Exploring Mobility in Public Environments among People with Cognitive Functional Limitations—Challenges and Implications for Planning

Abstract

Mobility in public environments is an important part of people’s everyday life. However, living with functional limitations often means limited mobility. To plan for public environments that enable mobility for everybody, knowledge about various user groups’ mobility is important. Up until now, knowledge concerning the mobility of people with cognitive functional limitations has been scarce. The aim of this paper is to explore, from experts’ perspectives, mobility in public environments among people with cognitive functional limitations (target group). The findings of focus group interviews with experts showed that the target group had to keep external and internal challenges at a manageable level in order to maintain mobility. The target group’s mobility is interpreted as depending on both the individuals’ cognitive capacity in relation to environmental demands as well as the motility of the members of the target group, i.e. how they form their opinions about their possibilities for mobility. Both those aspects are important for planners to consider in order keep the target group mobile.

Key Words:

• mobility
• cognitive functional limitations
• public environments
• focus group interview

Acknowledgments

This paper was based on data from the project ‘Accessibility in public transport for people with cognitive impairments – Survey, methodological development and innovative IT‐solutions’, funded by the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (20011 – 06707), the Swedish Road Administration (AL90B 2002:7609), the Swedish Rail Administration (S03‐3608/AL50), and the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (2002‐0931). We thank all consortium members at Lund University for their contribution.

This paper was prepared within the Center for Ageing and Supportive Environments (CASE), at Lund University, financed by the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research.

Notes

1. The participating experts were between 30 and 60 years, three of whom were men. Eleven participants represented health and rehabilitation services, seven represented public authorities and nine represented special interest organisations and lay assessors.

2. The central themes were mobility, transport modes used and evaluation of various transport modes related to the difficulties caused by acquired cognitive functional limitations. Four topical questions were formulated: (1) ‘What does a normal day look like for an individual with acquired cognitive functional limitations’? (2) ‘What does this group’s mobility look like’? (3) ‘How does it work for an individual with acquired cognitive functional limitations to walk, use a bicycle or travel by train, bus or car’? and, finally, (4) ‘What is a good way and a bad way of moving around, and why’?

3. The moderating team consisted of a moderator and an assistant who alternated in their respective roles. The task for the moderator was to pose the questions and to support the discussion by encouraging the participants to use their own words and categorisations (Stewart & Shamdasani, 1990). The moderating team also made sure that the focus group interview was not dominated by one or two participants.

4. Coding means giving a name to a phenomenon or event (Starrin, 1996).