From Open Geographical Data to Tangible Maps: Improving the Accessibility of Maps for Visually Impaired People

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Visual maps must be transcribed into (interactive) raised-line maps to be accessible for visually impaired people. However, these tactile maps suffer from several shortcomings: they are long and expensive to produce, they cannot display a large amount of information, and they are not dynamically modifiable. A number of methods have been developed to automate the production of raised-line maps, but there is not yet any tactile map editor on the market. Tangible interactions proved to be an efficient way to help a visually impaired user manipulate spatial representations. Contrary to raised-line maps, tangible maps can be autonomously constructed and edited. In this paper, we present the scenarios and the main expected contributions of the AccessiMap project, which is based on the availability of many sources of open spatial data: 1/ facilitating the production of interactive tactile maps with the development of an open-source web-based editor; 2/ investigating the use of tangible interfaces for the autonomous construction and exploration of a map by a visually impaired user.

Tactile cartography in the digital age: A review and research agenda

“…The other approach, translation, entails creating tactile maps directly from unmapped geospatial data (i.e. translating from data to map), such as TIGER ® line data (Miele et al, 2006), LIDAR data (Schwarzbach et al, 2012), depth camera imagery (Katzschmann et al, 2018;Velázquez et al, 2006), data from OpenStreet-Map (OSM), which is especially popular (Ducasse et al, 2015;Götzelmann and Eichler, 2016;Hänßgen et al, 2016;Poppinga et al, 2011;Rifat et al, 2011;Taylor et al, 2016;Watanabe et al, 2014), or using whatever data are available from public GIS data portals (Červenka et al, 2016;Štampach and Mulíčková, 2016). The data source used by each project influences the type of map that is created, as one might expect (e.g.…”

Automatic (Tactile) Map Generation—A Systematic Literature Review

“…Some of the papers did not mention any specific solutions but presented planned research in the field of automatic tactile map generation. Ducasse, Macé, and Jouffrais [89] provided information about the AcessiMap research project, whose goal is to improve map accessibility for the visually impaired in France. The paper also mentioned other existing solutions in the field of tactile map generation such as Touch the map!.…”

“…Section 3.2-RQ2), but they can be dynamically updated. Besides, some researchers suggest that solutions for on-demand generation of tactile maps should rely on the kind of spatial data that are free to use and publicly available [89].…”

Designing spatial tangible interfaces for visually impaired users

“…Ceci peut en partie s'expliquer par le fait que les DV ont rarement accès à des cartes géographiques. Rendre les cartes accessibles, en s'appuyant par exemple sur des données libres de type OpenStreetMap (voir [8] par exemple), contribuerait très certainement à l'insertion professionnelle des DV, et pourrait aussi impacter positivement leur vie sociale [26].…”