PAMELA
As a certain contestant from this year's Big Brother might say, "Who IS she?". PAMELA isn't a person, though: it's an acronym. It stands for the Pedestrian Accessibility and Movement LAboratory at the University College London.
describe PAMELA as follows:
"As well as studying how accessible and user friendly a pedestrian environment is for people with different capabilities, the laboratory can be used to pinpoint exactly how and why an environment may become difficult or confusing, for example, a railway station subject to noises from different sources, strange lighting effects caused by shadows and arches, moving people and machines, changing floor surfaces and levels, etc."
The scientifically-minded among you can find out more how the laboratory works at this link:
PAMELA is just part of the work being done by University College's larger , whose stated approach is
"We believe that the world should be designed to be accessible. This includes buildings and infrastructure, vehicles, planning and operating systems, network design, information, training and the way in which people interact with each other.
Our research interests include issues such as infrastructure design, pedestrian manoeuvrability, specification and design of accessible vehicles, rural public transport, urban public transport micronetworks, community development, information systems for people with learning difficulties, transport problems for people with mental health problems, co-ordination of transport resources, manoeuvrability of wheelchairs in restricted spaces, development of video mapping devices, ethics, social inclusion and access to justice in planning processes."
So, a big shout out to the Accessibility Research Group from the Ouch massive there, then, surely? Do follow the links through. There is far more information of interest on the UCL site than Crippled Monkey will permit Lady Bracknell to quote here at length.
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