For those with disabilities, navigating an unfamiliar environment presents special difficulties. With the use of efficient wayfinding technology, those who are blind, deafblind, visually impaired, or have limited vision, as well as those who use wheelchairs, can walk more independently throughout cities.
The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) has released a new paper that looks at how to use inexpensive techniques to make it easier for people to move through public, urban indoor, and outdoor places.
Focus groups, two case studies, and an in-person organized navigation experience on the PSU campus were utilized in the project, which was directed by Martin Swobodzinski and Amy Parker of Portland State University, to determine the most practical means of navigating the area. It was discovered that tactile maps were a very helpful tool, and an accessible mobile app also showed promise as an assistance for movement and direction.
The researcher will share more details about this project in a free webinar on December 15: Individual Wayfinding in the Context of Visual Impairment, Blindness, and Deafblindness.
Improvements in employment outcomes, more access to higher education, and greater quality of life have all been related to environments and navigational resources that facilitate safe, confident mobility. The findings of this study contribute to our growing understanding of how blind and visually impaired people navigate their surroundings.
As it relates to the integration of indoor and outdoor navigation, as well as routing for visually impaired, blind, and deafblind pedestrian passengers, researchers are confident that the study’s insights will promote the establishment of standards and innovation in mobile wayfinding.
While there are many navigation apps available, their usefulness for travelers is still rather constrained. This study provided voice to various travelers’ experiences using navigation devices to complete significant daily chores.
Researchers expect that the study of the remaining data will further knowledge of the information requirements of visually impaired, blind, and deafblind pedestrian travelers in addition to the results covered in greater depth below.
The project sought answers to three questions:
What are the preference structures, information needs, and expectations of individuals with visual impairment, blindness, and deafblindness towards wayfinding in public indoor/outdoor spaces?
How can low-cost wayfinding technology (e.g., digital maps, spatial data, personal telecommunication devices, and low-energy beacons) be leveraged best to allow for the seamless wayfinding of pedestrian travelers with functional disabilities in public urban indoor/outdoor spaces?
Which wayfinding technologies, data products, and technology platforms afford a sustainable, scalable deployment in a large academic institution?
Navigating college campuses is notoriously difficult, especially for visitors with visual impairments. The inability of individuals from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to consider themselves as complete members of the college campus community is one of the major obstacles to attending higher education.
The PSU campus was the best location for this experiment because it offers realistic wayfinding scenarios and mobility issues in a public metropolitan area. It is a public university located in the center of Portland. In addition, PSU’s commitment to community service, equity, and inclusivity align with the project’s goals of promoting community participation and access.
The researchers began with a review of the existing literature on the topic: Wayfinding tools for people with visual impairments in real-world settings: A literature review of recent studies.
Case Studies
An adult who is deaf-blind was the only participant in the team’s initial pilot case study. The full results of that case study were released in the journal Frontiers in Education: An urban college campus’s seamless navigating by a deafblind adult: A case study on performance, information preferences, and technology needs. The participant used a smartphone app, textual instructions, or a tactile map to complete three journeys around the PSU campus. The tactile map provided the highest wayfinding performance, confidence, and satisfaction, as well as the quickest completion time for this participant, while the mobile app had the lowest confidence and wayfinding performance.
In a second case study, a traveler with a combined vision and hearing disability worked as an O&M specialist who assisted people with visual impairments throughout several states. The research team used this participant’s professional and personal experiences to further improve their testing procedure.
The project’s original intent was to contrast three different types of navigational aids, including tactile maps, spoken directions, and the iPhone and Android navigation app “GoodMaps.” The researchers changed the next stage of the experiment without explicit instructions in response to this participant’s ideas.
Wayfinding Experiment
In a bigger study, participants were asked to take part in a series of navigation exercises that involved completing three brief routes around campus that contained both indoor and outdoor components. Accompanied by an experimenter with professional experience in Orientation and Mobility, participants were asked to travel two different routes while using one of two possible wayfinding supports: a tactile map for one route and the GoodMaps mobile app for the other.
A total of 28 people participated in the main data collection phase of the study and completed the experiment: 21 adolescents (between the ages of 14 and 18) and seven adults. Participants included people of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and people with varying levels of visual impairments.
The research team’s urgent next step is to compile individual-level data for each of the 28 individuals and code and evaluate their observed wayfinding performance and behavior. The 28 participants’ data are still being analyzed, but preliminary results from the two case studies show that the tactile map provided the best wayfinding support.
Focus Groups
Two focus groups were held, one with eight blind or visually impaired people who were hearing-unimpaired and the other with nine deafblind participants who used tactile American Sign Language or close-range visual American Sign Language. The two focus groups’ collective topics included both the potential of wayfinding apps to promote increased environmental literacy while traveling in the real world and its drawbacks.
Due to the apps’ specific constraints in changing travel circumstances, both groups agreed that it was essential for travelers with visual impairments to be involved in the app design process. Because each app is only suitable for a certain set of wayfinding activities, using many applications to accomplish a single trip emerged as a common theme among visually impaired travelers.
Further description of the findings from the focus group with deafblind participants is provided in the open-access Frontiers in Education article: The use of wayfinding apps by deafblind travelers in an urban environment: Insights from focus groups.
This study is a product of several innovative partnerships. Martin Swobodzinski, the project’s principal investigator and an associate professor of geography at PSU, is an expert in human wayfinding, the acquisition of spatial information, accessibility, and human-computer interaction. In 2017 he and Amy Parker of PSU’s Special Education Department began this work by collaborating on a NITC Small Starts project: Electronic Wayfinding for Visually Impaired Travelers: Limitations and Opportunities. The current project expands upon that research.
Parker is the coordinator of PSU’s Orientation and Mobility Program, a program for preparing orientation and mobility (O&M) specialists which launched in 2017. The program has spearheaded several initiatives including interactive O&M workshops in partnership with TriMet and a new conference in Portland, the Mobility Matters Summit, held for its fifth year in 2022.
The collaborative research team included Swobodzinski, Parker, and graduate students in Geography and Special Education, as well as Elizabeth Schaller and Denise Snow of the American Printing House for the Blind. GoodMaps, the mobile wayfinding app used in the study, was created by the American Printing House for the Blind. GoodMaps engaged with developers at Intel to refine the accuracy of spatial information.
In May 2021, the GoodMaps team began scanning PSU’s Smith Memorial Student Union onsite using Lidar equipment. In order to welcome interested students and staff with visual impairments for an informal assessment of the technology installation within SMSU in November of that same year, GoodMaps partnered with PSU’s Disability Resource Center. In December 2021, the refined version of the GoodMaps installation was ready for research participants to evaluate.
The Digital City Testbed Center (DCTC) at Portland State University works towards establishing a network of campuses in the Pacific Northwest where smart city technologies can be tested before being deployed in communities at large. DCTC’s support of this project allowed the hiring of a graduate research assistant, Julie Wright, who contributed to the achievement of project milestones and the creation of project deliverables.
This research was funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, with additional support from Portland State University, the PSU Digital City Testbed Center, and the American Printing House for the Blind.
