Adaptive Accessible Floorplans for Vision impaired, Learning Impaired and Wheelchair Users

Stage 1: This research investigates how floor plan graphics can be improved to support adaptability, in order to better address the accessibility needs of disabled users, including low and colour vision impairment, dyslexia and mobility impairment. Plan to augment Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)-based floor plans to enable a suite of accessibility features.

The solution will present a floorplan that queries the user's accessibility needs and adapts its colours, fonts, and points of interest accordingly.

To evaluate the feasibility of this solution, we performed a case study on a moderate-sized retail precinct floor plan. We modified its SVG floor plan file to our proposed structure and built a web tool, which allows users to interact with the floor plan and adapt it to suit their needs better.

We conducted a user study with two real users with physical impairments and a secondary evaluation with 12 participants who adopted personas representing one or more of our target disabilities.

Stage 2: Conduct detailed requirement gathering and evaluation. Develop a figma-based prototype based on new learnings.

Project Lead

Dr Anuradha Madugalla

Project Team

Prof John Grundy, Yutan Huang, FIT4003 student team (Min Hee Cho, Lasith Koswatta Gamage, Yuet Pok Lau, Tristan Leao, Sam Thiele)

Publication:

Madugalla, A., Huang, Y., Grundy, J.C., Cho,M.H., Gamage, L., Lau, Y.P., Leao, T., Thiele, S. Engineering Support for Adaptations in Information Graphics for Disabled Communities: A Study with Public Space Indoor Maps, to appear in Empirical Software Engineering, Springer -- Final publication available at DOI Author pre-published version PDF