Ida	Well, it’s not actually the email with the link to the Box, this is the email with the link to the meeting is what we’re looking at.  

Marsha	Wait a minute.  I’m talking about the one with the link to the Box.  I can forward that to Mike so it’s on the top of his email.   

Kristin	So we can share it. So we apologize, everybody.  We are going to get that link and share it, even if it’s long.  

Susan	I mean is anybody else on the line having trouble with the link, and you’ve received it? 

Tim	I had the link—

Ida	That’s the link to the Box.  I just want to make sure we’re talking about the correct link.  

Kristin	So, Michael, are you able to take a call from Jessica or she can send you an email and we can get the long link to you?

Mike	Yes.  Let me grab the other phone.  You can try 805-870-0900.  That’s my office line.  

Marsha	Mike, I just forwarded you the email.  So, just look at item 2 in the body of the email.  

Mike	Okay, well go ahead.  I’ll keep working on it.  I’ll tell you if it doesn’t work.  

Kristin	Okay.  Great.  

Susan	And then Jessica, she’ll give you [indiscernible].  

Kristin	We have that challenge.  The solution is in process.  So Jessica will be reaching out to Michael shortly.  Is there anything else accessibility-wise that folks would like to share?  

Susan	Is there anybody else on the line that is having problems with the link to get to the session?  No?  

Kristin	Alright.  So we are going to go ahead and move ahead with our agenda.  In the room here, Susan is pulling up the examples that were sent in and she’s going to be sharing—she’ll be calling each person who sent in their examples to walk us through them.  We’re pulling it up right now.  

Susan	We have quite a few photographs to go through.  What we talked about before—and my apologies because I was out of the room—were there any examples that we might want to take a look at first where the locations of detectable warnings actually worked?

Ida	Did we get any?  

Susan	Oh we’ve had a lot of pictures but I don’t know if there are any of them that—

Ida	That worked?

Susan	That worked. 

Ida	That was my question.  Does anyone share any that they felt worked well?  

Vidal	Can you hear—okay, so I found it difficult to distinguish what was working and what wasn’t because there was so many, as my photos will show, and then again you have to decide whether they’re warning or directional.  It’s truly difficult when you’re out there navigating or walking to figure out what they’re supposed to be doing.  So to say that there’s some good ones is kind of hard to say that.  

Ida	Well then we can go through them and—I’m sorry for interrupting.  I apologize.  This is Ida.  Vidal, we can go through them and you can tell us both what you think may [audio disruption].

Vidal	Oh, absolutely.  Absolutely.  I had planned to, yes.  

Susan	So do you want to Vidal.  So should we start taking a look at some of the—oh go ahead.

Kristin	Absolutely.  And, Gene, did you have a comment before we move forward?  

Gene	Well again, I was having somebody try to describe it because the descriptions really didn’t provide the description information for me to comprehend but there seemed to be one where there were detectable warnings in the curb ramps. They were yellow, which was excellent.  

	But I think it went down from a pedestrian access aisle, access parts of that, and then the crosswalk began.  The detectable warnings were outlining the crosswalk and then going to where there was another curb ramp to go up with detectable warnings.  Marking the crosswalk with detectable warnings is not the proper use of detectable warnings. 

	That’s not where to use them because that’s using it as a guide and those truncated domes are not meant to be as a guide.  And I guess that somebody was interpreting that because pedestrians, we walk between the crosswalk, to get out of the pedestrian way but it isn’t really exclusive one because it’s where vehicular traffic crosses it.  It totally needs a different solution to resolve that thing.  How do you get from if it’s an access aisle for another curb ramp to the—if it’s a crosswalk through a parking lot or whatever it is, detectable warnings should not be outlining the crosswalk markings. 

Kristin	Good. Thank you, Gene, for that input.  This is Kristin.  So we do have, as Susan had mentioned, a number of photos to go through, and we have our next two hours to do that together.  So what I would like to propose is that as we call on each person who submitted their examples, we will have that person describe each of their photos.  We can help prompt if need be to describe what photo we just pulled up and ask each of you for help with the description.  So the person that submitted them will share what they wanted to say and then if people have questions we can open it up after each one if they have any input.  

	Initially we had dreamt of having the beautiful organization where first we would talk about what worked well and then we’d move into what didn’t.  And just with life, nothing usually is that clear cut.  And so we will just go through as we have our examples and discuss each one.  We will take a break part-way through.  

	We’re going to start with Vidal, and the first slide that is up is Corner Curb Cut.

Vidal	Okay, is that the first one?  Is it an island?  Because mine are labeled.  There’s a description underneath the photos.  The first one that comes up on the box is Islands, or Island.  

Susan	On this one, Vidal, the first one I opened says, “On this corner the truncated dome.”

Vidal	Okay, let me go to that one then.  

Susan	Okay.  It’s the side of the street and they’re red.

Vidal	They’re red?  Oh, boy.  I see.  They put them in an order here and they should go down the order but now I have to search for them.  [Audio disruption] wow that’s going to be—

Kristin	Vidal, would another—may I propose that instead you lead us through which one you would like to talk about and we can pull them up?

Vidal	Yes, let’s do that because they are indicated on the photos themselves.  So let’s go to something that says on the photo, the label on the photo, well it’s up in the corner.  It says vmisland.doc.  So it’s an island, and the description starts with these photos that are two islands on the crosswalk.  Are you on that one?

Kristin	Yes, I’m finding it.  

Susan	Oh, this one.  Got it.  Okay.  

Vidal	Okay, great. 

Kristin	Pulling it up.  

Vidal	Alright.  So this is kind of an interesting one.  My description says—can you see the description under the photo?  

Ida	Hold on, we’re still pulling it in.  

Susan	I’ll pull it in right now.

Vidal	Okay. 

Ida	And it’s this guy right, okay.  Do you want to bring them all in now or is that just going to take too long?  

Susan	I think I have all of them but maybe one or two that he has.  

Ida	I think you need the last VM [ph] quarter curb cut and the three designated.  

Susan	And this one?  Okay.

Ida	So those three and that one, yes.

Susan	And this one.

Kristin	Thank you for your patience.  We’re—

Vidal	Oh absolutely.  

Susan 	Okay, just one moment.  So we want to go to the island?

Vidal	Yes, island.  

Susan	Okay, let’s see here.  

Vidal	The description underneath indicates the island because it’s six feet of truncated dome almost.  And that’s in the description so that’s how you’ll know, which is the one I’m looking at.  

Susan	Okay, got it.  

Vidal	Got it?

Susan	 Alright.  I think we have it now, Vidal.  

Vidal	Okay.  This is an interesting cutout.  As I described, there’s two islands, and each island has this same truncated dome about six, maybe a little bit more, six feet.  What it’s doing, there’s a cutout with actual island or dirt and plants in it but I’m not sure why they did this.  It’s so long of a strip that there’s a raised area in the middle.  It’s kind of hard to see unless you zoom it or something but it has a raised area.  

	And I’m not sure, like I mentioned before, this can’t be a directional.  It’s only going to be used to know that you’re approaching traffic but it is a long strip and you can see the stop sign over there where someone, the pedestrian crossing, kind of the upper right.  At the corner of that cutout you can see the pedestrian lines that they would cross.   

Ida	So I think we probably need to give a little bit better description.

Chris	I don’t understand.

Ida	Yes, exactly.  For Gene.

Kristin	Vidal, can you describe this in a little more detail so those who are unable to see the photo?

Vidal	Yes.

Kristin	Thank you.  

Vidal	Sure.  Yes.  I’ve done descriptive stuff before.  So if you were to imagine a crosswalk, you’re approaching a crosswalk and all of a sudden you detect two curbs, two raised areas of concrete on each side of you, and then you run into a truncated dome.  As you think you’re going toward the crosswalk, you’re picking up this truncated dome that goes on for about six feet before you get to the curb where you’re going to go out into the street.  Now there’s no dirt on either side of that.  There is an island but you can’t feel the dirt because it’s a raised, about a 4-inch curve on each side of this truncated dome.  

	Does that help, Gene?  

Rachelle	Did you say that it’s as if it’s six-foot path of truncated dome that leads to the crosswalk?  Right?  

Vidal	Yes, that’s correct.  But it cuts through an island.  It cuts through an island that’s almost six or seven feet long.  

Rachelle	On either side of the walkway.  Does that make sense, Gene? You’re walking on a walkway that’s six feet long but it’s truncated down—The entire way. With curbs on both sides.  

Gene	Okay, so it’s a cut-through through an island—

Rachelle	That’s right.

Gene	And the whole entire area that’s between and through the island is covered with detectable warnings, and that’s definitely, well [overlapping voices].

Vidal	It’s leading you to the pedestrian crosswalk.  That’s where it’s leading you to.  

Chris	So, is the entire walk area detectable warning, the truncated domes, or is it a line along your path of travel connecting from one curb ramp to the other across the island?

Vidal	No.  It comes off a sidewalk on one side, and then it’s truncated, truncated domes through this cutout of the island, sort of like Gene was saying.  It’s a cutout through the island but it has raised concrete areas on both sides.  It leads to the pedestrian crosswalk but it comes off a sidewalk.

Marsha	I think what is confusing people here is your description of raised concrete areas.  Basically it’s a channel through an island, and either side of the channel has a curb.  

Vidal	That’s right.  Okay. 

Marsha	So that you can detect the curb potentially but it’s flat, or it’s nearly flat, and it is for the truncated domes.

Vidal	Nearly flat.

Marsha	So it’s not a curb-cut.   It’s—

Vidal	No, I didn’t say it was a curb-cut.  

Marsha	No slope to it.  No slope to it.  It’s just cut all the way through the island.  The island is six or eight feet wide.  And so, you basically are walking on six or eight feet of infill with detectable warnings.  

Vidal	Well the width is about maybe three feet.  The length is six to seven feet.  

Marsha	That’s what I said, long, six or eight feet long. Yes, well the width of the island is six or eight feet.

Vidal 	Yes, it’s about three.  Yes.  

Marsha	So your walkway is six or eight feet long, covered with detectables.  

Kristin	Thank you.  I would like to let Gene say something at this time.  

Gene	What I was going to say is similar to what Marsha described.  It sounds like it’s an island that is less than six feet wide, or six feet or less, and therefore they’ve tarpeted and that’s when our California code then says you’re supposed to have 24 inches of detectable warnings, and then a 2 feet minimum of clear space, and the 24 inches.  Otherwise if it’s wider, it would be 36 inches and 36 inches detectable warnings with an open space because like being tarpeted it’s an overkill, it’s very confusing, and it’s difficult for people to negotiate.  So, it’s a bad application.  Excellent one that was submitted.  And, it’s a bad example.  

Kristin	Good.  Thank you.  Yes.

Vidal	Yes.  That was my feeling as well.  It’s sort of like someone got happy with the truncated domes and just plastered them on this pathway that could have been left alone really.  I mean you’re on there and these concrete sides on it are kind of directing you anyway to the pedestrian crosswalk.  

Susan	I think Gene has another question.  

Chris	Well I think it’s more important to stick—this is Chris Downey—I think Gene’s recitation of the code is accurate.  If it’s a six-foot long or wide island you’re crossing across, then you have the two-foot deep hazardous warning strips at either side.  And then you have the clear space, two feet clear, in between.  If they went to the three-foot deep, you would end up with what you have there, which is six continuous feet of hazardous warning strips.  So they didn’t read the nuance of the code of what you use when.  

Vidal	And that was my example.  They did not follow any code, or it just seems like they did what they wanted.  And it could be, like I mentioned before at the first meeting, sometimes it’s aesthetic.  Aesthetically for some reason to just put them down on the ground, and that was why I took photos of this particular corner.  

Marsha	I’m wondering why that requirement is written the way it is because quite frankly if you can detect 24 inches as you’re cutting through an island, then why do you need 36 if the island just happens to be a little bigger?  I don’t get that.  

Vidal	Yes, I don’t get it.  Okay.  

Kristin	Yes, Gene will be speaking next followed by Derek.  

Gene	Based on research, Marsha, that you’re familiar with, that approximately 85% to 87% of people detect 24 inches, and you get up to 36 inches it’s close to about 97%, and it gets greater there.  Footwork’s a factor.  And so we have always gone with having a significant percentage of stopping distance, taking under consideration the footwear and also the research that had been done that you’re familiar with.  

Kristin	Thank you.  Next we’ll hear from Derek.  

Derek	I just wanted to double-check I guess my own view of this slide.  In a lot of aspects, it does take on the appearance of an island that we might see with roadways on both sides of the island.  But it does not appear that there’s a roadway on both sides of this particular [audio disruption].  It looks like there is a roadway on one end of this cut-through but there’s a cut-through is a larger—it is cut through a larger planter, which then on the opposite end of this cut-through it connects to a series of blocks or sidewalks.  

Vidal	This is Vidal.

Kristin	Hi, Vidal.  Go ahead and then we’re going to hear from Rosa and Gene.  

Vidal	Okay, so I don’t know if you’re showing the second slide or the third slide of this.  There’s three slides.  There’s three photos for this particular corner.  So you’re showing one but have you shown the other two photos?  

Susan	Vidal, I’ve scrolled through all nine of the slides.  

Vidal	Okay, but on the one slide with this corner, on the second photo it actually shows both sides of the street as the gentleman was asking about.  There are two of these that are going to the streets.  Can you see that or did that one come up?

Susan	Yes, we’re actually looking at it’s a view where it’s number 5 in the series.  It looks like we can see the two, well the two legs of the island coming into the sidewalk.

Vidal	Yes, that’s it.  Yes. 

Steve	It looks almost like a street corner and the street corner had parking on each street, but as you came to the street corner it became a bulbous planter island and it just looks like a cut-through.  Maybe 15-foot of planter to get through the depth that used to be parking when you get further beyond the corner.  It’s a raised curb on each side of that cut-through, the planter.  

Kristin	Thank you.  Rosa, did you have something you wanted to—

Rosa	Thank you.  I was just thinking about after having this discussion, if we’re hearing out, my thoughts are that it would be helpful to know kind of the context in which we’re sharing.  So last week on one of my takeaways, and I have not been a part of a group, established, the detectable warnings—one of my takeaways was that detectable warnings are just that.  It is a warning to notify an individual who cannot see that there is traffic on the other side of these truncated domes.  

	And I’m also hearing that in some instances there may be detectable warning information that actually gives information.  And so in thinking about if there’s going to be a rewrite of regulation, it is great that the regulations are going to help the builders to know what they need to put there.  But when we think about this in terms of an end user, is the information that is going to be put off I guess by these warnings, do they make sense?  

	So in our society we know that the red light being stop and the yellow caution and the green is go [audio disruption] detectable warnings.  As an end user I have no idea that 36 inches means this and 24 inches means that and I don’t walk around with a yardstick to measure.  It sounds like Gene had some stats to say that while individuals are able to detect this, it’s great that they can [indiscernible] wider than the other, but without that context.  

	So I just thought it would be important enough for us looking at the concerns and developing possible new regulations around this that the end user has a clear understanding of what is trying to be communicated and also defining are we just warning, or are we really going to provide some useful information. 

Chris	If I may, I don’t think there’s any intention to communicate anything in particular by the different depths.  It’s a function of the physical nature of where you apply them so that if there’s room for a 3-foot you can go with the 3-foot.  In these conditions where they’re close together, it’s an opportunity to have enough—as Jan explained—to reasonably communicate to most people so you come into contact with it.  The critical thing is hazardous warning strip.  That’s what you need to know.  

	So you capture most of the people that way.  You have a space before the next one, then you hit it again to know you’re exiting going back into a hazardous warning area.  So I don’t think there’s ever been any intention of reading the depth of the hazardous warning strip to communicate anything to the end user.  

Kristin	Thank you, Chris.  So Gene will speak followed by Ida.  

Gene	Well two things.  I want to echo what just Chris said.  You’re absolutely correct what he said.  The second was that if their description were that one side of that cut-through took you to a vehicular area and the other side took you to generally pedestrian walkways and so forth, then there would have been only needed 36-inch as a detectable warning there.  Here is another example of being overkill of state puts the feet of detectable warnings there.  So I thank you. 

Kristin	Thank you.  Ida? 

Ida	I actually have a question for blind and visually impaired colleagues here today.  When you are on the street and you encounter this where it goes for six feet, what is the thought process in your mind?  Like what are you anticipating?  So you can help us understand that when you’re using them what is this communicating?  Are you realizing it from this application?  Are you waiting for some other clue to see where you are?  Like when you encounter a very long stretch, what is that telling you?  Gene?  

Gene	It indicates to me that somebody was excessively using this and it’s an overkill.  And the fact that if anything maybe it’s triggering maybe some hesitation not knowing.  If it’s this extensive, I don’t have [audio disruption].  

	The question where is the beginning of the vehicular area, so there’s a little hesitation, it slows me down because I’m wondering because it’s like the detectable warrants are supposed to tell you, you are at the boundary where you’re entering an area that you need to take caution and use all your training to negotiate wherever you’re going there and determining what it is.  But if it goes on forever, you have no idea actually where and you become hesitant guessing where that vehicle area is.  

Susan	Let’s finish up in the room and then Marsha has her hand up as well.  

Kristin	Wonderful.  So next, we’ll hear from Rosa and then Rachelle and Marsha. 

Rosa	So far my thought is also in the context of where I am—so for example, if I’m at a shopping center or like at Costco and you know there’s that long strip, that would tell me that there’s a separation between the pedestrian area versus the street.  But I think in this example that Vidal provided, I think I was just very confused and not know what was the intent of why this was such a long strip and what is it trying to tell me.  Thank you. 

Kristin	Rachelle?

Rachelle	Is the question is, okay, so in a situation like this where there’s six feet of truncated dome, there, detectable warning.  With what Gene said is it’s very confusing.  You don’t know where the end of it is.  

	Is it then a place where you are then forcing yourself to turn off this element and then start queuing in to other sensories running, whether it’s sound or whatever it may be?  I’m not sure.  I mean, if it comes to a point where it becomes so unhelpful and so confusing that you are then forced to completely ignore it or is it always something that you look at?  I don’t know if that makes sense.  

Kristin	So we’re going to let Gene answer Rachelle’s question, and then we’d like to hear from Marsha.  

Gene	It would just mean pay attention.  I wouldn’t get off because it’s not providing any more information whether it’s 36 or 80 feet.  Excuse me.  I’m not being flippant, just what you’re asking.  Just that it’s just excessive but it just needs warning and that’s all and this dilutes the effectiveness of it.  

Kristin	Thank you.  Marsha, we would like to hear from you.   

Marsha	Thank you.  I think I have a perspective just from having worked on the public rights of way requirements that aren’t final yet as well as being a person with a vision.  California is one of the few places that I see such overuse of detectable warnings.  

	I’d like to suggest that in part it might be some confusion between the 36-inch which I think only California uses now versus 24 inches, which is used in most of the United States, and perhaps some just general misunderstanding by those people who are trying to implement these requirements.  I can say that for the sake of people with mobility disabilities, the reason that the federal government cut back to 24 inches was to minimize the impact on wheelchair users and people with other mobility disabilities.  

	We’re not particularly concerned about the people in high heels, because you know what, they can avoid the detectable warning altogether in most instances.  They can step off the curb for example.  They don’t need to go down a curb ramp.  So I don’t buy into the arguments about people in high heels and all of that.  

	But having worked for so many years with so many people who have mobility disabilities, most people tolerate the discomfort because they appreciate that the detectable warnings serve a purpose for people who are blind or low vision.  But when you end up with this carpet of detectable warnings that goes on forever, you really can induce vibration and other impacts on their mobility that really can be severe.  

	Access Board did a research study on just vibration in wheelchairs generally a while back and many people in wheelchairs experience more vibration than what is allowed for a truck driver and they’re cheap [ph].  So I think we have to make some compromises.  The research that Gene and I are familiar with and I think others probably are is rather old.  I don’t know if we’d get the same results in terms of efficacy today because people are now more familiar with detectable warnings.  So I think perhaps one of the things that we’re going to have to talk about and we’re going to have to consider is cutting back to the 24-inch. 

Kristin	Thank you.  So we would like to hear from Kaylan.  

Kaylan	Thanks.  I’m just going to back up what Marsha has to say.  I’m a manual wheelchair user.  I’m sorry, I don’t have much of a voice.  So if you can’t hear me, I can send it in a message.  

	As a manual wheelchair user, something like we see in the photo where it’s many feet of detectable warnings, I would either go down to the other end of the block and travel out in the street or probably find a way to bump down off of a curb just to avoid that because it is potentially dangerous going down that curb ramp with those domes, but also because like Marsha said, it’s quite painful just the pounding that you get from those domes.  

Kristin	Thank you.  Next we’ll hear from Ida.  

Ida	So this is all really good discussion and thank you.  So I’m also going to throw out this other question because when I look at these applications I try to go back to code language and say what in code language resulted in this application.  Because we have to look at the language that’s proposing forward to say how’d we get here where we all agree this is not a good thing.  

	So I’d like to suggest and I’d like to hear yours, Jay.  I have been thinking about this.  What in our code language?  I’m assuming this is California and I’m assuming all the pictures we are presenting yes, are from California.  Okay, thanks.  

	So I’m thinking because this is a [indiscernible], someone may have interpreted that these walks are somehow in the vehicular area.  I don’t know.  That’s what I’m throwing out there.  I’d like someone else to offer like where in our code language could you see that this is the result.  

	Wait, I think Jay has—

Jay	Yes.  I don’t see anywhere in the code language where this applies.

Ida	I don’t either. 

Jay	But one of the things is perhaps adding some language restricting their locations.  Because if I were the plan checker looking at this, I could write an advisory comment that says in essence, really?  But I cannot compel them to remove them.  

Rachelle	And that’s what’s so frustrating is—I’m downtown Fresno a lot where this is.  This will forever be there until I’m long gone.  There’s no mechanism then for going back in and taking it out and I know the developer and there’s no way on God’s green earth I’m going to take it out. 

Chris	I’m not keyed into the technology to be able to put my digital hand up.  But is there no reason why if it’s non-compliant it can’t be corrected? 

Rachelle	It’s already been installed and signed off.  

Chris	Well is that always the case?  Things get signed off and they’re incorrect and they’re changed.  If it’s wrong, it’s wrong.  It’s non-compliant.  

Kristin	So let’s here from Ida and then Steve and Gene. 

Ida	So I would like to suggest, Chris, that perhaps what’s happening here— and I will also defer to our plan checker folks—is that when there is sometimes a method to address a disability issue, sometimes people with a lack of understanding of what the purpose is will do overkill thinking it’s providing greater accessibility than less.  And because the language perhaps in the code, unless they address it as a safety issue which is may not there, be overkill, maybe difficult to pull back in a plan review comment.  

	But I will defer because that’s the way I would assume it’s being applied.  People are thinking that there’s an overabundance of caution here just to take care of it because they lack understanding of its use. 

Kristin	Steve next. 

Steve	This is Steve’s warped view of maybe why that’s there is that this condition is called a curb ramp in somebody’s mind, and it’s back to the generation where the entire phase of the curb ramp had to be covered in detectable warnings.  Right or wrong that’s all I can think of.  

Kristin	So we’re going to hear from Gene and then Tim and [audio disruption]. 

Gene	I need some clarification.  This bulbout, any bulbouts I’m familiar with are in the Sacramento area where the radius of the corner has gone out taking out a right-turn lane and you usually have two either curb ramps or there are cut-throughs and then they meet the cut-throughs, the level ground, and then there’s maybe like a letter Y. 

Rachelle	Yes, that’s exactly how that goes. 

Gene	So if it’s like that, well still if those two legs or if it’s just one leg goes out to vehicular movement, the detectable warnings are needed there and since it’d be generally level would be the 36 inches.  I do recall and had forgotten—thank you, Steve—that the first time the detectable warnings were put in, which was the full depth in my organization fought that and said it shouldn’t be the full depth.  They said no, it should be 36 inches, but you still need it.  

	It’s not to say, if it’s a bulbout and it’s a cut-through, you don’t need detectable warnings. You still do whether it’s sloped or level, you need some to warn you there because you’re going to the vehicular area.  I just want to state that.  It sounds like all that needs to be addressed.  

	The whole concept, because sometimes they’re not just—there’s modulations in them and that’s another thing, too, and the positioning where these cut-throughs or curb ramps should be positioned.  So I think that it’s very expansive and should be looked at comprehensively.  

Kristin	Good.  Thank you.  Next we’ll hear from Tim followed by Marsha.  

Susan	I think we missed Derek.  

Kristin	Derek, I thought—okay, Derek did—okay I thought I saw a hand, but said oh forget it.  Derek, now over to you.  Okay.  Derek and then Tim. 

Derek	Okay.  Thanks and, Tim, sorry I won’t step on your time too long.  A lot of designers use the building code requirements as minimum requirements.  So when we see something like this, yes it could be an example of a much earlier installation where the requirement was to cover the entire slope of the curb ramp.  Or it might be something saying well the minimum requirement in this condition at a curb ramp today is 3 feet in length, but it’s the minimum requirement so I’m going to put in 15 or 18 feet in this example that we see here.  It’s hard to say.  

	Now if we wanted to address that in code language and we really wanted to be zeroing in on a 36-inch length, we could use requiring detectable warnings being provided within a range.  So we could say for example 35 to 37 inches in length and so that way that precludes people from exceeding the maximum part of that length.  

Kristin	Thank you.  Tim, you’re up.  

Tim	Okay.  I wanted to tag on.  That’s a good lead in, Derek.  I do believe—and I think it was Jonathan who originally brought up this point and it’s in some of the documents I submitted—I think there is a clear need in the code right now to talk about prohibited locations.  

	I think we have a lot of these situations where we have extensive placement of domes on ramps that should be removed and there is no mechanism to do that.  If we say it’s prohibited, then on the very next path of travel alteration they will be required to be removed and properly enforced and I think that’s important.  

	I think from my experience working with most building apartments and having been a former building official and still working with them, formally in the CALBO organization, when in doubt they ask for more of everything when it comes to accessibility.  It’s something they don’t want to get wrong.  They may not understand something or miss something, but more often than not they’re asking for more than actually is required.  

	I think tagging on to what Marsha said, there’s a lot to be said for matching the ADA standards for the 2-foot size.  I think also it would raise the question whether or not we can make the spacing match the ADA narrower, too, if it’s a very small size detectable warning.  

	One of the biggest problems I see in construction observation is that half the time people are buying a closer space rectangular grid pattern that’s allowed under the ADA and not allowed under the CBC.  So those are issues I think if we can reduce it, I think that says a lot.  It helps people but I also think having many places—and some of my photos show for instance where these are placed within door maneuvering clearance spaces.  Sometimes they’re placed in access aisles, but all locations that prohibit more of the half-inch rise on the surface and yet people don’t understand that all these things have to work together.  

	So my comment would be if we could match the federal I think it’s good, but clearly language being added would be in part prohibited.  And as far as the size ranges for these, normally the manufacturers that I work with and that I see specified all the time, they’re producing it either exactly for 2-feet or for 3-foot depths.  

	So if we tell them 36 inches, whatever construction tolerance we want to apply or industry manufacturing to all those who want to apply is fine, but they’re going to make it that.  The only time that we run into a problem—and I think Jonathan brought this up in some of his comments and I did, too—is we have a lot of radius curves that these things end on.  They don’t always end nice and straight on a perpendicular curve.  

	So we need to talk about what we expect detectable warnings to do when the surface of the curve at the street or the gutter of the street is actually curving.  It’s not straight.  But the proposed right-of-way guidelines say that you can still use a straight across line as long as one edge is no more than 5 feet from the street and I think we should think about how we want that to work in the detectable warning thing.  So those are my comments for now.  Thank you. 

Kristin	Good.  So we’re going to hear from Marsha and then Rachelle and then after that I’d like us to move on because we have a lot of other examples to discuss.  So go ahead, Marsha.  Marsha, we can’t hear you.  You might need to unmute your phone. 

Marsha	I’m so sorry.  

Kristin	Oh there you are. 

Marsha	One of the things that I’d like to point out is the proposed right-of-way guidelines did receive a lot of comments and those comments are available online.  I can’t share with you what is in the last draft of the final rule for two reasons.  One, I don’t remember it all and I didn’t bring it home with me because that would have been illegal.  The other reason is that it could have changed between now and then.  But once we start looking at the federal proposed rules, I think it would be good if we would go back and look at the comments to those sections so that we might learn something that could help to improve whatever we want to come up with in the future. 

	Secondly, I’m looking at the text of the rule and I’m looking at islands that cut through medians, Section 11B-705.1.2.3.  In that requirement it shows shall be 36 inches minimum.  This is the only place it says 36 inches minimum.  If you go up to curb ramps it says it shall be 36 inches in the direction of travel.  That’s an absolute number.  So for curb ramps we have an absolute number.  For islands you don’t have an absolute number. The only time it would be absolute is if you had an 8-foot wide island or cut-through median and that’s because you cobble that together with the next set that’s in the requirement that says separated by 24 inches of walking surface.  So 3+3 is 6+2 is 8.  

	If you had let’s just say a 10-foot wide median or island, which I grant is unusual, there should be nothing to prevent you from doing 4 feet of detectable warning on either side with a 2-foot blank space in the middle.  So the text of the rule already encourages going beyond 3 feet.  I think at a minimum that has to be addressed.  

Kristin	Thank you, Marsha.  Rachelle? 

Rachelle	That’s exactly what I was going to point out was the verbiage of the code about the minimum.  That’s it.  Marsha’s hit it. 

Kristin	And one more comment from Gene and then we’ll move on.  

Gene	Well no motion’s been made, but I absolutely agree about the inconsistency and that I would say that the minimum should be removed from the island requirement, 36 inches minimum as Marsha pointed out and it being the absolute number. 

Kristin	Thank you. 

Susan	Being we have spent a fair amount of time on this example from Vidal, maybe we could take a look at some of the other examples that we have received like there’s a plan that Tim McCormick provided.  There’s some other photographs that we could take a look at.  So would you like to take a look at that plan that we were looking at a little bit ago?  

Kristin	We’re seeing heads nod around the room.  So Vidal, we will get back to the rest of your examples. 

Vidal	Oh no.  That’s fine.  That’s fine.  So tell me which one we’re going to so I can find it on the Box here. 

Susan	We’re going to one and it says TM [ph] and detectable warnings in public housing. 

Vidal	Yes.  Okay.  I see it.  Alright.  Thank you. 

Susan	Yes, that’s the one that we’ll take a look at next.  So let me go ahead and we’ll share that.  We’ll take that and put that right in there. 

Kristin	So, Tim, we are getting a photo up on the screen.  

Susan	Here we go. 

Kristin	Can you walk us through the image?  Describe it and tell us your thoughts. 

Tim	Okay.  So this is the parking garage for a public housing project and this is one end where the accessible parking is yet to be located.  There’s also a storage area down below.  

	The question comes, what is required really for detectable warnings for hazardous vehicular warning areas when I come out of the garage into the parking structure and if I have a need to go somewhere else besides parking?  For instance, in this case if I’m going to a storage space, what is the requirement for a person?  

	This gets to the questions we ask about is it to alert them when they’re entering a vehicular way where they can be harmed, or is it to allow them also to have way finding to another location that keeps them out of a vehicular way that they would otherwise maybe need to go to.   So if it is both way finding and parking, then it seems that the yellow would represent all the places along the walkway that are the border between where someone would walk to go to the storage from the elevator and separate it from any parking facility, whether it’s the parking space or loading area or whatever.  

	So I’m not saying this is right or wrong.  I’m just saying that this is one way that the rules may be applied and it needs clarity.  It could also be the simple fact if I’m getting out of the elevator going to a parking garage, what are the requirements for a person who has vision impairment that maybe accidentally gets out at the wrong level of the building?  I don’t know. 

Susan	So the plan that we’re taking a look at, if you were to come down the elevator and step out of the elevator and immediately go to your right, then you’d go for a certain distance and then you’d turn to your left and take another left and then you’d go for another distance and take a right.  That would take you into a storage room.  

	Tim, what is that?  Maybe about 175 feet of detectable warnings that—

Tim	Yes, it’s quite a bit.  

Susan	So in other words, along this path on the right side you’re up against a wall either the face of where the elevators are or the walls of the parking structure.  On the left-hand side of this path that you’re walking along, it’s bordered along the entire length of that path by detectable warnings.

Ida	By parking, too.  The other side, it’s parking spaces.

Susan	Right.

Tim	Yes, there’s parking on the other side of it.

Kristin	Gene?

Gene	Well, I can see the confusion because one, let’s start off—again, it’s not supposed to be way-finding at all.  It’s just strictly a warning that you’re—and be cautious.  You’re entering a vehicular area.

	It sounds like this is all great, this walkway with the adjoining parking lot or parking spots.  And that’s—the detectable warnings would be the only thing that’s seen or if you add bollards or something, some kind of fencing or something that would prevent you from veering out into that parking area.  Again, the answer would be really is having a raised walkway, the whole area be raised with a curb rather than detectable warnings.  That in itself, by just having that and you have a definite curb, that can be outlining the walkway.

Tim	Gene, with all due respect, the reason they don’t do that is the curb ramps that end up having to be built for it.  You already have one level floor throughout the entire surface and they would opt instead almost universally to find another solution than rather than creating a need for curb ramps by raising the curb.  Because at some point you’re going to have to come back down to the elevator level.

Gene	Okay, it was just trying to come up with something without using all those detectable warnings.

Tim	I understand, Gene.  I think the issue that I’d like us to talk about is, is this helpful to have?  Is this something we should worry about in parking garages?  And what’s a realistic limit for how much of this we need to put in parking garages?

	One of the arguments that people raise is that with the exception of someone accidentally getting off on the wrong floor from the elevator, the majority of people coming and going are with someone because they’re not driving.  So it’s not that they’re—this is a typical situation that they’re going to go to now.  For that storage area, that may well be a community asset.  It’s probably a poor location for one and it’s possible that someone may want to get to it.

	But I think the question here that I’d like us to talk about or think about is: What is really important to have in the way of advising people that they’re in a parking garage that have vision impairments to warn them?  What’s important?

Kristin	I can see that Michael has his hand raised, so we’d like to hear from Michael and Marsha and then we can move on.  Michael?

Mike	Thank you.  Hi.  I would like to tack on to that, too.  I don’t believe that there should be any truncated domes down here.  I don’t believe that this is something that creates the danger that those things were designed for in the first place.  A person that’s blind or visually impaired already has an exceptionally heightened awareness of their environment and the dangers they’re going to be dealing with.  The less truncated domes are used specifically as something not as a way-finding device ever, but only as a safety issue in order to let them know of something that is a heightened sense of awareness they need to because of a specific danger, then all we’re going to do is confuse the signals.

	In my opinion on this particular issue, there shouldn’t be any truncated domes down here.

Kristin	Marsha?

Marsha	Yes, thank you.  Unfortunately, I can’t read the notes on the drawing because of the quality of the rendering on my screen, but the blue area and the green area are labeled what?

Ida	Access aisles.

Marsha	I’m sorry, I can’t hear.

Kristin 	We heard access aisles.

Marsha	No, that’s not an access aisle.

Steve	The green might be, but—

Marsha	I don’t think.  It’s the blue area—

Kristin	We have that folks [ph] getting up in our rooms.  

Marsha		It’s right across from the stairwell.

Ida	Yes, right.  They are access aisles.

Steve	[Indiscernible.]

Marsha	Okay.  All right.  So that’s your accessible parking space.

Ida	Yes.

Marsha	Your van accessible parking space.  So that’s your van accessible parking space here, and this whole thing just frames—basically it frames, one, two, maybe three parking spaces.  A route around against the wall and three different parking spaces.  I’m with Mike.  I wouldn’t put detectable warnings in a parking lot, period, and particularly one in a garage.  I understand that people may have to go find their storage lockers.  This is a housing place.  Nobody’s going to go to that storage locker that doesn’t live there—particularly go alone.  

	So if you live there and you’re blind you’re going to learn your route to your storage locker and you know you have to go into the garage to get to it.  This is pure way-finding, as far as I can see.  It’s not demarcating hazardous vehicular areas.  I don’t believe that a parking space is a hazardous vehicular area.

Kristin	Thank you, Marsha.  Go ahead, Chris, and then we’re going to hear from Gene, and then Jonathon has his hand raised.

Chris	I can’t see the image on this, responding to what I’m hearing, but I have a funny different take.  I can imagine all sorts of reasons.  I could go down the elevator to then wait for someone who’s going to then come and pick me up that might be driving over to pick me up closer to the elevator because they get out ahead of me or for whatever reason.  It’s kind of nice to know when you’re waiting in a safe area as opposed to waiting out in the middle of the drive aisle.  It’s kind of nice to know when you’re crossing that line.

	In a case like this, it’s basically taking the notion of what’s the safe pedestrian area?  Where are you outside of car traffic?  And it’s along that edge.  It happens to define a line that goes back to the storage closet.  That’s not the intent of it.  The intent of it is to separate the non-vehicular area as the safe area from the vehicular area.  You could also just follow the wall.  It sounds like you could draw a line against that height if you wanted to. 

	But at any rate, at any point along the way, if you go across that, you’re then going across that line of the hazardous area to then end up, you know, the hazardous warning strip to end up in the vehicular area.  All along that space, there’s giving you a safe place to be.  I can find all sorts of reasons not to have it, but it seems like it’s actually complying with the code and you might look at it and think, oh, it’s being used as a guide strip, but I don’t think that was its intent.  It’s separating the vehicular area from the non-vehicular area.

Kristin	Thank you.  Gene?

Gene	There’s been some assumptions.  One is there are people with low vision—I won’t say large numbers—but there are some that legally can get a driver’s license and adaptive lenses and can drive vehicles and they’re all over the country, including California.  They have a driver’s license.  They’re doing something legit.

	If you’re living here, using this facility, or visiting and coming here, just like Chris said, you could just come down waiting for somebody, the full spectrum, like all human beings, we all have abilities and skills from super—which from the blind, and sometimes we’ll jokingly refer to it in the super-blind that can just about walk on water that can do everything, to the person who’s so terrified to walk that you have to drag them, and it’s because of experience and abilities.  It’s just a full spectrum of abilities.  

	And I’m not trying to put down anyone, so to think everyone can have hyper sensation and picking up things, that’s not true.  You could have an off day.  You could have the effects of ambient noise that’s not constant.  There could be fans down there that can block out any auditory cues.  You could hear a lot of rain coming down or the splashing of car tire as the tires run over wet pavement.  There’s a lot of variables.

	Now the thing is, again, the detectable warning, I agree, is overkill.  There could be, okay, not raising the sidewalk like Tim said, the cost there, but then having a raised curb that’s 4-inch, 6-inch curb that just outlines it there and there are breaks in it where the accessible aisle is and having detectable warnings at the head, not at the end out in the parking area, that just warns you so that if you are totally blind or you can’t hear the thing, that you might drift out unintentionally, out into traffic or the parking area there, so that the detectable warnings tell you and that should be where the breaks are.

	And that curb could act as, not intentionally, but it could act as an outlining area.  It could be maybe the wheel—a place—no, forget.  Anyway, we need a walkway there.  That could be another way of doing it and still delineate it without using detectable warnings and putting the costs of curb ramps that you just have breaks in it, you put detectable warnings in just where the areas of where the breaks are in that curb.  Thank you.

	The last thing is also signage, gets into the signage.  That is visual signage and tactile signage.  The one thing is you can tell on elevators, the hoist-way [ph] signs.  That’s one thing.  But if you have other signs, the floor, of course that’s going to help, but it still is not going to address the issue of going out in the vehicular area.

Kristin	Thank you.  Next we’re going to hear from Jonathan and I do see some other folks have their hands raised.  We also have Rachelle here in the room and Steve and Rosa.  So, everyone, I literally see everyone is raising their hand.  I would like to ask, and this is tough because everybody’s comments are extremely valuable, but let’s try to keep them to a minute or two just for the interest of how many more examples we’d like to try to get through today.  And then be mindful that as soon as we’ve all had our turn we’ll take a quick break.

	Next we’d like to hear from Jonathan.  

Jonathan	Okay.  Thank you.  I think the parking garage is almost a session in itself.  It strikes me that whether this is in a parking structure or out in surface parking, this condition, the designer cannot help but want to—and feel like they have to—install it because of the language of the code that says that if a walk crosses or adjoins, and that’s an important word, adjoins.  That’s why we have them on long stretches in front of Costcos, etc., where the surfaces adjoin and they’re not separated by curbs or railings.

	My comment on curbs.  There’s a big difference, I believe, between the curb at the edge of a raised sidewalk and when you see people that literally string together wheel stops end to end and say that’s a curb, is kind of like something Gene just mentioned, I think, when he was fishing for a solution.  But I think those are dangerous.  People trip over them, that type of thing, all the time, where they’re texting and whatnot.

	But moving on to a parking garage structure separately, it seems to be that there’s a big philosophical difference between whether you should be even treating such a facility as though it will be navigated by someone who is blind.  I don’t know where I fall on that.  It is persuasive, the idea that in general people are not, with low vision, navigating throughout a garage because there are many such walks, as the code says, if a walk crosses or adjoins.  This is done only in respect to the accessible spaces, but a person who’s blind might have been the passenger of any given space and so then where do you define the walk in that case.

	So I do think the parking structure issue needs to be discussed at depth separately and if it’s going to be limited to the extent that one [audio disruption] with detectable warnings, then it falls more into the realm of what was once done with storage facilities, where for a lack of direction, one felt that you needed to provide an accessible route to every storage space and hence, forthcoming changes in the code narrowed it just to those spaces which are accessible.

Kristin	Thank you so much.  Next we’re going to hear from Rachelle and Steve, and then I see Mike and Marsha and then Rosa.  We’re going to go around the room.  So next Rachelle.

Rachelle	It’s a question.  What I’ve heard from the participants here over and over is that truncated domes are detectable warnings.  I always call them truncated domes.  I’m sorry.

Ida	That’s okay.

Rachelle	They’re not supposed to be way-finding.  So since the pedestrian access point is through the elevator or I see there is a staircase there, would it be advantageous to place detectable warnings where the pedestrian enters into the parking garage, so then they are warned that when you’re entering the garage from these two access points, the detectable warnings are along that length.  

	But now you have been warned because I’ve heard Gene and Rosa both say you can be overly warned.  You don’t know when things start and stop.  So if they’re not supposed to be way-finding, is it something where you could just place them at the touching access points so that way the user is warned that you are in an area where there’s hazardous potential vehicular traffic?  I don’t know if that’s sensible.  I wouldn’t want to throw somebody out into a hazardous area, but at least they’ve been warned now that they’re entering into an area where there’s potentially hazardous vehicular traffic.

Kristin	Thank you.  Is it okay if we don’t wholly answer?

Rachelle	Just food for thought.

Kristin	Just food for thought.  All right.  So next we’re going to hear from Steve.

Steve	Yes, this is Steve.  I would simply suggest much the same as to what you were saying.  Minimize the detectable warning, make a hypothetical horseshoe outside the door, maneuvering clearance at the elevator or at the stair.  And everything else, my gosh, there’s a gazillion ways a pedestrian could walk in a parking garage.  Why do we have to try and define where they’re going to walk?  But I understand the code says to the accessible storage and I can see that, but it seems like simplicity might be more helpful than literal—is a common-sense application we should work for.

Kristin	Thank you.  Next we’ll hear from Mike Gibbens. 

Mike	Thanks.  When you start looking at this here in the parking space, we’ve been through this a lot.  Once you go past the first part, or the beginning of the parking space, then you’re at the back end of the parking space, walking actually into the drive lane, and then should you be putting another lane and truncated domes there?  And then once you’re there, where do you find out once you’re outside this line when you’re going back again, getting back to the house or getting back inside, you’re going across another couple rounds of truncated domes.  

	We have a problem.  Because of the way the standards presently exist, people are putting domes everywhere and they are creating problems for people with other disabilities, significant problems.  Feds have been through this already and they’re still trying to figure it out and they haven’t figured it out.

	I would like to propose that instead of looking at these as trying to find a way to look at these and make them work, why don’t we pretend that they don’t even exist?  And if we’re going to put them somewhere, put them somewhere where they’re actually going to do some good?  Instead of trying trying to figure out where they shouldn’t go—because people are just throwing them everywhere right now.  The code needs to be fixed.  The language is horrible.

Ida	I’ll wait till everyone speaks.  I’ll do it after break.  I have a general question.

Kristin	Thank you.  Next is Rosa, then Marsha.

Rosa	I heard earlier Gene was talking about solutions as that what we have curbs, the sidewalks raised, versus the street and that would give us a clear indication.  However, it doesn’t accommodate the needs of individuals who are wheelchair users.  

	My thought is, when I think about and my understanding is when truncated domes were first installed, it was because there were curb cuts that were put in so that wheelchair users could get across the street and it created a flat surface so a blind individual was not able to tell when they came to the edge of the sidewalk and where the street began.  That was very clear information.  We have the truncated domes that let you know that two things, one, you’re coming up on a street crossing.  Actually there’s a crosswalk that a person can cross on and that was clear information.

	When we have, for example, in parking lots like the Costcos or Targets and they have these long strips, I’m guessing and I haven’t really asked, but I’m also thinking that there’s probably some lines on the street that tell people where it’s okay to cross, pedestrians to cross.  But with that long strip we don’t have that information because it’s just a long strip of truncated domes or have a solution so that we’re accommodating other needs, utilizing something and maybe like in the area where it’s okay to cross the street because we’ve got those lines there’s the truncated domes, but in the area where I want to let you know that the separation between the pedestrian walk area and the street, we have for example, a double raised line of some type of material that’s made out of truncated dome, for example.  

	It gives different information, to say, here’s the difference between where is a crosswalk, pedestrians cross here, you’re going to enter, versus this is a separation.  It’s not necessarily designated, though you can make that choice just like everybody else to be able to cross into the street.

Kristin	Thank you.  Next we’re going to hear from Marsha.

Marsha	Thank you.  Looking at this drawing, except for one spot, this entire way that is paved with detectable warnings, either abuts the short end of a parking space, the head end I’ll call it, if you drive straight into the parking space, or it runs parallel to the length of a parking space, and in one other spot it basically abuts the long side of the parking space with about a 3- or 4-foot width.

	This walkway that they’ve done, or this route that they’ve paved with detectable warnings, only one spot really could lead you into an area where a car is turning or driving and that’s directly opposite the elevator.  Even that little landing, if you will, is sort of the approach to only one parking space.  So I think we’ve got some real problems defining that as a hazardous vehicular way.  It’s a parking space.  And every space except for the one opposite the elevator, it’s a parking space where the car is either parked there or it is parking in the process of parking there.

	I just don’t believe that when you’re dealing with the potential for a single car—and by the way, there’s wheel stops, so the wheel stops are going to stop the cars from driving into the sidewalk or into the walk, if you will.  So I can’t define that as a hazard, this vehicular way.  It’s not a way at all.  It’s a parking spot.  Yes, I agree that if you inadvertently find yourself in a parking lot because you didn’t have anything to detect that you’re walking into a parking lot that may be an issue.

	But I have a very hard time defining this parking space as a hazardous vehicular way and that leads me to what we learned at the federal level.  Everybody’s definition of a hazardous vehicular way is different.  People who are worried about litigation, people who are worried about doing their jobs right if they’re a code official, are going to define everything where a car might go as a hazardous vehicular way.  That was never the intent of the Access Board requirement.  Ever.

	The intent of the Access Board requirement was that you have someone honestly evaluate hazards.  Having said that, I realize now that that was in 1991.  I realize now that that is asking too much of a covered entity and people are going to make these determinations inconsistently and that’s the real problem.  I think if you want to protect people from various types of vehicular circulation that is not a street crossing—I think street crossings are separate, let’s put them aside.  Something that is not a street crossing, we have to find better words.  If you don’t find better words, you’re going to continue to have these problems.

Kristin	Thank you, Marsha.  We’ll hear from Jay before we take our break.

Jay	Yes, I concur completely with what Marsha just said.  How achievable is it to get a definition for vehicular area?

Ida	We can create definitions.

Jay	I think that would help tremendously.  Let’s define the elements.  This is.  This is not.

Ida	We have the ability to create definitions, yes.  That we can agree on—

Jay	Yes, I know.  I understand.  But to address the inconsistent applications—right?—that’s—

Kristin	I do see two more hands raised.  Does it work for the group to hear two more comments before we break?  Okay, so we’re going to hear from Derek and Tim, and then that’s it for a bit.  All right, Derek, you’re up.

Derek	I’ll make this so brief.  The current California building code, chapter two, definition for vehicular way, is a route provided for vehicular traffic such as in a street, driveway, or parking facility.

Kristin	Thank you.  Tim?

Tim	Derek stole my thunder.  I think we start there and we talk about how that correlates or doesn’t correlate with the hazardous vehicular area.  Part of my recommended language was to get rid of that phrase completely, and start from vehicular way and decide what you want to do with it.  I think there’s a lot to be said about not having any requirements in parking facilities, but that’s a bigger discussion and I agree with—I think it was Jonathan—so we should make it a separate meeting almost by itself.

Susan	My only comment before we take a break and we come back and we start looking at other examples, are there any photographs in particular that you think it would be best for us to take a look at with the amount of time that we’ll have left?

Kristin	We will have about 45 minutes or 40 minutes together when we reconvene.

Tim	I have a couple photos in parking garages that talk about some of the challenges.  That might be beneficial.  There’s also one that shows detectable warnings being added in a new location for a parallel—I think it’s parallel—curb ramp and leaving the old ones there and how that raises the issues of if we don’t have prohibited locations, the old mis-installations will stay.

Susan	Yes, we can do that.  I see there’s another one, another parking garage, so yes, Tim, how about we’ll take a look at some of the photographs from Tim.

Kristin	It sounds like we have agreement.  Good.  All right.  Let’s come back at let’s say at 3:20. That’ll give everyone about 13-, 14-minute break.  We’ll see you in a bit. 

[Break]

Kristin	We are all getting ready to begin again.  Alright, everybody, I’m hoping those on the phone can hear.

M	Yes.

Kristin	Okay, good.  Welcome back, everyone.  Tim, we would like you to tell us about the example that we have up on the screen, which is a parking garage inside with the three strips of detectable warnings. 

	Tim, are you with us?  He might not quite be back yet.  

Susan	He’s still in the session.

Kristin	Can we look down and see if he has a description below?

Susan	He does.  Well, what he says is detectable warnings at door into out of garage at a local mall.  What we’re looking at here, there are two door openings and two sets of big double doors, and right at the sets of the double doors, right at the threshold, there’s a strip of detectable warnings at both sets of double doors and these doors lead out into a parking garage.

	Once you pass through the doors with—

Tim	I’m sorry, I’m back, Susan, just to let you know.

Susan	I just started to describe your photograph, Tim, so I’m going to let you take over.

Tim	Okay.  I didn’t realize I had speaker off, so you were talking in the phone in a [audio disruption] voice.  Once I saw the photos, I wasn’t getting something right.  This is a mall parking lot, and there’s a walkway coming from outside the parking structure into the parking structure, and I’m not really sure why they decided to put detectable warnings on different sides of the door. 

	They walk out into a—pretty much, it’s an immediate drive aisle and this is where they thought they went. 	  

Steve	Is there a bollard missing, Tim, on the left-hand door similar to the right-hand doors, maybe?

Tim	They didn’t put bollards over there.

Steve	Okay.

Ida	I think because of the man-hole cover.

Tim	It’s an inconsistent application.  They basically have two sets of doors and they did it differently on each door.

Marsha	It also looks like there’s a detectable warning across, maybe six feet from the left-hand door.  It looks like it may be at the end of an access aisle.

Tim	They did put some at the end of the access aisle.  We have some other photos; they do that.  That seems to be a common problem, too.

Marsha	It almost looks like a street crossing with a detectable warning on each side.

Kristin	Let’s pause and make sure we have a full enough description of the photo for everyone.

Rachelle	If you’re coming out from the mall into the parking garage, there’s two sets of doors.  On the right side—

Gene	I’m sorry, you’re on the sidewalk?

Rachelle	Yes, you’re on a walkway and you’re walking into a parking garage.  Okay?  There are two sets of doors, one on the right, one on the left.  They’re two big double doors.  On the door on the right, there’s a bollard right in the middle of where the center of the door jambs would be if they were closed.

	Then, on the door set on the left, there’s no bollard whatsoever, but there are detectable warnings at each of those thresholds.

Gene	Okay.  When you go out to that door in the threshold at the detectable warnings, is there a walkway or is it just strictly—

Rachelle	You’re right at the top of the threshold.  The detectable warnings are in the drive aisle.

Gene	Okay.  You’d go out into the drive aisle there.

Rachelle	Then, across from that, where the accessible parking would be, so if you’re walking through the drive aisle to where the accessible parking would be, there’s also detectable warnings at the end of the access aisle, but as it stands [audio disruption].

Susan	But, as you came out of that door, if you were entering into the parking structure, and for whatever reason you might veer off to the left or to the right, there are no detectable warnings.  As you pass through that door, and you walk over the one set of detectable warnings, you have to continue on—it looks almost like a little bit of an angle and if you continue on towards the accessible parking space, then you’ll come across another set of detectable warnings.

	But, on either side of that area that you’re walking, where there are no detectable warnings, it’s just flush.

Ida	It’s a drive aisle.

Susan	Right.  It is a drive aisle but it’s just flat so there’s nothing that separates, other than there are some stripes painted on the floor of the parking garage, but there’s nothing that would separate that that would give you a cue that you’re staying on that path to get over to where the accessible parking spot is.

	Really, then, all that does is it just leads you through that door over to that accessible parking spot.

Rosa	Are they aware the detectable domes start on the other—is that the crosswalk area?

Susan	Well, it’s not really a crosswalk.  They mark it like a crosswalk.

Tim	They did mark it like a crosswalk.

Susan	Right, but it’s just the route through the parking structure to the accessible parking space. 

Rosa	Okay.

Gene	Again, it sounds like—okay, you go through the left set of doors, and these detectable warnings, they’re marking the threshold.

Rachelle	That’s right.

Gene	Everything out beyond that—

Rachelle	Is a drive aisle.   

Gene	It’s a drive aisle and the route there.  So, as a detectable warning, it would seem, at least the left side, for the purpose of bollards, you could walk around it and not pick up on it. 

Susan	Oh, yes, easily.

Gene	That would be a problem.  That should have detectable warnings.

Rachelle	It does.  Both sets of doors have detectable warnings, just one has a bollard and the other one doesn’t.

Steve	One set of doors has a detectable warning on the approach side of the door into the parking structure and the other door has detectable warnings after you’ve gone through the door and you’re already in the parking structure, but they placed a bollard at the end of the 3-foot to now make that a safe zone on the side of the door.  Does that make sense?

Tim	That is correct.

Gene	It sounds like detectable warnings need to be at both sets, it should be right there at the threshold just to delineate that and then it’s open space, and then anything— a directional surface is something there but that’s a totally different subject, but it seems like if you’re just outlining one area to another area, it sounds like—

Tim	I think one of the things to bring out here is the code actually doesn’t allow the detectable warnings to be there as part of clear force space for door maneuvering.

Gene	That’s true, that’s true.  [Overlapping voices].

Ida	I’m sorry could you repeat that.

Tim	It doesn’t allow to have a raised surface there.

W	Correct.

Gene	Okay.  It would seem, then, creating like a little level space out was the challenge.  I’m sorry.

Ida	That’s why we’re having these discussions.

Gene	It sounded like it would need a little space outside of the doors, maneuvering space but also a little area, a little rectangle that has detectable warnings, a safe area there, and then you go out and that’s the asphalt prairie.

Tim	Okay, and since I’m very familiar with this, I walk through this a lot of times on my way from lunch.  My office is right next to the mall.  To be clear, once you get past the doors, you’re completely in a drive aisle.  There is no safe place in front of—you’re definitely in a drive aisle once you get on the other side of that wall where the doors are at.

	The only safe spot is the other side of that wall.

Marsha	Tim, are those doors ever closed?

Tim	I’ve never seen them closed.  Honestly, I’ve never seen them closed, and I think they’re actually removed on the one on the left.

Marsha	Yes, it looked like it might be, and it looks like the door in the middle has a hold open on it of some kind.

Tim	Yes, the one on the right has a trash can holding it open.

Kristin	We’ll hear from Chris Downey and then, Gene.

Chris	It sounds like, again, I’m not looking at a photograph, but it sounds like there’s a bollard that’s attempting to create the safe zone or at least keep vehicles from going into at least one of the sets of doors, but it seems like that’s where the hazardous warning strips should be, out of that zone to get it out as was earlier described.

	I don’t know if there’s ever a requirement for bollards, and I was going to say, there shouldn’t be.  We shouldn’t really, necessarily, be dealing with a bollard except for the fact that’s the only thing really creating a safe space to keep the vehicles away from the door, so it’s a really odd thing there, but it just seems like the hazard warning strips should be out and defining that whole area of the safe zone.

Kristin	Thank you.  Gene? 

Gene	I was just wondering and Tim, maybe can answer this, and Marsha was just talking about it.  Those doors, are they closed for security reasons at night or is there—because I’m just wondering, one, the doors could just be removed and then you have the detectable warnings as a threshold alerting them you’re going there, or that the doors could be pushed back a distance inward away from that parking lot and then you’d have the detectable warnings in your little safe area that you have.

Tim	This is an older design.  The first question is, I do believe the doors are closed at night for security, although the mall has gotten some renovation and then, I think, the door is missing, for some reason, on the other side there.  I do think they’re likely closed at night since it’s not a 24-hour facility.

	The second question is from what we normally see, the doors are set back and there is room like there was on the other plan we saw before the break.  There is a distance between where you come into the parking garage to where you actually enter, what might be a vehicular way.

	In this particular design, though, the door is literally on the vehicular way and once you step on the other side, you’re able to get hit by a car, which is why they put the bollards up.  This is a bad design on many levels, but this is sometimes what we see, and this is also the case of alterations—what a person might have to deal with and then decide where they best go.

	Most people, I think, would have put them on the mall side, not the vehicle side in both locations.  Then, I think, in the current situation, in the current language, the code, they would have moved them back out of the dormitory spaces, but it’s also then going to be further and further away from where you’re saying, is the hazard next.  I’m not sure how effective that is in communicating the point.

Kristin	I think Marsha is up and then we’d like to hear from Jonathan after Marsha.  

Vidal	Can I put my hand up for a comment?

Kristin	Sure, yes, of course.

Vidal	Okay, thank you. 

Marsha	I think Tim said everything that I wanted to say.  I don’t think this could be constructed as is today and so I almost feel like if we—we need to resolve the whole issue of hazardous vehicular way and what we’re going to consider a hazardous vehicular way, deal with new construction first and then start looking at alterations and other [audio disruption] conditions.

	There’s no way in the world this could be built as it’s constructed right now, today, I don’t think, and meet anybody’s building code.  There’s a lot more attempt to protect pedestrians in general under current building codes than in parking garages than is showing here.

	There’s a bit of a danger of us looking at a lot of non-compliant or not good examples and then assuming everything is not good, and I just would want to warn that we don’t want to do that.  We also don’t want to spend too much time trying to redesign it because it’s, I think, we can all agree it’s just not good. 

Kristin	Thank you, Marsha.  Ida has a response.

Ida	Not a response, but I think that it’s important to understand something that I’m seeing here.  I’m surprised that, in my sensibility training and reaching out to many individuals, how the access code is not viewed always from the regulations and human benefits.  There’s a lot of people who don’t understand the interface of the detectable warnings with dormitive [ph] clearances.  

	They applied the code in a linear fashion, and they’ll say all the dormitive clearances are there—and where are the detectable warnings?  We need to put them here.  They don’t realize that there’s conflicting elements and so this is something where we discussed about addressing some issues regarding prohibition language, and I don’t know how well that’s going to work.

	We have to flush that out and see but it is tricky sometimes, or an advisory manual to address—watch out for this, don’t do this, don’t do that when you’re designing or applying.  I think that, obviously, as this occurred here, they didn’t realize there were two conflicting provisions.

Kristin	Thank you.

Susan	I just had one quick comment.  Let’s say, for instance, in this photograph that you put a long band of detectable warnings out of the door, maneuvering clearance along the front of these doors.  You go across that, you’re out into the parking structure and then what? 

	How are you going to determine, after you pass through those doors, and now you’re in that parking structure, which is really one big circulation path, how do you say, okay, from this point, now how do we mark it and this is where we say to someone who isn’t going to come, maybe you can get into this by walking into this parking structure or they’re going to walk out of here, walk out of that parking structure, walk over to a sidewalk and take off?  What do you do once [audio disruption] parking structure to continue marking what is a safe route and where is that safe route going to take somebody who has a vision impairment?

Kristin	Thank you.  We have Jonathan to hear from next followed by Vidal and then Gene and then Marsha.  Thank you.

Jonathan	Are you asking me to comment on my submittals or on this drawing?  If it’s on this drawing or photo, I did not have my hand raised.

Kristin	Oh, we thought you did.

Jonathan	No, no.  Now that I have the floor, I can see that those might be fire doors and they’re supposed to be closed but the way this was designed, like Marsha said, doesn’t meet it from a number of different perspectives because the drive lane, I think, practically or does overlap the door landings.

	If you were trying to make this place work, I think Gene’s thought that you need to recess the doors into the building so that you have a door landing alcove, so to speak, and then you could put your detectable warnings at the outside into them where it butts the drive lane.

Kristin	Thank you.  Vidal?

Vidal	Yes.  This is Vidal.  From a non-architect’s point of view, I’m wondering when someone went out there to implement these warnings, did they go exactly by code?  Is there a way that they would interpret it like a building plan as to this is where it goes based on code language?

	I happen to agree with Ida that sometimes they are not aware of who and why these things they’re putting in.  Maybe they’re just eyeballing it, I hope not.  I hope they’re following some code.  Is that how it’s done, as far as the architects in the room?  Is that how these are actually placed?

Susan	From the experiences that I’ve had in travelling around the states and delivering training, and the architects and the design professionals that would participate in those training sessions, what I typically would do is show the animations on the Access Board website prior to the training session beginning, because, then, all of a sudden people would look at that and say, oh, I get it now.  Now I understand how somebody with visual impairments or somebody was in a mobility site and how they transfer onto a water closet.

	Typically, no, they don’t understand, that this really when you look at the access code you have to really understand how it impacts the end user and which end user it impacts.  Because I would see directional and informational signs with raised features and then if you tell people who will understand an identification sign and where it’s located and where somebody knows where to find it.  Typically, they don’t put all the different parts and pieces together in the code.

Ida	And, the code is not written in structure to the why.  It’s only written in structure as a directive of where to place things, so it doesn’t answer the why.

Vidal	Is that language that could be added to code just for clarification as to why?

Susan	Advisory manual.

Ida	Yes.  We have a method to address that in our advisory manual in [indiscernible].

Vidal	Okay.

Susan	But, it really is not appropriate code language or code structure.  

Rachelle 	You’d never get through it.

Ida	Yes, exactly.  You’d be explaining the whole thing.

Kristin	Let’s hear from Gene.

Gene	Well, it sounds like, too, is that sometime we need to address looking at the way find, the directional surface issue, getting some clarity if there’s a walkway that’s indicated to bode out to specific area exit areas in this situation.

	Then, just saying, like in Japan they have the bar tiles and that’s been very effective since 1956 and these are the same ones that are in store indicators that we have for warning areas to the door for transit vehicles.  So, these are the raised bar tiles and we don’t have a video anyone could see but there are like two tongue depressed—well, within a 12-inch by 12- inch square, you would have 4 lines that are approximately 11.5 inches in long, less than a quarter inch high that and those would be laid out.  You’d walk on those, if you choose, or you could slide your cane across them.

	I’m just saying that looking at that—because it’s clearly different than the detectable warnings and so this may be, not this code cycle, but we may want to have another task force to deal with directional surfaces.  I’m hearing, that keeps on coming up in the questions, how do you find [indiscernible], so that’s it.

Rachelle	Are these used for directional purposes?

Gene	Yes.  They’re only used for directional.

Rachelle	Okay.

Gene	Yeah, they are only used for [Audio disruption].

Kristin	We are going to hear from Marsha.

Marsha	The only place that I see that the code requires anything directional is at transit boarding platforms.  Unless I’ve missed it, that’s the only place I see it and I think it’s a very, very big mistake to confuse way finding, directional cues with detectable warnings.

	Detectable warnings, and Gene said it earlier, serve a very specific purpose—to warn of entering a vehicular area and I think that we should stick to one job right now and that’s dealing with the code as it’s written and dealing with the detectable warnings and the purpose they serve.  If we want to get into whether or not it’s appropriate to do way finding, then I think that’s a whole different path course.

Kristin	Thank you, Marsha.  Next, we’ll hear from Steve.

Steve	Hello.  I was just going to sum up in my brain, it’s a very complicated topic.  I agree with what everybody is saying today, and I think I’ll expand on what Marsha just said.  Maybe we need to focus on the simple first and the more complex later.  This thing on the screen created so much deviation of thought, if we just stuck with the basic curve, perhaps, and then got right back parallel walks to vehicular ways, for example, this might be a simpler topic for us to grasp is a suggestion. 

Kristin	Yes, thank you.  Ida?

Ida	I think, first of all, we’re not dealing with directional in this task force.  It’s too big of a task to deal with but however we parse this out, I think there’s a lot of good information that came out today and I think that, perhaps, your suggestion is right, let’s talk about the basic components of what works and then we can discuss the larger areas like parking structures based on what we discussed the other day.

	I think we’ve raised a lot of issues here today.  We’ve really brought forth a lot of good discussion, but I am curious as to parking lots are difficult because sometimes you have to go through a parking lot to get to the public way when you’re in a parking structure.

	If you don’t need to go, if you’re not wandering the parking structure, in other words, you’re there accompanied by someone who’s taking your car and then going away because it is a structure, so is that the case— different instances with parking where, then, we can have that discussion of how do you approach this type of parking area so then it can start to formulate any regulation we discussed.

	I don’t believe in specialty parking areas because that, to me, seems to be the big area where there’s a lot of issues, is the one-size-fits-all discussion, so breaking down the components and then looking at different parking areas and using those components to see how it’s best decided.

	I would like to know, really, from the perspective of—we seem to have a lot of discussions regarding the regulations, specifically, and that’s fine, but I do really want to address if those of us who are here are willing to express what would be specific types of scenarios of different types of parking areas like how you navigate them.

	From a personal perspective, perhaps what you would do, say, that starts to form the others of us who aren’t aware of the manner in which you navigate your environment.  I think that that’s something that I’m interested in, if you’re willing to share that.

Kristin	Let’s spend some time on that before we adjourn today.  If anybody has some thoughts to Ida’s question that she just posed and really, it’s going back to, I think, what works.  Is that correct?  What works when you’re trying to navigate your environment?  What is helpful to you?  What are you thinking when you come upon different things?

Ida	And, maybe as an example, if it’s relevant, and you can tell me whether or not it’s relevant, I’m throwing it out there.  How do you know you’re approaching a parking lot?  What do you hear?  What do you see and then what do you do?  How do you know you’re trying to navigate through a parking lot and trying to find a street?  When you arrive at a bus stop and you’re dropped off, how do you navigate to the front door, if it’s through a parking lot?

	Those, I think, start to help—I’ve used the tools that we have in place to identify a process of direction so that we can understand a better application.  We have the language now and I feel in some ways we’re [audio disruption] the existing language to address the pictures as opposed to saying, what are our clues so that we can address the language.  Does that make sense?

Kristin	Yes.  Gene has his hand raised first and then we’ll go to Rosa and whoever would like to speak after that. 

Gene	Let me ask a question so I can respond.  Would it be like at Arden Fair shopping mall?  Is that what you’re trying to get at?

Ida	Exactly.  Like if you were just dropped off at a bus at Arden Faire and you need to get to the front door if you could share with us how you navigate that environment.

Susan	Or, even the local Safeway store.

Ida	Exactly.  Even the local Safeway and especially, too, as well, there’s a difference, I know, of being on a sidewalk but once the pathway has [indiscernible] through a parking lot, that’s something different.  Right?  That’s what I was trying to understand.

Gene	No, I understand that and that is a real challenge when you get off a bus, for example, on a public right-a-way up the street and you will—I’m talking about someone going first and using a chain.  It would be different for those who talk about a service animal.  It’s finding where—sometimes I’ll ask someone standing there or maybe I’ll ask the bus driver am I near the walkway that goes into the mall.  Find somebody to give directional information, otherwise I get off and I follow the shoreline, sometimes there’s a plantar and there’s a break and then there’s a walkway and it could be a flush transition, or it could be a little walkway and then it goes into a curve ramp with a detectable warning.

	After that, going in there, it’s really confusing when you have train traffic, it’s inconsistent school traffic, how frequent it is and you go down the aisles and you’re trying to—if you’ve gotten a direction, like somebody said, okay, like 2 o’clock you get off there and then go toward 2 o’clock you kind of try to aim in that direction assuming you’re still on alignment.

	There’s a big issue that everyone, to a different degree, veers because you don’t have those visual cues to focus on what you’re walking toward like somebody with some vision.  You’re over there and you may become like the ping pong ball bouncing off cars, finding walkways, maybe a break that might lead onto a sidewalk.  That’s where there really needs to be a circular path to travel that leads you from the main street through the parking lot and that could be a dedicated walkway that’s built with the segments that—it’s like a speed table where cars can go up and over and down.  There would be the crosswalk with detectable warnings on either end of that raised walkway, a crosswalk, a portion of it.

	There’s a lot of variables and a lot of hit and miss and sometimes if you seem to get to the end of the aisle and then you hear traffic, maybe perpendicular to the direction you’re going, that might be a cue.  You might start hearing the sounds of a building, the exhaust of a fan or maybe music you’re trying to home on.  It can be intimidating at times.

Steve	A little sign with a pole and the arrow doesn’t cut it.

Gene	Oh, not at all.  [Overlapping voices].  You can have all the signs you want, that’s not going to help you.  Sometimes people propose maps and it takes training to learn—sometimes if you’ve had vision before, it does help [audio disruption] where you can then understand the tactical maps, but if you haven’t, it takes some training that.  It’s still not going to be foolproof when you have that map and in the parking lot ahead, because there are variables that are constantly changing, it won’t be shown on the map.

Kristin	Thank you.  Ida and then, Rosa.

Ida	I just wanted to say, I know that it’s 3:52 and we want to end—it’s at 4:00 that we end.  Thank you, Gene, for that because that really started to help and I guess my question, when I put that out there, is that even when we forward, whenever we’re looking at that to start help us thinking in that direction, like what are the issues you see, what do you encounter.

	I think it helps for us to be, in any way possible, relate to the experience that you’re having and the cues that you’re using to determine how to navigate the environment, if you’re willing to share that.  I appreciate that.  That’s something that I would like to understand when we’re addressing pictures and giving you a scenario, if you’re willing to share.  

Kristin	That’s helpful.  We will make sure to use that as a lens as we look at additional examples in the future.  I did want to give Rosa a chance and then Chis Downey to share if they had any comments before we wrap up.

Rosa	So, I’m coming from the perspective of not traveling in that parking lot before, because if you have assistance and learned, that’s very different than I have to do it for the first time and a lot of times that is the situation.  I remember that I was working at a place and they were doing construction so I could no longer walk the other path and the only way to get to where I needed was to go through the parking lot.

	I got some general directions from a person who worked there but basically it was walking through, and there were sidewalks with those tactile domes, so for me, it was helpful to know I must be on track because I keep hitting these tactile domes.  I thought that was helpful.  

	I wasn’t certain that it would be something I could use as a cue, also knowing that at the end of the parking lot was traffic at the street, so that was the direction I needed to go in.  And Gene, I’m not using my guide dog right now, I actually turned her in for an evaluation.

	I was using a guide dog so it was helpful to have a dog who could see that path to travel.  If I was using a cane then, sometimes those little paths curve and there are things that are on the sidewalk or on the path that I didn’t even know existed.

	There are times when I’ve had to navigate, like Gene said, parking lots where I relied on—let me kind of put myself near the back of the car, listening to traffic that may be passing to get into their slot, to make sure that I’m out of the way but being safe and heading into the general direction that I needed to go to.

	Once I get towards whatever it is that I’m looking for—even looking for tactile domes to know that, oh, this must be where the sidewalk is or if I’m finding a curve that I can step up in on the other side of the curb knowing that I’m not in the right spot.

Kristin	Thank you.  Chris?

Chris	I guess, I’d say I changed.  I live in areas where I can get to grocery stores and everything I need to without having to walk through parking lots.  It’s a rarity, unless you get training through it, it can be a really intimidating thing to do.

	Quite frankly, I typically say, this urban model that we build all over the place today is at its course and inaccessible to the point of using parity, in terms of those challenges where it just—having to negotiate through parking lots.

	Other ways to do it are potentially a landscape design that could make it more evident and there are certainly technologies now that you can use, whether it’s Aira glass or the [indiscernible].  Then, there’s always the good old-fashioned GPS that good people, still, are talking with people around you, but if everybody is in their car, you have nobody to talk to. 

	I don’t have any good solutions, but it is quite a challenge.

Kristin	Thank you.  We’ll take a final thought from Jonathan.

Jonathan	Okay.  I just had a brainstorm.  I think that it would be so instructional for all of us if someone who was blind was to put a GoPro camera on a helmet and go for a walk and record it and we could be told what the person is perceiving while the others of us are watching what they’re experiencing.  Do you follow that?

Rachelle	Ida is cringing.  [Overlapping voices].

Ida	I don’t know what the tools are.  I want to people to participate as they are comfortable, of course, as they are comfortable participating, so obviously I don’t want to entertain unreasonable requests.

Jonathan	Okay.  Then, the other thing is—

Ida	And, I’m not saying that’s unreasonable.  That’s from the perspective of the person being made to do that.

Jonathan	Okay.  The other thing is I’m going to send everybody a link to the most hilarious YouTube video on conference calls you’ve ever seen.

Kristin	Oh, no.  We look forward to that.  A good laugh is always good.  Gene, I think, had a final thought.

Gene	Yes.  It was just the wayfinding like I was commenting from the sidewalks, trying to get into the mall but the reverse—in certain ways, it’s like you’re in the mall, like trying to get to the street, it’s pretty intimidating but I have to admit, and I think everyone would agree, that a visual impairment is a little easier because you have that moving traffic, that constant humming of the moving traffic, so it gives you a little of that [audio disruption] that you’re homing on that.

	With our quieter cars, that’s becoming less helpful.  I just wanted to say the reverse—it’s intimidating both directions but that is at least you have a bigger homing device, is that traffic on the street that hopefully is the street you’re trying to get to.

Kristin	Good, thank you.  Well, we’ve had a great discussion today.  Thank you, everyone, for actively participating.  I’m going to ask Susan if she could say a couple of words about our next meeting.

Susan	Well, we didn’t get to all of our photographs today as we have an abundance of photographs.  We have three sessions left after today, so Ida, we have some other comments that came from Tim McCormick and Jonathan Adler and I think, maybe some other stuff that came from Chris Hanson.

	Maybe, at this point, we want to take a look at some of those comments that have come in for our next session.  Gene sent in some comments, as well, as some potential code changes.  So maybe, at this point, we can go through some of those photographs and then see if there are any that we might want to take a look at next session.

Ida	We’ll do a pre-screening and send it 

Susan	Right.

Ida	Okay.

Susan	Then, maybe for the next session what we want to start looking at are some of those comments that have come in and take a little bit of a different direction and start looking at that and then, because then after that, I think we’re going to want to get into some of those technical sections, like the color issue.

Rosa	Will those comments be available to us?

Susan	Yes.  

Ida	Actually, we would review them so we could plan an agenda, so they would be available to everybody.  Yes.

Susan	They’re uploaded to the Box right now and they’re, if I’m not mistaken, I think they’re both Word and PDF documents, but they’re already in the Box.

	All of the photographs, anything that anybody has submitted, all of that has been uploaded to the Box and if you have issues with the Box and you would rather that we email you those, just send you an attachment, we can do that as well, but those are all uploaded. 

Kristin	In terms of, I don’t want to call it homework because it’s not required but there is an opportunity if anybody would like to submit additional images as examples, like just here, at least one of our participants hadn’t had a chance to send them in yet, feel free to do that with descriptions. 

	Then, I heard this mentioned, Susan, of possibly sending in additional ideas for the requirements for the code language.

Susan	Yes.  If anybody else has any other, like Marsha was saying, she thought it would be a good idea on the island to limit it to the actual 36 inches as opposed to a maximum.  So yes, if anybody else, if you have any other comments, send those to me and then I’ll upload it all that to the Box.

Kristin	Good.  Our next meeting is a month from now.  We will be again here in Sacramento at the Division of the State Architect and then, also, have the remote option available for everybody.  The next meeting is Wednesday, March 6th, same time, 1:30 to 4:00 and we look forward to seeing everybody then.

Susan	Yes, and then we’ll send a follow-up email at the end, just to reiterate what we’re going to do over the next few months.

Ida	One quick announcement.  I know that we discussed putting our transcripts on our website.  We are having a new website launching live this Friday.  If you have any saved links, they will no longer be active after this Friday.  I think we’ve waited to do any web things because we knew this was coming.  We did make that commitment that we would be putting this information on the web.  It’s not on our web yet because our new website hasn’t launched but it will be coming.

Susan	And, we do have that in the Box, the transcripts are in the Box.

Ida	Yes, it is in the box, but I’m saying if you wanted to have friends understand or see our discussion or whatever.

Kristin	It looks like we have a question from Gene before we go.

Gene	The Box link will still be good, then?

Susan	The link to the Box is different from our website.

Gene	Oh, okay.

Susan	That won’t change.

Kristin	Thank you, everybody.  I look forward to seeing you next month.

Kaylan	Thank you all.

Marsha	Thank you.