Appraising the sonic environment of urban parks using the soundscape dimension of visually impaired people

The study aimed to investigate the specific soundscape dimensionof visually impaired people and to learn about the possiblyunique soundscape dimension elicited by the hearing sensealone. The soundscape dimension of the visually impaired will beused as a reference for improving urban parks to accommodateusers inclusively. A semantic-scale questionnaire survey of sightedand visually impaired people in both in-situ and off-site modeswas performed. Data were extracted using principal componentanalysis with polychoric correlations, which produced threesoundscape dimensions elicited from the sighted and six from thevisually impaired. In sum, evaluation of the park�s sonicenvironment identified the eventfulness soundscape dimensionand the pleasantness soundscape dimension as being the mostprominent for visually impaired and sighted people, respectively.