Collective Intelligence and the Mapping of Accessible Ways in the City: a Systematic Literature Review

This paper has the objective of assessing how ICTs are being used to provide accessibility in urban mobility, with special interest to collective intelligence approaches. A systematic literature review (SLR) was performed, using several different criteria to filter down the 500+ academic papers that were originally obtained from a search for “accessible maps” to the 43 papers that finally remained in the corpus of the SLR. Among the findings, it was noticed that (i) few studies explored the motivations of users that actively contribute, providing information to feed maps, and they restricted themselves to exploring three techniques: gaming, monetary reward and ranking; (ii) social networks are rarely used as a source of data for building and updating maps; and (iii) the literature does not discuss any initiative that aims to support the needs of physically and visually impaired citizens at the same time

On supporting university communities in indoor wayfinding: An inclusive design approach

Mobility can be defined as the ability of people to move, live and interact with the space. In this context, indoor mobility, in terms of indoor localization and wayfinding, is a relevant topic due to the challenges it presents, in comparison with outdoor mobility, where GPS is hardly exploited. Knowing how to move in an indoor environment can be crucial for people with disabilities, and in particular for blind users, but it can provide several advantages also to any person who is moving in an unfamiliar place. Following this line of thought, we employed an inclusive by design approach to implement and deploy a system that comprises an Internet of Things infrastructure and an accessible mobile application to provide wayfinding functions, targeting the University community. As a real word case study, we considered the University of Bologna, designing a system able to be deployed in buildings with different configurations and settings, considering also historical buildings. The final system has been evaluated in three different scenarios, considering three different target audiences (18 users in total): i. students with disabilities (i.e., visual and mobility impairments); ii. campus students; and iii. visitors and tourists. Results reveal that all the participants enjoyed the provided functions and the indoor localization strategy was fine enough to provide a good wayfinding experience

A Service-Oriented Approach to Crowdsensing for Accessible Smart Mobility Scenarios

This work presents an architecture to help designing and deploying smart mobility applications. The proposed solution builds on the experience already matured by the authors in different fields: crowdsourcing and sensing done by users to gather data related to urban barriers and facilities, computation of personalized paths for users with special needs, and integration of open data provided by bus companies to identify the actual accessibility features and estimate the real arrival time of vehicles at stops. In terms of functionality, the first “monolithic” prototype fulfilled the goal of composing the aforementioned pieces of information to support citizens with reduced mobility (users with disabilities and/or elderly people) in their urban movements. In this paper, we describe a service-oriented architecture that exploits the microservices orchestration paradigm to enable the creation of new services and to make the management of the various data sources easier and more effective. The proposed platform exposes standardized interfaces to access data, implements common services to manage metadata associated with them, such as trustworthiness and provenance, and provides an orchestration language to create complex services, naturally mapping their internal workflow to code. The manuscript demonstrates the effectiveness of the approach by means of some case studies

A context-aware system for personalized and accessible pedestrian paths

This work presents mPASS (mobile Pervasive Accessibility Social Sensing), a social and ubiquitous context aware system to provide users with personalized and accessible pedestrian paths and maps. In order to collect a complete data set, our system gathers information from different sources: sensing, crowdsourcing and data produced by local authors and disability organizations. Gathered information are tailored to user's needs and preferences on the basis of his/her context, defined by his/her location, his/her profile and quality of data about the personalized path. To support the effectiveness of our approach, we have developed a prototype, which is described in this paper, together with some results of the context-based adaptation

La perception des usagers de fauteuil roulant manuel envers les technologies géospatiales d'assistance à la mobilité

Les sites internet et applications mobiles documentant l’accessibilité destinés aux usagers de fauteuil roulant se sont multipliés au cours des dernières années. L’avènement des interfaces multimodales, par l’entremise des systèmes géospatiaux, offre aussi des perspectives prometteuses pour aider les usagers de fauteuil roulant à la planification et navigation de leurs déplacements. Dès lors, des technologies géospatiales d’assistance sont en émergence. On ne connaît cependant pas l’ensemble des critères d’utilisabilité à considérer pour les évaluer malgré l’existence de plusieurs questionnaires standardisés. Cette étude propose de documenter les besoins et exigences des usagers de fauteuil roulant manuel concernant les technologies géospatiales d’assistance puis d’appréhender leur utilisabilité à l’aide du modèle “Matching Person and Technology”. Un examen de la portée a été réalise afin de compiler une liste de critères spécifiques liés aux interfaces utilisateur et aux technologies géospatiales d’assistance à partir de questionnaires standardisés. Une étude transversale à visée exploratoire a été réalisée auprès de 17 usagers de fauteuil roulant manuel afin de rendre explicites leurs besoins et attentes. Ces critères s’ajouteraient à la catégorie des facteurs technologiques du modèle “Matching Person and Technology” pour l’utilisabilité des technologies géospatiales d’assistance: Bluetooth, content, content-clarity, content-color, content-consistency, content-credibility, content-legibility, content-relevance, content-trustworthy, content-understandable, delivery format, ease of navigation, everyday words, functions-expected, functions-integration, graphics, hands-free, input, network externality, structure et time spent waiting. Nos résultats interprétés à l’aide du modèle “Matching Person and Technology” suggèrent que l’utilisation actuelle et la familiarité reliées à une technologie donnée ainsi que les attentes envers le contenu informatif et la transportabilité sont des critères forts importants pour l’adoption des technologies géospatiales d’assistance par les usagers de fauteuil roulant rencontrés. Nos résultats aideront les développeurs d’assistances technologiques et cliniciens à faire des choix éclairés dans le futur.Websites and mobile applications providing accessibility information for wheelchair users have increased in recent years. The advent of multimodal interfaces, through geospatial systems (route planners and navigation systems), also offers promising opportunities to help wheelchair users plan and then execute movements in the city. Geospatial assistive technologies are now emerging for them. However, the set of usability criteria to consider for evaluating this type of assistive technology is unknown despite the existence of several standardized questionnaires. This study proposes to document the needs and requirements of manual wheelchair users regarding geospatial assistive technologies and then to understand their usability through the "Matching Person and Technology" model. A scoping review was conducted to compile a list of specific criteria related to user interfaces and geospatial assistive technologies from standardized questionnaires. An exploratory crosssectional study has been carried out with 17 manual wheelchair users to make explicit their needs and expectations. As results, these criteria could be added to the technological factors already known via the "Matching Person and Technology" model for the usability of geospatial assistive technologies: Bluetooth, content, content-clarity, content-color, content-consistency, contentcredibility, content-legibility, content-relevance, content-trustworthy, content-understandable, delivery format, ease of navigation, everyday words, functions-expected, functions-integration, graphics, hands-free, input, network externality, structure and time spent waiting. Using the "Matching Person and Technology" model, the results suggest that actual use and familiarity with a given technology, as well as the expectations about information content and transportability, are important criteria for the adoption of geospatial assistance technology by the manual wheelchair users interviewed. Our results will help developers and clinicians to enhance the geospatial assistive technologies, structure the testing experimentations and make attribution recommendations

Vers l'automatisation de la mise à jour des bases de données spatio-temporelles d'aide à la navigation : cas d'une base de données pour la navigation des personnes à mobilité réduite

De nos jours, les systèmes d'aide à la navigation occupent une place de plus en plus importante dans la vie quotidienne. Toutefois, leur potentiel est mal exploité pour le déplacement des personnes à mobilité réduite (PMR). À cet égard, le projet MobiliSIG a vu le jour. Son objectif est de développer une solution d'assistance multimodale mobile selon les principes de la conception cognitive pour la navigation des PMR. Au cœur de cette solution se trouve une base de données d'accessibilité dont l'usage permettra de proposer des itinéraires adaptés aux profils des utilisateurs. Cependant, vu que l'environnement évolue et que certains obstacles ont un caractère spatio-temporel, l'outil développé doit être doté d'un système qui lui permettra de rester continuellement à jour. L'objectif global assigné à notre projet est la conception d'un système automatique de mise à jour (MÀJ) continuelle des données d'accessibilité en temps quasi-réel à partir de données multi-sources hétérogènes. Pour ce faire, tout d'abord, nous avons passé en revue la littérature inhérente aux concepts relatifs à notre problématique. Ensuite, nous avons créé et implémenté une ontologie d'obstacles/facilitateurs sur la base des facteurs environnementaux de la classification PPH afin d'identifier et de bien cibler les données spatio-temporelles d'accessibilité. Par la suite, nous avons déterminé les besoins et fonctionnalités utiles à notre système de MÀJ à travers la présentation et l'analyse des spécifications des données d'accessibilité et de différents scénarios de cas d'utilisations. Finalement, en s'inspirant des concepts fondamentaux des processus ETL et des architectures orientées services, nous avons proposé une solution composée d'une couche d'extraction automatique de multi-sources; une couche de transformation qui répond au besoin du multi-formats; une application web pour les collaborateurs; et un service web de MÀJ chargé des tâches de traitement automatique et en temps quasi-réel de l'information reçue de multi-sources en effectuant l'analyse syntaxique et sémantique, la géolocalisation, le géocodage, la projection du système de référence le cas échéant, la validation et le contrôle d'unicité avant de procéder au chargement. Les résultats des tests et validations du prototype développé ont permis de confirmer l'atteinte de l'objectif de la recherche

Adaptabilidad sobre permisos y hardware de dispositivos móviles para favorecer la recolección de datos en Ciencia Ciudadana

La Ciencia Ciudadana es una forma de colaboración del público en general (voluntarios) en proyectos científicos, muchas veces realizando tareas de recolección de datos. Las aplicaciones móviles juegan hoy un papel importante en esta tarea, debiendo permitir tomar la mayor cantidad de datos posibles sin descuidar la experiencia de usuario. En esta tesina, se presenta, en primera instancia, la extensión de un componente para la creación de widgets adaptables a restricciones de hardware y falta de permisos. Dicha extensión es utilizada para confeccionar una nueva versión de “Resuelvo Explorando, aplicación móvil de recolección de datos, para integrar nuevos widgets adaptables en las tareas de recolección.Facultad de Informátic

Ontology of accessibility in the context of wayfinding for people with disabilities.

There is evidence that objects in and of the built environment function as barriers or facilitators to accessibility for people with disabilities. Although there are many existing sources of information about accessibility, they often lack clear criteria to describe accessibility, explanations of barriers and facilitators to mobility, and coverage of multiple physical environments. Researchers have argued that wayfinding services (e.g., Google Maps) can help people with disabilities prepare to travel through the built environment, yet current wayfinding services include little to no information about accessibility. This dissertation aims to study accessibility, in the context of wayfinding, in indoor, outdoor and transitional environments for people who travel in wheelchairs and people with low to no vision. To this end, a qualitative ontological analysis of multiple sources of information regarding accessibility was conducted including analyses of important categories associated with accessible wayfinding; different information providers’ views on accessibility; and specific barriers and facilitators to accessibility. The results indicate that (1) people with low to no vision and people who travel in wheelchairs have different core wayfinding information needs, (2) a gap exists between the information people with disabilities and researchers provide on accessibility and that provided by standard guidelines, and (3) conceptualizing accessibility requires capturing actions performed by people with disabilities during every day travel along with characteristics of environmental objects. The resulting ontology could be leveraged to generate new criteria describing accessibility, new routing algorithms, or to attach provenance to existing accessibility criteria. The findings have implications for people who design wayfinding services and collaborative maps and people collaboratively collecting data on the accessibility of specific places