Policies and Practices of Making the City Accessible for Visually Impaired People

In this study, attention will be paid to the problem of the “accessibility” and attractiveness of the Moscow urban environment for blind and visually impaired people. These aspects of the urban everyday life of blind and visually impaired people seem to us problematic and worthy of study due to the peculiarities of the policy of the device and development of modern megalopolises, as well as the peculiarities of their bodily organization, which determine the practice of the development of the urban environment by the blind and visually impaired. On the one hand, the need for geographical location and coordination of the daily collective practices of the growing population of the city has led to the translation of most of the navigation communication into a visual format (maps, road markings and signs, etc.). At the same time, the development of technology and the neoliberal transformation of the urban economy created the need to create a replicated image of the city that could attract tourists and contribute to the visualization of urban entertainment. With our research, we want to draw attention to the problems of blind and visually impaired people in the field of accessibility and attractiveness of urban space, thus contributing to the improvement of ways to solve them. Structurally, the work will consist of 4 chapters. In the first chapter, we will dwell in detail on the relevance of the problems of accessibility and attractiveness of the city for blind and visually impaired people, considering the change in the political agenda of organizing Moscow's urban everyday life. In the second chapter, we describe the existing approaches to the study of disability and their applicability in the context of the empirical tasks set and the Russian experience of disability policy. Based on the conclusions about the applicability of certain approaches to the study of disability, we present a conceptual framework for the study - reflecting the "performative" approach to the definition of disability, and the research methodology. In the next chapter, we will turn to the analysis of the collected interview materials in accordance with the empirical tasks set (see next paragraph). Finally, in conclusion, we will summarize the research, summarizing the identified problems of accessibility and attractiveness of Moscow for blind and visually impaired people, as well as outlining potential ways to solve them. The object of the research is the experience of using the city and urban infrastructure by blind people. The subject is the construction of the accessibility and attractiveness of the city in the daily practice of blind people. The goal is to build a typology of barriers limiting the access of the blind to the city, as well as methods of their normalization and characteristics that determine the attractiveness of the urban environment for the blind. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to perform the following tasks: Describe the organization of the environment of a modern city, paying special attention to its visual aspects; Highlight the main approaches to the study of disability; To characterize the specifics of the definition and research of disability in Russia; Identify and describe the main ways of navigation and orientation of blind and visually impaired people in the urban space using the example of Moscow; On the basis of empirical research, highlight the features of the organization of the urban environment that complicate the orientation and navigation in it of blind and visually impaired people; On the basis of empirical research, identify the features of the urban environment, which is positioned as attractive to blind and visually impaired people The research methodology involves the analysis of an everyday experience of using the urban environment in the framework of the performative model of disability. The performative model of disability was developed by us as an alternative to the social model of disability, which is criticized for simplifying and depersonalizing disability, as well as insensitivity to the local context of the variability of body states, up to its complete “disappearance” and understanding of these states. By addressing the practices of using the city by blind people using the semi-structured interview method, we will retrospectively turn to the practices of using the urban environment in which their bodies are involved.