Through the help of a Trent University student, the Ennismore Heritage Trail is on the way to becoming more accessible for those with low vision or blindness and accessibility issues.
Maxim Tandon, a fourth year Trent geography student gave a delegation to council during Tuesday afternoon’s council meeting, providing an update on the Ennismore Heritage Trail Accessibility Improvement project.
Tandon undertook this project through the Trent Community Research Center with Coun. Mary Coulas, who sits on the accessibility committee for the Township, as his supervisor.
He told council, “This project is important to me because I believe everyone should be able to access the outdoors in an accessible way.”
The idea behind this project was to create an interactive mapping system of the Ennismore Heritage Trail and Waterfront Park so people with accessibility issues, such as those who are blind or low vision, may be able to travel the trails in a more accessible way through GPS Mapping.
Through this project, Tandon was able to research the current and planned trail infrastructure in the township as well as trail improvement strategies across Ontario, Canada and the beyond.
Through this research Tandon told council that there is a lack of research in the field of Trail Accessibility Improvement.
He also mentioned that through this project, Eric Thornley, a member of the Selwyn Accessibility Committee who is blind, helped Thorton develop this program that would help blind or low vision residents and visitors navigate the trails better.
For the project, Thorton explained that since January, he has been researching and visiting the trail site.
“We did two visits to get some initial grounds on how we should actually undertake the project. We did do mapping each time, but the last time we did the mapping, it was the most in depth. The mapping involved point plotting using a system called Terraflex GPS. It’s a GPS software, and what we did was we took points of interest and we plotted them in our Terraflex GPS, so some of the points of interest included the information plaques along the trail, an Osprey observation platform and a gazebo.”
He also included in the mapping information about what types of surfaces visitors would be walking on such as a stream or a boardwalk as well as key points such as the Secret Garden and the disk golf holes along the trail. He also included other key infrastructure such as benches and commemorative trees that are actually within the Waterfront Park separate from the trails.
After using the Terraflex program, Tandon went on to map out the area with a program called ArcGIS FieldMaps.
He explained, “It’s a software that tracks your location on your iPhone or your Samsung or whatever phone you may have and actually sees where you’re walking and records it in the software.”
Moving forward with the project, Thorton hopes to extract this data and convert it to a publicly accessible link that would be hosted on the Township website as well as create an ArcGIS story map template for future students to be able to add on to.
“We’re hoping that this can be used as a public navigation wayfinding aid for everyone, no matter their ability. We’re hoping that it can be just a simple trail and points of interest map that everyone can use and further, it can also hopefully be downloaded and imported into mobile apps which help those with low vision or blind folks to be able to navigate trails.”
After the presentation Councillors had the opportunity to ask questions and make comments.
Coun. Brian Henry asked how they can support this initiative long-term with potential changes coming to post-secondary education centres from both the provincial and federal levels.
Coulas responded saying that Trent is still very willing to work and expand this project with the Township and that there is no compensation being given or received by any parties involved. She said the real value and reward for this type of project is knowledge, experience and networking.
It was also mentioned by Henry and Deputy Mayor Black the potential to expand this project beyond the Heritage Trail to the rest of the township and beyond.
Black stated that this project could become county wide with the new Economic Development team to try and bring in more visitors and tourism to the area.
The presentation was received for information.
