Digital Route Planning for People with Limited Mobility

Motivation

Going into this project, we wanted to focus our design problem on accessibility. As part of our research, representatives from our team attended a meeting of a campus group that focuses on creating a community for disabled students and using their leverage as a student organization to solve inaccessibility issues at RIT. After talking to the students, we learned that many use mobility aids to navigate through campus. We reviewed the idea of a navigation application that includes accessibility with mobility aids, which was a proposed project problem that resonated with the members of the campus group as something that would improve their daily life. Our exchange with these stakeholders showed us that we had identified a real issue for the community.

Based on personal experience and outreach with members in the disability community, we have observed the absence of accessibility features in GPS applications such as Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Waze. Existing research shows that GPS directions often lack sufficient UI to give users with limited mobility crucial accessibility information along the route, including ramp and elevator access and locations of steep hills to avoid [1-3]. Further, these applications sometimes exacerbate issues due to inconsistencies in the map or vague directions.

Upon researching this issue, we found studies supporting the idea that navigation software is in need of improvement in order to be accessible to people with limited mobility. In one paper, it was reported that “the uncertainty imposed upon people with mobility impairments– in respect of the accessibility of routes that are not already known to the person in question– has a substantial impact on their day-to-day lives” [4]. The affected population is not limited to ambulatory and full-time wheelchair users; people with limited mobility who choose not to utilize mobility aids also need pathways where their journey will not be blocked by accessibility barriers such as curbs without entry ramps, stairs, steep inclines, and blocked sidewalks [5].

The combination of personal experience, positive feedback from the campus group, and the findings of existing research demonstrates that developing a digital navigation tool for people with limited mobility is a valuable improvement to peoples' lives.

Stakeholders & Potential Users

The main users for this design solution are members of the disability community who have limited mobility. This includes people who use mobility aids, such as wheelchairs or walkers; as well as those who do not use any mobility aids, but may struggle with steep inclines or stairs.

In addition to these main users, secondary stakeholders include the family, friends, and healthcare team of those with limited mobility, as this group of people is often assisting or traveling with people with limited mobility. These secondary stakeholders would also benefit from improved access to knowledge of accessibility issues along a route.

Solutions Proposal

GPS applications lack sufficient features that cater to the accessibility challenges faced by people with limited mobility. Individuals using wheelchairs, strollers, scooters, and other mobility aids often struggle with navigation; existing tools offer insufficient consideration of steep hills, slope gradients, stairs, inaccessible pathways, hazards, and other obstacles.

We aim to design a solution that provides routes to avoid such obstacles. Our solution will focus on identifying and visualizing accessibility-related barriers and providing users with different routes to choose from. The interface will allow users to be more informed and more easily navigate without dealing with the additional stress of finding accessible paths and points of entry.

The visual tools and routing will be modular, offering different routes and behavior depending on the specific needs of the user. Granular settings will allow us to draw more or less attention to different features, and maintain an appropriate cost-benefit-analysis between accessibility and convenience when displaying optimal routes, as mentioned in Tannert et al. [2019].

Stakeholders have expressed interest in tools to assist with real-time navigation. We will explore the use of audio feedback and haptics to assist users in common tasks such as locating an elevator or an accessible entrance. We will also explore user attention and ways to notify them that their current route is likely to end in a roadblock.

Our team intends on actively involving potential users and stakeholders in the development process to ensure that the solution genuinely addresses and fixes the problem.

References

• Reza Hosseini, Daoqin Tong, Samsung Lim, Qian Chayn Sun, Gunho Sohn, Gyözö Gidófalvi, Abbas Alimohammadi, and Seyedehsan Seyedabrishami. 2023. A Novel Method for Extracting and Analyzing the Geometry Properties of the Shortest Pedestrian Paths Focusing on Open Geospatial Data. IJGI 12, 7 (July 2023), 288. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi12070288
• Tomás E. Martínez-Chao, Agustín Menéndez-Díaz, Silverio García-Cortés, and Pierpaolo D’Agostino. 2024. Urban Pedestrian Routes' Accessibility Assessment Using Geographic Information System Processing and Deep Learning-Based Object Detection. Sensors 24, 11 (June 2024), 3667. https://doi.org/10.3390/s24113667
• Zhu Qing, Carlos Sun, and Joseph Reneker. 2021. Evaluation of Airport Wayfinding Accessibility with the Use of a Wheelchair Simulator. Transportation Research Record 2675, 4 (April 2021), 52–60. https://doi.org/10.1177/0361198120980445
• Benjamin Tannert, Reuben Kirkham, and Johannes Schöning. Analyzing Accessibility Barriers Using Cost-Benefit Analysis to Design Reliable Navigation Services for Wheelchair Users. In Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2019, David Lamas, Fernando Loizides, Lennart Nacke, Helen Petrie, Marco Winckler and Panayiotis Zaphiris (eds.). Springer International Publishing, Cham, 202–223. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29381-9_13
• Evan Young. 2024. Not everyone who uses a wheelchair is paralysed. This is what ambulatory users want you to know: Ambulatory wheelchair users are relatively common but say they often face judgement and accusations they’re faking their disabilities. This is what they want you to know. ABC Premium News. Retrieved September 15, 2024 from https://www.proquest.com/docview/3068893399/citation/94461DFB9B0B4C8APQ/1?sourcetype=Wire%20Feeds