An Adapted Wayfinding System for Pedestrians with Cognitive Disabilities

Abstract

This paper presents a novel wayfinding system adapted to people with cognitive disabilities. It adapts to the user in terms of route calculation, instructions delivery, and interface design. To do so, the system divides the calculated route into atomic instructions and uses street-level photographs at the decision points. To evaluate this approach, we compared it with a commercial navigation application on a field trial with a sample of users (N= 18). From the evaluation, we concluded that our system improves users’ performance in terms of the number who reached the destination and were able to identify it correctly.

Towards behavioral adaptation for people with intellectual disabilities in a mobility context

“…For instance, Davies and colleagues [2] propose a step-by-step system allowing ID people to take the bus for the first time on a new route but does not emphasize the learning of these routes. As for the system proposed by Gomez and colleagues [5], we find it somewhat confusing in terms of user interface, and not taking into account users who would not be lateralized (i.e. do not know their left and right).…”

“…From the proposition of adaptive system, modeled by UML diagrams, mock-ups are proposed to allow a better visualization of the system and the possible interactions with the user. We took inspiration from [2,5] concerning (1) the progress bar, (2) the step-by-step process with interaction needed with the user, (3) the always available help function, (4) the simple user interface, (5) the use of precise and streetlevel pictures and photos, (6) the personalization in the management of landmarks and photos. Figure 2 shows different screens of the prototype.…”

Hands-On Experiences With Assistive Technologies for People With Intellectual Disabilities: Opportunities and Challenges

“…To address this problem, a mobile pedestrian navigation assistant was designed, developed, and evaluated for smartphones: AssisT-OUT [36], [37]. It adapts to the user in terms of route calculation, instructions delivery, and interface design.…”

“…This step was supported by experts from different areas, such as labour trainers, therapists, and special education teachers. Furthermore, working with new groups and experts expanded the research to cover other needs to provide a comprehensive support, including navigating outdoors (AssisT-OUT, [36], [37]) and indoors (AssisT-IN, [38]). These two new projects were based on previous experiences and attempted to provide assistance in a similar way to AssisT-TASK, both from the interaction perspective and provision of support.…”

State model of wayfinding task with the goal to design a support system for mobility of people with intellectual disabilities

“…Nous introduisons le wayfinding comme étant la tâche qui permet de déterminer un itinéraire vers une destination ainsi que son suivi [6]. Selon [7], il est défini suivant quatre étapes qui sont : (1) l'orientation (la capacité qu'a un individu de savoir où il se trouve), (2) la prise de décision (décider du chemin à parcourir pour atteindre l'objectif choisi), (3) le contrôle du parcours (vérifier si le chemin mène au but) et (4) la reconnaissance de la destination. La taxonomie proposée par [13] est venue pour compléter et enrichir les travaux de [1], [9] et [10].…”