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原文传递 Enhancing the Safety of Visually Impaired Travellers in and Around Transit Stations.

题名：	Enhancing the Safety of Visually Impaired Travellers in and Around Transit Stations.
作者：	Dias, M. B.; Teves, E.; Hochendoner, E.; Sistla, P.; Min, B.; Steinfeld, A.
关键词：	Visually impaired persons, Transit stations, Urban environments, Transit systems
摘要：	Safety is a primary concern for the visually impaired when navigating unfamiliar urban environments. Since most environments are constructed to be easily navigated by sighted people, visually impaired people have to often seek help and use secondary clues to navigate many urban environments safely. As a result, daily activities such as using transit systems remain challenging tasks for people with visual impairments even though the use of transit systems is often a key factor for participation in employment, and educational, social, and cultural opportunities. Visually impaired adults have several challenges when navigating unfamiliar environments. First, they must pre-plan their navigation routes as much as possible and need to build a mental map of the new environment they will be navigating. Next, they need to figure out how to navigate between locations of interest from a known environment. They also need to be informed of dynamic changes to the unfamiliar environment which may impact their safe navigation. Furthermore, they need to be able to “record” their navigation experience for future trips and also potentially share this information with others who might find it useful. Finally, if they get into any unsafe or difficult situation while navigating the unfamiliar environment, they need to have a reliable means of getting help. The TechBridgeWorld research group at Carnegie Mellon University has been exploring specific needs and constraints encountered by this user population when using transit stations. Through this work, our findings indicated a strong need for a tool that allows these travelers to annotate routes with their own notes of useful information, and to easily obtain and use relevant information from trusted sources. These trusted sources can fall in the category of authorities, individuals in the area who have been vetted or have a reputation for providing trustworthy information of relevance, and personal contacts (both sighted and B/VI) who the user trusts to provide useful and accurate information. The information needed and the level of detail/nature of the descriptions needed can be very different for people with different levels of visual impairment and/or familiarity of the environment. While Google Maps provide online map services that enable route planning, it does not provide continuous and dynamic information and notices that are often useful for B/VI travelers to accomplish safe and independent navigation. In addition, it does not allow users to verbally annotate their route. This is because Google Maps does not provide a real-time map and mainly targets sighted users.
总页数：	Dias, M. B.; Teves, E.; Hochendoner, E.; Sistla, P.; Min, B.; Steinfeld, A.
报告类型：	科技报告