Maps as a service: A systematic approach to the production of tactile and audio/vibrational maps for visually impaired users

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Project Summary Mobility, orientation, and spatial awareness can be challenging for people who are blind. Navigating new or unfamiliar environments without sight can be confusing and stressful, and potentially dangerous. As a consequence, it has been reported that at least 30% of blind individuals do not make independent trips outside of their home. For sighted and blind travelers alike, maps represent a valuable tool for spatial cognition. Maps can be made accessible to blind users using tactile format, or as multimodal vibrational/audio maps (a format pioneered by co-I Giudice, himself a blind individual). Research has shown that, when given the opportunity to explore an accessible map beforehand (pre-journey learning), blind travelers may achieve better spatial awareness of locations, which may help with maintaining orientation and determining new routes. Tactile maps are traditionally created by professionals, often following “tricks of the trade” and using non-standardized symbols. Recently, there has been a push towards systematic approaches to tactile map creation that would enable wider diffusion and consistent spatial symbols rendering. Online services (e.g., TMAPS) have been created, that allow anyone to specify a certain region to be mapped, and have a tactile map automatically generated for that region, sourcing from an open access geographical information system. Existing systems for on-demand map creation, however, can only map outdoor areas. There is no such service for building indoors, and in fact, very little research work has addressed the systematic production of tactile indoor maps. Indoor environments are generally less structured than typical urban layouts. Moving about in a building may require spatial knowledge at multiple scales (from the general building structure to the internal layout of a room). And, unlike widely available GIS data sets, obtaining detailed floor plans in a format amenable for tactile map creation can be challenging. In this application, we propose research and development focusing on a system for the semi-automatic creation of accessible maps (in tactile and vibrational/audio format) of indoor environments. This work will stem from a prior web application (SIM, developed by PI Manduchi’s team) that allows anyone to trace an existing floor plan to generate an embossable map. Our research activities will be organized around the following Specific Aims: Facilitating acquisition and “vectorization” of floor plans (Aim 1); Automatic conversion of a vectorized map (expressed in terms of spatial primitives) to an accessible map at any desired scale, by means of cartographic generalization operators and carefully designed symbol sets (Aim 2); User studies with blind subjects, designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the maps produced by our new SIM system (Aim 3); Transferring the new SIM web app technology to our partner institution, the Vista Center for the Blind of Palo Alto, which will make it available as a service to interested stakeholders.