The universal design comes to Liepāja

Liepāja is the first city in Latvia where together with a new bicycle path winding through the entire city also new pedestrian lanes with tactile tiles have been built in line with the principles of the universal design. The local Liepāja entrepreneurs have worked out the design and started production of the special tactile tiles for pavement that allow also the vision impaired people to have a safe walk. This idea was suggested by Andis Dzērve, expert of Liepāja Association of the Blind who got the inspiration during his travel in Italy, where it is a daily reality. The needs of the vision impaired are taken into account in the metro stations, on the sidewalks and in the public buildings.

Thanks to Andis Dzērve more and more sidewalks in Liepāja have tactile paving. For this intitiative he was awarded the title Liepāja Citizen of the Year 2011

Andis Dzērve was drawing the design of tactile guidelines for the streets, persuading the builders and officials and approaching the local entrepreneurs with an offer to make those special tiles. Andis was drawing on paper what the visually impaired Māris Ceirulis, President of Liepāja Association of the Blind "saw" through his feelings. The local company SIA Rūķis LM agreed to produce the tiles.

Now the citizens of Liepāja already got used to seeing colored textured tiles in the newly built sidewalks or bike paths.The grey color pedestrian lane runs side by side with the new 7 km long red color bicycle lane stretching from one city border to the other. The pedestrian lane is equipped with a tactile guideline made of tiles with a different texture and lighter colour, thus helping the vision impaired people feel where the middle line of the sidewalk is. There are detectable warnings also at street crossings - tiles with yellow truncated domes alert the visually impaired pedestrians that the pedestrian lane ends and they are approaching the carriageway.

Liepāja has started implementation of the universal design also in the currently renovated Station Square, at street intersections and pedestrian crossings, as well as at public transport stops. There is another novel project elaborated in cooperation with the Development Department of Liepāja City Council -"My Social Responsibility".The project is submitted to the INTERREG Latvia-Lithuania cross-border cooperation program. It proposes to adjust the city beach for the people with disabilities giving them a possibility to enjoy a swim in the Baltic Sea.