#TIL: Back to Basics: Using Shapes to Make Mobility Inclusive
By Siddhant Chatterjee
What was the first thing we learnt in preschool? Shapes. These basic identifiers become anchors that dictate how we perceive, distinguish, interact with objects throughout our lives.
How are shapes important in the realm of mobility? Take the humble traffic light: they were first developed with circular stencils of red, yellow and green for two reasons. The primary reason being psychological, as circles tend to communicate stability, decisiveness and movement, and the second, more of a technical adjustment — as only circular lights could contain the large bulbs of that time.
In all this, a crucial consideration was missed; making mobility infrastructures accessible to all. The colour-blind for example, cannot distinguish between red and green — and therefore the same shapes (circles) emitting colours are of little use to them. That is why the inventors of colour-blind friendly traffic lights went back to the basics and used distinct shapes to convey signals that colours couldn’t. And this has worked — countries across the world (Canada, the United States, Germany, Japan and Norway to name a few) have started incorporating such designs into their traffic lights, which is a step ahead in making mobility systems more inclusive.
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