Public space users with impairments are not only those with disabilities, but also the elderly, the long-term ill, the injured, pregnant women, parents with small children, etc., and each of them has a certain level of special needs when using public spaces.
Public space users with disabilities live with diverse disabilities, be they physical, sensory, mental or cognitive, and the diversity within each of the groups is significant as well.
The needs of disabled citizens reflect the diversity recognized within the groups of disability.
In addition, there is a significant level of individuality expressed through individuals' characteristics, attitudes and motivations, as well as constraints towards themselves, their (dis)abilities, their lives and their community, the environment in which they live, etc. CONCLUSIONS (process-wise; typology of materials gained):
A detailed folder of digitally and manually produced multimodal material, collected for and by participants with identified demographic and personal data. Researcher's diary with observations of the users.
SPATIAL CONCLUSIONS (content-wise): Public spaces still tend to be designed to fit the needs of a fully abled adult male, thus creating barriers for a great array of citizens with different impairments. Urban planning design still focuses mainly on visual aspects of the environment, thus primarily creating visually attractive but non-inclusive public spaces. As a result, it discriminates to a large extent against visually impaired people, who rely on senses other than vision. Nevertheless, in recent years, progress in increasing the accessibility of public spaces in the two cities has significantly increased for the physically impaired. For the visually impaired, accessibility of public spaces has improved, but many barriers can still be detected.