This article takes the travel needs of visually impaired population as the entry point and the barrier-free environment of urban living streets that are essential for travel as the research object. Firstly, 18 visually impaired individuals were selected to conduct semi-structured interviews, and the built environment data of the study area was obtained through open-source data and field research. Secondly, based on the Grounded Theory, the intense degree of travel willingness of the visually impaired people was correlated with their travel needs, i. e., "able to travel" corresponds to safety, "easy to travel" corresponds to convenience, and "willing to travel" corresponds to comfort, and then constructs an evaluation system for the accessibility of living streets in 3 dimensions - safety, convenience and comfort. Finally, taking the living streets in the historical district（Daoli area） in Harbin as the empirical object, the barrier-free environments of the streets were evaluated, and the problems and spatial characteristics were summarized from the 3 dimensions of safety, convenience and comfort, so as to propose optimization strategies such as the diversification of the types of barrier-free facilities for the visually impaired, providing scientific support for the construction of barrier-free environment and the practice of high quality urban street renewal.

visually impaired population  /  livability living streets  /  Grounded Theory  /  barrier-free environment evaluation  /  historical district in Harbin