Follow the yellow brick road (if you can)

Pathway in Xi'an (via Teng Yun)

Walk into a parking lot (via HSH)

Recently-renovated sidewalks in China often have a line of textured yellow bricks running down the center. These yellow pathways, combined with audible signals at intersections and Braille labels on buttons, are intended to help blind pedestrians navigate the city on their own.

Xinhua reports that the Beijing alone "has paved 1,541-kilometer-long paths for the visually impaired in 880 urban roads."

But that's no guarantee that they will actually be accessible. When they're not blocked by kiosks, criss-crossed by guy-wires, or dug up for a construction project, strict right-angle turns often send them on torturous paths around minor obstacles. Some seem more decorative than functional, like the Xi'an sidewalk shown above.

The arrival of the Paralympics has the potential to improve the situation. At the end of August, the police in Haidian District issued their first-ever citation for obstructing a pathway for the blind. A shipping company was fined 3,000 yuan after it dumped a pile of packages across the entire sidewalk.

Obstructing the yellow pathway has always been against the rules, but the Haidian police launched a special campaign on 26 August to make sure the district's sidewalks are accessible to the blind. The Beijing Youth Daily reported that this includes 24-hour patrols to make sure the pathways around Paralympic venues and major tourist sites are clear and to respond to emergency situations.

On the other hand, these efforts might just be temporary, and things may return to normal after the Paralympics conclude and disabled athletes return to their home countries. The following cartoon, which was included in today's iZaobao news roundup, illustrates the cynical view: a poster promoting the Paralympics is set up smack in the middle of a yellow pathway:

This article is from Danwei.org

Read the complete post at http://www.danwei.org/paralympics/clearing_off_paths_for_the_bli.php