Indonesian shopping malls: A soundscape appraisal by sighted and visually impaired people

Similar to normal-sighted people, visually impaired people also like to spend leisure time in shopping malls. Regrettably, public facilities in developing countries hardly accommodate the visually impaired, who mainly use their sense of hearing. A soundwalk method was employed to collect the sonic perception of sighted and visually impaired people in shopping malls, and varimax rotated principle analysis was used to extract the data. The results reveal that soundscape dimensions of pleasantness and space are the two most prominent factors for both groups of participants. In general, the visually impaired perceived the surveyed shopping malls more favourably than the sighted, which is unexpected. They also perceive soundscape dimensions of danger and direction using the hearing sense alone, which can help improve shopping malls. In contrast, the sonic perception of the sighted is somehow mixed with visual perception.