Mobile Application for Crowdmapping Accessibility Places and Generation of Accessible Routes

Abstract

Accessibility, as an essential attribute in a society, guarantees an improvement in people’s quality of life. Therefore, it must be present in the most diverse means of social interaction, such as transportation, communication and information. Ensuring that these assemblies are accessible to wheelchairs or people with low mobility generates positive social outcomes and contributes to inclusive and sustainable development in a social setting. This work aims the development of a crowdmapping application based on mobile apps, which enables the user photograph and rate locations in the city that present obstacles for reduced mobility people (accessibility traps) making hard or even impossible for disabled people to bypass them, especially wheelchairs users. Based on the collected data provided by the crowdmapping initiative, the application permits the user visualize heat maps that demonstrate the most accessible places, combine the geographic locations and their rates, and then be able to elaborate the best accessible routes. The proposed mobile app is a powerful tool to help disabled people avoid obstacles in the available paths. Also, this collaborative system is important to easily indicate the current access problems around the city and serve as support to monitoring and maintenance of these locations. An interesting future work might involve expanding the system to other accessibility aspects apart from mobility, such as blind or deaf people.