NSF Convergence Accelerator Track H: Towards a Community-Driven Framework for the Creation and Impact Analysis of Digital Accessibility Maps with Persons with Disabilities

作为解决国家健康、繁荣和福利问题以及促进科学进步的一种手段，拟议的项目的长期目标是通过创建MABLE(建筑环境中无障碍地图)，改善室内建成环境内和周围残疾人的无障碍环境。Mable将提供室内环境的数字无障碍地图，并提供一个界面，用于根据用户的负担能力和能力在其中进行评估、规划和导航。它还将允许用户根据他们的经验或观察来扩大地图。设想的用户包括视力或行动不便的人(盲人、低视力、轮椅使用者、拐杖使用者等)。以及其他类别的有规划和导航协助需要的残疾人士。MABLE将增强残疾人士在地图绘制的工作环境中导航的能力，以便他们可以更轻松地快速地在其中导航，并轻松完成基于导航的任务，特别是在跨越多层或建筑物的大公司中。作为一种普遍的需求，Mable适用于公共空间(购物中心、活动场馆、体育场馆等)因此，提高无障碍程度会带来积极的经济效益，就像对私人或受出入控制的室内空间(公司园区、商业多层建筑)一样。该项目将在收集、处理和评估建筑环境中的可访问性信息方面创造新的知识。该项目还将创建新的框架，用于量化无障碍建筑环境带来的经济效益，包括对未来经济增长潜力、成本节约和投资回报的看法。这个项目的长期结果将影响残疾人士的生活质量和就业能力。从该项目收集和提供的详细建筑环境信息不仅将增强残疾人士的流动性，还将为其他人提供经济利益，而无论残疾程度如何。残疾人更多地参与社会，有望改变包括残疾人在内的整个家庭的社会结构。拟议项目中实现这些社会影响的活动包括与残疾人社区的利益攸关方举办讲习班和网络研讨会，提供教育和课程，以及技术转让活动。室内定位技术的最新进展为在已建成环境中实现实时导航和寻路提供了机会，但由于缺乏详细和可用的无障碍信息，这一进展受到阻碍。商业上可用的地图需要普通民众的自愿贡献，往往不包括无障碍信息，残疾人的贡献有限或根本不存在。室内地图的开源或众包计划也有类似的特性，尽管它们的开放性质意味着它们可以被感兴趣的开发人员扩展。然而，为了使这种方法具有可伸缩性、可用性和更广泛的应用，需要建立机制来实现地图绘制过程的自动化，并以通用的方式通过众包或用户贡献来增强地图。拟议项目的目标是创建一个社区驱动的框架和原型，用于信息收集、处理、分析和使用，以便在室内环境中为残疾人提供无障碍地图、导航和寻路，如产品MABLE(已建成环境中的无障碍地图)所体现的那样。MABLE的创建将涉及五个核心组件的规范和开发：(I)室内地图和后端地图数据库服务器的可访问性元数据模式，(Ii)用于半自主地探索给定空间并建立基准可访问性元数据的机器人系统，(Iii)用于查询、探索和规划标准计算机上的已知室内空间的扩展地图的基于网络的接口，(Iv)用于向现有数字可访问性地图提供可访问性元数据的接口，以及(V)用于就地使用数字可访问性地图的移动设备应用。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

As a means to address national health, prosperity and welfare and to promote the advancement of science, the proposed project has the long-term goal of improving accessibility for persons with disabilities (PWDs) within and around indoor built environments through the creation of MABLE (Mapping for Accessibility in BuiLt Environments). MABLE will provide digital accessibility maps of indoor environments with an interface for assessing, planning, and navigating within them based on the affordances and capabilities of the user. It will also permit map augmentation by users based on their experiences or observations. Envisioned users include those with visual or mobility impairments (blind, low vision, wheelchair users, cane users, etc.) as well as other categories of PWDs with planning and navigation assistance needs. MABLE will enhance the ability of PWDs to navigate within mapped work environments so that they may feel more at ease within them quickly and accomplish navigation-based tasks easily, especially in large companies spanning multiple floors or buildings. Being a universal need, MABLE applies to public spaces (shopping centers, event venues, sports venues, etc.) for which there is a positive economic benefit to increased accessibility, just as much as it does to private or access controlled indoor spaces (company campuses, commercial multi-story buildings). The project will create new knowledge in the areas of collection, processing, and evaluation of accessibility information from built environments. The project will also create new frameworks for quantifying economic benefits from accessible built environments encompassing perspectives of future economic growth potential, cost savings, and return on investments. Long term outcomes from this project will impact both the quality of life and employability of PWDs. Detailed built environment information gathered and made available from this project will not only enhance mobility for PWDs, but also provide economic benefits to others, regardless of disability. Greater participation of PWDs in society promises to change entire social structures of families that include PWDs. Activities within the proposed project to realize these societal impacts include workshops and webinars with stakeholders from the disability community, educational and curricular offerings, and tech transfer activities.Recent advances in indoor localization technology provides opportunities to enable real-time navigation and wayfinding within built environments, but this progress is being held back by the lack of detailed and usable accessibility information. Commercially available maps require voluntary contributions from the general population and often do not include accessibility information, with contributions from persons with disabilities (PWDs) being limited or non-existent. Open source or crowdsourced initiatives for indoor mapping have similar properties, though their open nature means they can be extended by interested developers. However, for this approach to be scalable, usable, and more widespread, mechanisms are required to automate the mapping process and to augment the maps through crowdsourced or user contributions in a universal manner. The goals for the proposed project are to create a community-driven framework and prototypes for information collection, processing, analysis, and use towards accessible maps, navigating, and wayfinding for PWDs within indoor environments, as embodied by the product MABLE (Mapping for Accessibility in BuiLt Environments). The creation of MABLE will involve specification and development of five core components: (i) an accessibility meta-data schema for indoor maps and the back-end mapping database server, (ii) a robotic system for semi-autonomously exploring a given space and establishing the baseline accessibility meta-data, (iii) a web-based interface for querying, exploring, and planning with the augmented maps of known indoor spaces on standard computers, (iv) an interface for contributing accessibility meta-data to an existing digital accessibility map, and (v) mobile device applications for in situ use of the digital accessibility maps.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.