TATU: an Approach for Supporting Tourists with Disabilities to Indoor and Outdoor Navigation using Mobile Devices

Abstract

People with disabilities living in Brazil face great difficulties in the tasks of daily life mainly due to the lack of accessibility in public spaces, products and services. In this context, we noticed a lack of a computing tool that embraces both people with visual and hearing impairment. This work presents TATU -- a mobile application for both Android and iOS platforms aimed at supporting people with visual or hearing impairment to enjoy Brazilian tourist attractions, including both open-air and indoor spaces. TATU application has an adaptive interface exclusively designed for each of the impairment user profiles, it can work on guided tour mode by indoor navigation using BLE beacons and outdoor navigation using GPS. Our solution was evaluated by three experiments, one of which was carried out with blind volunteers and TATU application obtained satisfactory results for both spacious attractions with the lowest density of collection items and for the smallest spaces.

Tecnologias assistivas e o turismo inclusivo: proposta de mapeamento colaborativo de iniciativas brasileiras

“…Utilizando tecnologias como Bluetooth e GPS, o aplicativo mapeia obras e pontos de interesse, como monumentos e museus, fornecendo mídias como audiodescrição para deficientes visuais e vídeos em LIBRAS para deficientes auditivos. A metodologia do aplicativo emprega um dispositivo móvel para auxiliar na navegação em ambientes internos e externos, com o objetivo de possibilitar que pessoas cegas e surdas aproveitem as atrações turísticas de maneira autônoma, sem depender de assistência externa, como a de um guia turístico (Coutinho et al, 2021).…”