Abstract
Soundscape assessments by citizens are starting to emerge as a common practice, normally carried out in context by means of soundwalks along selected paths with volunteers. However, when such assessments are carried out, either in situ or in laboratory experiments, visually impaired citizens are not usually involved. To address this question, three soundwalks were carried out in 2020 in the city of Granada, in southern Spain, with the participation of visually impaired people. In this paper, we present the lessons learnt from this research with respect to the methodology issues that have to do with soundwalking and the surveying procedures when people with limited vison are participating, the assessment results, and a comparison with a soundscape evaluation carried out in 2019 without the collaboration of visually impaired people. The results of this preliminary campaign highlight that: (1) Adapting soundscape assessment protocols from standards for visually impaired people is a methodological challenge that requires research attention; (2) Some of the different patterns in the assessment of the soundscape pleasantness between visually impaired and nonvisually impaired participants emerged; (3) The perception of quietness may differ for visually impaired people when orientation and identification are factors that play a role in the acoustic environment evaluation.
Highlights
In the context of the noise laws and regulations of Europe and the national MemberStates, environmental urban sounds exceeding legal limits are always interpreted as pollutants; they are just noise, affecting human health, and a source of annoyance for citizens.There is little place for urban soundscapes in national regulations, nor for soundscape protection, nor even for official recommendations for urban landscape design that include the soundscape vision
In successive soundwalks after the first, it was learned that new questions should be added to the questionnaire in order to include survey information on some urban soundscape nuances that are relevant to people with limited vision, or to add unique insights not foreseen by the nonlimited
An urban soundscape assessment of the Granada city center was conducted with the collaboration of visually impaired citizens, an evaluation that complements previous studies in other places of the city that did not include people with limited vision
Summary
In the context of the noise laws and regulations of Europe and the national MemberStates, environmental urban sounds exceeding legal limits are always interpreted as pollutants; they are just noise, affecting human health, and a source of annoyance for citizens.There is little place for urban soundscapes in national regulations, nor for soundscape protection, nor even for official recommendations for urban landscape design that include the soundscape vision. In the context of the noise laws and regulations of Europe and the national Member. Environmental urban sounds exceeding legal limits are always interpreted as pollutants; they are just noise, affecting human health, and a source of annoyance for citizens. The technical approach has proven to be insufficient to describe all the characteristics and dimensions of the urban acoustic environment [2], the importance of the perceptions of the citizens in context when determining annoyance affection and quality-of-life issues, and the extraordinary value and importance it can gain in achieving the sustainable development goals of the 2030 Agenda and the Green Deal in Europe, as soundscape research over the last ten years has clearly shown [3].
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