Braille for the Feet
by Bronwyn Wilson
“It’s literally Braille for your feet,” said Jon
Julnes, as he demonstrated the warning track for the visually impaired
that his company installed at the Woodinville Fire & Life Safety
District headquarters.
Warning System Signals Potential
Risk to the Visually Impaired
“Alto. Dur.” You don’t have to speak the language
of the country to know the meaning. Whether the stop sign reads “Alto” in
Mexico or “Dur” in Turkey, people around the world recognize
the red octagonal shape and know to stop or face potential risk.
But what signals potential
risk or danger to pedestrians with limited or impaired vision?
Jon Julnes, president of TILCO Vanguard Inc. in Maltby, has the
answer. His company manufactures a detectable warning system that
notifies sight-impaired pedestrians when they’re
about to intersect with a road, parking lot or railroad crossing.
The product looks like a plastic floor mat with raised yellow domes
the size of two quarters stacked together and set 2.35 inches apart. “It’s
literally Braille for your feet,” said Julnes. “Blind
pedestrians feel a regular pattern of bumps underfoot. They’ve
been trained to know this means ‘Stop! Beware! You’re
about to enter a dangerous vehicular way or grade change.’”
Julnes began his business
at age 17 in 1976. While other teens applied for their first job
at fast food restaurants, Julnes entertained bigger ideas. He wanted
to have his own business while attending the local junior college. “My dad suggested I paint (residential)
addresses on curbs, but then I saw a parking lot that needed painting.
I decided to talk with the owner about painting his parking lot and
he said, ‘I’ll take a bid from you.’ That was the
beginning of my company. I started with a four-inch paint roller
and a gallon of traffic paint.” Julnes named his company TILCO
(for The Indelible Line Company) and began striping parking lots
with a Donald Trump-like zeal.
When the American Disabilities
Act (ADA) passed in 1990, companies wanted to get up to speed with
the bill’s federally mandated
requirement for a tactile warning surface that would alert visually
impaired pedestrians. TILCO got on board and began installing the “standard” detectable
warning surfaces.
“At first, products with tiles came out,” said Julnes. “But
you could not get them to stay on the ground. And every time I installed
it I couldn’t figure out how to make it work. They were slippery.
I’d often shake my head and think ‘there’s got
to be another way.’ Then one day I was driving out of Woodinville
and everything struck me like a ton of bricks. I’d been dancing
around various ideas. And it suddenly hit me: I know the product!
And here’s how we’ll do it. Rather than have a product
with glued on tiles, my idea was to make ours out of epoxy with truncated
domes as detectable warnings.”
In marketing his new
product, Julnes ran into some roadblocks. “‘Big
Box’ stores were familiar with the old product with plastic
tiles,” he explained. “It’s like they were familiar
with an old Model T with a crank and weren’t willing to look
at a newer car. They knew the old product had tiles that popped off
and they thought they were dangerous. Their concern was to not install
our product due to the maintenance costs they believed were involved.”
Julnes noted the ADA
requires private property in front of ‘Big
Box’ stores to install a curb, railing or a detectable warning
system on sidewalk ramps. “It’s a federal mandate and
they must do this,” he said, adding, “And any time a
new sidewalk ramp is put in by the city or for the city, they must
have a detectable warning system.”
He cited the headquarters
station for Woodinville Fire & Life
Safety District and the PUD administration building as two examples
of locations with his “Braille for feet” warning system
in place. “We’ve been installing the system since 1994
and began marketing it out of state in 1997,” he said. “Along
with easy maintenance, ours is non-skid which is great for people
with cerebral palsy or an uneven gait. Also, a lot of cities have
chosen systems with colors other than yellow. But yellow is the easiest
for those with limited sight to see under any lighting conditions.
Some cities have chosen to use black, but Seeing Eye dogs see black
as a hole. Black is also a heat battery which is very hot to a dog’s
paw. If a dog is jittery, it upsets the blind person. I really like
to avoid black if at all possible.” Other companies manufacture
plastic warning tracks made of injection-molded materials, but the
competition hasn’t stopped Vanguard from growing 250% a year.
Julnes sees the future
as a wide-open market. “We’re
now moving to a point in history where we have the largest group
of people retiring and older people with disabilities will be trying
to be a part of their world.”
Thank you to the Northwest
News of Woodinville, Washington for providing us this informative
story. They can be contacted at 13342 NE 175th Street, Woodinville
WA 98072, phone: 425.483.0606, www.nwnews.com/editions/2005/
