Crowdsourcing-based Mobile Application for Wheelchair Accessibility

Zhan Liu, Nicole Glassey, Maria Sokhn, Eline De Gaspari

Data Semantics LabInstitute of Information Systems

University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western SwitzerlandHES-SO Valais, Sierre, Switzerland

32nd CSUN Assistive Technology ConferenceFeb 27 to March 3, 2017, San Diego, USA

OVERVIEW

• Who Are We ?

• Motivation and Research Questions

• Business Needs and Key Findings from Online Survey

• Mobile Application Design and Development

• Evaluation and Discussion

• Conclusion and Future Research

WHO ARE WE ?

WHO ARE WE ?• 80 staff members

– 21 Professors– 19 Research scientists– 31 Research assistants– 9 Administrative collaborators

and interns

• 105 scientific publications

• 307 projects (2015)

• CHF 8,1 million (Turnover in 2015)

90%

10%

Ra&DConsultancy services

CORE COMPETENCIESeHealtheEnergy

BPM

Cloud Computing

Data Intelligence

Ergonomy, Usability

Intelligent Agents

Internet of Things

Medical InformationProcessing

Semantic Web

Software Engineering

eGov ERP eSerices/eTourism

MOTIVATION

MOTIVATION

RESEARCH CONTEXT

over 1 billion people, about 15% of the world’s population have some form of

disability

1/6 have a disability (some 80 million)

783 million trips with special needs

the number of people with disabilities

reached 780,000 in Switzerland

USER STORIES

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

• When making travel plans, what are the real needs of people with mobility disabilities?

• How does one design and develop a mobile application by applying new approaches for semantic-based, linked data technologies and information visualization?

• How does one build a solution that can generate door-to-door routes automatically to avoid obstacles to wheelchair accessibility and make the journey easier for people with mobility disabilities?

METHODOLOGY

Design Science Research methodology that integrates the heterogeneous information by using three approaches: integrated-source, business-source and crowd-source

BUSINESS NEEDS SURVEY

75% used a wheelchair for

traveling

74 participants with different backgrounds

BUSINESS NEEDS SURVEY

Satisfaction with existing information on mobility disabilities (Canton of Valais, Switzerland)

BUSINESS NEEDS SURVEY

Satisfaction with WEMAP application ideas

BUSINESS NEEDS SURVEY

Accessibility criteria and definitions

COMPARISON OF EXISTING MOBILE APPSAxs Map Wheel Map AmiWheelChair Wegoto Access Earth

AXS Map (access map) is a crowd-sourced tool for sharing reviews on

the wheelchair accessibility of businesses and places.

An online map to search, find and mark wheelchair-accessible places.

Get involved by marking public places like bars, restaurants, cinemas or

supermarkets!

Assistance and monitor for the person using a manual wheelchair

Smartphone-based approach to assess and improve accessibility for

wheelchair users

Empower people to embark on adventures to new venues and places without having to worry about their

destination not being easily accessible

Add information Add the steps Rate a location Rate the entryway Rate parking facility Take a photo Add review Incentive mechanism Login and profil Multilanguage Mobile app (Android) Mobile app (HTML5) Wheelchair sensors/monitor Different types of street Calculate the short route Structured data (schema.org)

Open data

Open source Linked data from other resources

Plan the journey from door to door

MOBILE APP DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT

• Linked data technologies-based approach– defines and integrates the data from different

sources about accessible tourism with different formats

– ontology-based structured data

• Crowd-sourced information rating and sharing– the more evaluations users made, the more

useful and reliable the information became– ratings provided by the “disabled community”

would be more reliable

WEMAP MOBILE USER INTERFACES DATA COLLECTION

WEMAP MOBILE USER INTERFACES ROUTE SERVICES

APPLICATION IN USE• More than 600 Swiss POIs have

been collected– Mainly by our partner Swiss Post– Sion, Sierre and Val d’Anniviers– POIs include restaurants, hotels, bars,

stores, public administration places, clinics, bus stations, parking, museums, etc.

FOCUS GROUP EVALUATION• 12 participants used and evaluated WEMAP

• 3 focus group interviews

• Duration about 1 hour

• 11/12 participants believed that WEMAP was useful for their daily life and expressed their willingness to continue using it

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE RESEARCH• Presented a linked data technology-based solution to help people with

mobility disabilities plan their travels

• Designed and implemented a user-friendly crowdsourcing-based mobile application by integrating heterogeneous information

• Contributed significantly to both the tourism industry and the scientific community

• Future research should include integrating photo recognition approaches to control the quality of the data users input automatically, and gamification to motivate using application