Blind, Disabled Find Obstacles to Enjoyment of Braille Trail : Recreation: Not-yet- completed nature path has been plagued with problems, including text falling off signs.

If all had gone right, blind and wheelchair-bound nature lovers should have been enjoying a slice of wilderness along the Braille Trail in Thousand Oaks by last Christmas.

But some things went very wrong, and the specially designed, $80,000 multiuse trail for the disabled--although open--is still far from finished.

* The restroom kiosk--installed just after Labor Day following months of delay caused by winter rains and persistent design flaws--still lacks a doorknob or latch.

* The sturdy wheelchair-accessible water fountain is clogged with grit.

* And Braille text explaining the smells, sounds and tactile sensations along the trail is falling straight off 16 brand-new signs. The ground beneath them was littered Monday with flaking plastic letters and jumbled Braille dots.

Miraculously, the oak-shaded trail itself was largely unharmed by the massive Green Meadow arson fire that was sparked two weeks ago today, not 20 yards from the trailhead near the end of Green Meadow Avenue.

But the lack of progress annoys Mike Taylor, a wheelchair user and advocate for the disabled who helped design the trail.

“It’s kind of a shame,” Taylor said. “I’m disappointed because a lot of the (disabled) groups want to get out on the trail.”

Park officials say they are working on the defects and waiting for the general contractor--who had been kept waiting by the restroom manufacturer--to squeeze in the time to put on dozens of finishing touches.

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Work began Oct. 1, 1992, on the Braille Trail, a joint project by the Conejo Recreation and Park District, the city of Thousand Oaks and the Conejo Open Space Conservation Agency.

“The goal for this was a 60-day contract, restroom included,” said Shauna Welty, the district’s park planner. “The hang-up was the restroom. We didn’t get it till March.” And winter and spring rains further delayed installation, she said.

The restroom--intended as a full-fledged shelter with a pioneering self-composting design--looked no better than a large fiberglass shell for a portable chemical toilet. It seemed flimsy and had no handrails for wheelchair users.

“It wasn’t anything close to what was ordered. It was a totally different building,” Welty said. “It was basically a $2,000 building, not a $12,000 to $15,000 building.”

The district refused to accept the shelter, insisting on a larger, more attractive design.

By the time the manufacturer, Shasta Systems, finally retrieved the shell and built and delivered a replacement matching the district’s specifications, it was summer.

The new restroom, a wood-frame fiberglass unit with the proper hardware for disabled hikers, was installed Sept. 24.

The district is happy with the replacement, Welty said. “Everything works. It is much more than we expected,” she said. “We did get our money’s worth out of it.”

In the following weeks, workers bolted the Braille signs onto the wood rail along the quarter-mile trail, just above the vinyl-coated steel hand cable that was to guide blind hikers.

By Monday, the signs were disintegrating, the silver-painted letters flaking off to expose orange plastic underneath.

Welty said the signs might be failing because of a chemical reaction in the plastic and paint, but not as a result of the fire, which surged through the adjacent canyon without damaging more than an acre or two of underbrush along the trail.

“We have no reasoning for it,” she said. The signs were made at the Braille Institute with an untried design process and will be replaced immediately, said Sally Jameson, a spokeswoman at the institute.

Ordinarily, Braille signs are stamped onto zinc plates, Jameson said.

But the Braille Trail’s designers wanted signs printed in both Braille and large English letters. That would allow them to be read by fully blind hikers, by vision-impaired hikers who can read large type with the aid of strong magnifying glasses and by hikers with average vision, Jameson said.

“Because this was the first time that a sign of this nature incorporated both large print and Braille, a plastic material was used,” she said. The Braille Institute’s sign makers are uncertain why the letters are falling off, but they will try to solve the problem when making the replacements, Jameson said.