Iceland - Yellow Reykjavik – Nordic youth for better visual accessibility

The youth section of the Icelandic Association of the Visually Impaired arranged a Nordic accessibility project in the end of June. A small group of partially sighted youths from Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway visited Iceland to explore the visual accessibility of Reykjavik for a few days. Dario Sorgato, the founder of Noisyvision (www.noisyvision.org) was invited to join the group as an instructor since he has for several years been yellowing the world – using yellow paper thumbs up or down to show his opinion on accessibility.

The aim of the project was to raise awareness of the importance of visual accessibility, explore public areas in Reykjavik to find out what is good and what could be better done and finally to try to make a change

The participants worked in groups and explored different places in down town: the new concert hall Harpa, city hall with surroundings and the area around the office of our association. Many yellow thumbs showed down for the lack of marked steps, glass walls and dangerous low grey poles. But we also found places to put thumbs up such as for signs with big letters in good contrast colours. The action day was used to show how easy it is to improve our visual surroundings by marking stairs and other invisible edges with yellow tape, putting guiding lines to show the way to lifts and doors and colouring grey poles with pieces of chalk. The participants also shared information about accessibility to passers-by and published pictures and videos on social media to reach a larger public.

Two photographs illustrating the awareness day.

Participans marking stairs with yellow tape

Stairs with yellow tape

Marjakaisa Matthíasson