Soundwalk of visually impaired people on Surabaya’s sidewalks

Abstract

A series of surveys to obtain data about the sonic perception of sidewalks in Surabaya Indonesia was conducted. The surveys involved visually impaired people considering that the soundscape of these people is specific since they use sound to identify the surrounding. The surveys were conducted in-situ using a soundwalk method consisted of nine segments, i.e., Siola (3 segments), Bambu Runcing (2 segments), and Raya Darmo (4 segments). The data were collected using an online questionnaire consists of semantic scale close-ended questions, where a visually impaired participant was accompanied by a sighted person to fill in the form. With ten visually impaired participants for each segment, 90 data were collected and analysed using varimax rotated principal component analysis. It shows there are four soundscape dimensions, i.e., dimension associated to relaxation (25%), dynamic (11%), communication (10%), and contour (9%). These are consistent with the soundscape dimensions from earlier studies, except the dimension of contour which is considered as the unique dimension perceived by the visually impaired people.