Accommodations to disabilities?

As we transited our final train station, I mentioned to Adam that I was curious about the raised white lines that I have seen in various stations throughout the trip.  They are parallel double lines that run kind of like a path, but have no signage associated with them at all.  He speculated that maybe they were designed for the visually impaired.  We both tracked them more carefully in the last station and at the airport and I think he might be right.  They tended to run to the side of the main hallways and had raised hashmarks where they intersected with other paths heading in different directions.  I'll have to keep this in mind in the future to see if there is more verification of this observation.  My first thought was to dismiss it because there are so few wheelchair accommodations in Europe (and small steps up and down everywhere!), so I assumed that there would be few accommodations for other impairments as well.  This is perhaps a less expensive accommodation than putting in ramps everywhere in a stair filled environment.