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，拟议项目的长期目标是通过创建MABLE（建筑环境无障碍绘图），改善室内建筑环境内及其周围的残疾人（pwd）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，用于根据用户的能力和能力在其中进行评估、规划和导航。它还允许用户根据自己的经验或观察来增强地图。预期使用者包括视力或行动障碍人士（失明、弱视、轮椅使用者、手杖使用者等），以及其他类别有规划及导航辅助需要的残疾人士。MABLE将增强残疾人士在地图化的工作环境中导航的能力，使他们在工作环境中更轻松，更容易完成基于导航的任务，特别是在跨越多个楼层或建筑物的大型公司。作为一种普遍的需求，MABLE适用于公共空间（购物中心、活动场所、体育场馆等），增加可达性对这些空间有积极的经济效益，就像它适用于私人或可访问的室内空间（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可达性信息的领域创造新的知识。该项目还将创建新的框架，用于量化可访问建筑环境的经济效益，包括未来经济增长潜力、成本节约和投资回报。这项计划的长远结果将影响残疾人士的生活质素和就业能力。透过本计划所收集及提供的详细建筑环境资料，不但可提高残疾人士的行动能力，也可为其他残疾人士带来经济效益。残疾人士更多地参与社会，有望改变有残疾人士的家庭的整个社会结构。为实现这些社会影响，拟议项目中的活动包括与残疾人社区利益相关者的研讨会和网络研讨会、教育和课程提供以及技术转让活动。室内定位技术的最新进展为在建筑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。商业地图需要普通民众自愿提供，通常不包括无障碍信息，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具有类似的属性，尽管它们的开放性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，需要一些机制来自动化映射过程，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，并用于室内环境中残疾人的无障碍地图、导航和寻路，具体体现在产品MABLE（建筑环境中的无障碍地图）中。MABLE的创建将涉及五个核心组件的规范和开发：(i)用于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）用于半自主探索给定空间并建立基线可访问性元数据的机器人系统，（iii）用于在标准计算机上查询、探索和规划已知室内空间的增强地图的基于网络的界面，（iv）为现有的数字可访问性地图提供可访问性元数据的界面。以及(v)可就地使用数字无障碍地图的移动设备应用程序。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.