Designing Visually Accessible Spaces

描述（由申请人提供）：行动不便是视力丧失的最严重后果之一，超过300万美国人视力低下。 我们将视觉可达性定义为使用视觉在环境中有效和安全地旅行，感知环境中关键特征的空间布局，并跟踪环境中的位置。 我们的目标是创建工具，为低视力人群（包括身体残疾者）的移动性设计安全的环境，并提高老年人和其他可能需要在低照明和其他视觉挑战条件下工作的人的安全性。 我们计划开发一种基于计算机的设计工具，使建筑设计专业人员能够评估各种环境（如酒店大堂，地铁站或眼科诊所接待区）的视觉无障碍性。 本工具将 以足够的准确度模拟这些环境，以预测关键地标或危险的可见性，例如台阶或长凳，用于不同水平和类型的低视力，以及用于照明、表面特性和几何布置变化的空间。 我们的项目解决了国家眼科研究所的计划目标之一：“开发建筑结构，开放空间和公园的设计要求的知识库，以及优化视觉障碍人士执行导航和其他日常任务所需的设备。“我们的研究计划有三个具体目标：1）实证：确定影响现实世界空间中与危险检测和导航相关的低视力可达性的因素。 2)计算：开发工作模型，以预测现实世界空间中的低视力可见性和可导航性。 3)部署：将基础视觉科学和临床低视力的研究成果转化为急需的工业用途，方法是制作一套开源软件模块，以增强视觉无障碍的建筑和照明设计。 我们伙伴关系中的关键科学人员来自三个机构：明尼苏达大学-戈登·莱格和丹尼尔·克斯滕;犹他州大学-威廉·汤普森和萨拉·克里姆-雷格尔;以及印第安纳州大学-罗伯特·莎士比亚。 这个跨学科的团队在视觉无障碍的程序化研究所需的必要领域拥有专业知识-正常和低视力的实证研究（Legge，Kersten，Creem-Regehr和Thompson），感知的计算建模（Legge，Kersten和Thompson），计算机图形学和光度精确渲染（Thompson & Shakespeare）和建筑照明设计（Shakespeare）。 我们与更多的建筑设计专业人士有合作安排，他们将参与我们的研究和开发转化为实践。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Reduced mobility is one of the most debilitating consequences of vision loss for more than three million Americans with low vision. We define visual accessibility as the use of vision to travel efficiently and safely through an environment, o perceive the spatial layout of key features in the environment, and to keep track of one's location in the environment. Our goal is to create tools to enable the design of safe environments for the mobility of low-vision individuals, including those with physical disabilities and to enhance safety for older people and others who may need to operate under low lighting and other visually challenging conditions. We plan to develop a computer-based design tool enabling architectural design professionals to assess the visual accessibility of a wide range of environments (such as a hotel lobby, subway station, or eye-clinic reception area). This tool will simulate such environments with sufficient accuracy to predict the visibility of key landmarks or hazards, such as steps or benches, for different levels and types of low vision, and for spaces varying in lighting, surface properties and geometric arrangement. Our project addresses one of the National Eye Institute's program objectives: "Develop a knowledge base of design requirements for architectural structures, open spaces, and parks and the devices necessary for optimizing the execution of navigation and other everyday tasks by people with visual impairments." Our research plan has three specific goals: 1) Empirical: determine factors that influence low-vision accessibility related to hazard detection and navigation in real-world spaces. 2) Computational: develop working models to predict low vision visibility and navigability in real-world spaces. 3) Deployment: translate findings from basic vision science and clinical low vision into much needed industrial usage by producing a set of open source software modules to enhance architectural and lighting design for visual accessibility. The key scientific personnel in our partnership come from three institutions: University of Minnesota -- Gordon Legge and Daniel Kersten; University of Utah -- William Thompson and Sarah Creem-Regehr; and Indiana University -- Robert Shakespeare. This interdisciplinary team has expertise in the necessary areas required for programmatic research on visual accessibility -- empirical studies of normal and low vision (Legge, Kersten, Creem-Regehr, and Thompson), computational modeling of perception (Legge, Kersten, and Thompson), computer graphics and photometrically accurate rendering (Thompson & Shakespeare) and architectural lighting design (Shakespeare). We have collaborative arrangements with additional architectural design professionals who will participate in the translation of our research and development into practice.