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（建筑环境无障碍地图），改善残疾人在室内建筑环境内和周围的无障碍环境。MABLE将提供室内环境的数字无障碍地图，并提供一个界面，用于根据用户的功能和能力进行评估、规划和导航。它还将允许用户根据其经验或观察来扩充地图。设想的用户包括那些有视觉或行动障碍的人（盲人、低视力者、轮椅使用者、手杖使用者等）。以及需要规划和导航帮助的其他类别的残疾人。MABLE将增强残疾人在地图工作环境中导航的能力，使他们能够在其中快速感到更轻松，并轻松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中。作为一个普遍的需求，MABLE适用于公共场所（购物中心，活动场所，体育场馆等）。在这方面，增加无障碍性具有积极的经济效益，就像它对私人或受访问控制的室内空间（公司园区、商业多层建筑）一样。该项目将在收集、处理和评估来自建筑环境的无障碍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的经济效益，包括未来经济增长潜力，成本节约和投资回报。 该项目的长期成果将影响残疾人的生活质量和就业能力。从该项目中收集和提供的详细建筑环境信息不仅将提高残疾人的流动性，而且还将为其他人提供经济利益，无论残疾与否。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社会结构。该项目旨在实现这些社会影响，包括与残疾人社区的利益相关者举办研讨会和网络研讨会，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，这一进展受到了阻碍。商业地图需要普通民众自愿提供，而且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具有类似的特性，尽管它们的开放性质意味着它们可以由感兴趣的开发人员扩展。然而，这种方法是可扩展的，可用的，更广泛的，需要机制来自动化的映射过程，并通过众包或用户的贡献，在一个通用的方式来增加地图。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，以实现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成部分的规范和开发：（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）用于半自主地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）用于查询、探索以及在标准计算机上利用已知室内空间的增强地图进行规划，（iv）用于将可访问性元数据贡献给现有数字可访问性地图的接口，和（v）移动终端应用程序在现场使用的数字无障碍地图。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持的评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

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.