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AccessibleMaps: Addressing Gaps in Maps for People with Visual and Mobility Impairments

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Computers Helping People with Special Needs (ICCHP 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12377))

Abstract

Persons with visual and mobility impairments often have problems when planning and implementing a trip to unknown buildings due to the inaccessibility of the built environment, the unavailability of reliable information, and missing mobility-supporting applications for indoor environments. One reason is the lack of barrier-free indoor maps enriched with accessibility information to support the diverse needs of people with disabilities. This paper provides a comprehensive review of user requirements, mobility-related applications and digital maps. We identify different gaps in supporting indoor mobility, i.e. lack of (i) dedicated requirement analyses for mobility in unknown buildings, (ii) procedures to improve the coverage of digital indoor maps, (iii) standards for barrier-free map representations and (iv) location-based indoor services that meet the needs of people with disabilities. Besides, we introduce the AccessibleMaps project, which addresses some of these gaps by automatically generating indoor maps enriched with accessibility features.

C. Loitsch and K. Müller—Contributed equally to this research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    SOZIALHELDEN e.V. - Wheelmap, https://wheelmap.org/, Retrieved April 3 2020.

  2. 2.

    Access Together. http://www.accesstogether.org/, Retrieved April 3 2020.

  3. 3.

    Seeing Eye GPS App. http://www.senderogroup.com/products/seeingeyegps/index.html Retrieved March 30, 2020.

  4. 4.

    Lazzus. http://lazzus.com/, Retrieved March 30, 2020.

  5. 5.

    Ariadne GPS. https://www.ariadnegps.eu/, Retrieved April 4, 2020.

  6. 6.

    ViaOpta Nav. https://apps.apple.com/de/app/viaopta-nav/id908435532, Retrieved April 4.

  7. 7.

    Routago Assist. https://routago.de/en/assist_en/, Retrieved April 4, 2020).

  8. 8.

    BlindSquare. http://www.blindsquare.com/, Retrieved March 30, 2020.

  9. 9.

    LowViz Guide Indoor Navigation. https://indoo.rs/solution/visually-impaired/, Retrieved April 4, 2020.

  10. 10.

    The international regulation DIN 23601 or national such as “Technical rules for workplaces” (ASR; Germany).

  11. 11.

    https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:door, Retrieved April 10, 2020.

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Acknowledgements

The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (BMAS) under the grant number 01KM151112.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Applied Computer Science, Human-Computer-Interaction, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany

    Claudia Loitsch, Christin Engel & Gerhard Weber

  2. Study Centre for the Visually Impaired, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Karin Müller & Rainer Stiefelhagen

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  1. Claudia Loitsch
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  4. Gerhard Weber
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  5. Rainer Stiefelhagen
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Correspondence to Claudia Loitsch .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute Integriert Studieren, JKU Linz, Linz, Austria

    Klaus Miesenberger

  2. Jack Baskin School of Engineering, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    Roberto Manduchi

  3. Dipartimento di Meccanica, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Mario Covarrubias Rodriguez

  4. Support Centre for Students with Special Needs, Masaryk University Brno, Brno, Czech Republic

    Petr Peňáz

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Loitsch, C., Müller, K., Engel, C., Weber, G., Stiefelhagen, R. (2020). AccessibleMaps: Addressing Gaps in Maps for People with Visual and Mobility Impairments. In: Miesenberger, K., Manduchi, R., Covarrubias Rodriguez, M., Peňáz, P. (eds) Computers Helping People with Special Needs. ICCHP 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12377. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58805-2_34

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58805-2_34

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