Transportation equity for the visually impaired persons to improve the whole journey chain: Insights from Greater Jakarta, Indonesia

Accessible public transportation is essential for daily activities. Public transportation systems should be well-planned and functional for everyone. All society should be able to smoothly and safely navigate built environment and public transportation to conduct their whole journey chain. Focus of this article is to identify the key barriers and facilitators of visually impaired person (VIP) using public transportation. We investigated their experiences navigating public transit, using semi-structured interviews from 10 VIPs. Participants volunteered from Greater Jakarta, Indonesia. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis in NVivo software to identify participants’ whole journey chain. The key barriers were the poor footpaths; officer’s unavailability and incompetence also lack terminal/stop design. Meanwhile, the main facilitators were society aid, officer’s assistance, and white cane. Most of the participants pointed out the importance of officer’s availability, both at the transit nodes and onboard. Proper guiding blocks installation, elimination of platform gap at the bus stop/station, and improved wayfinding at transit node are also significant for the whole journey chain.