Communications of the ACM
You Can Help Map the Accessibility of the World
The University of Maryland's Institute for Advanced Computer Studies created Project Sidewalk as a tool that uses Google Street View to rate the accessibility of sidewalks in Washington, DC, for people with vision impairment or mobility issues.
Credit: Project Sidewalk
Project Sidewalk is a tool created by the University of Maryland's Institute for Advanced Computer Studies that uses Google Street View to rate the accessibility of Washington, D.C., sidewalks for people with vision impairment or mobility issues.
The project is a Web application designed to crowdsource audit data without having to conduct physical inspections. Participants examine DC streets using Google Street View and mark curb ramps and obstructed sidewalks and rank routes for accessibility.
Since the app's beta launch on Aug. 30, 212 people have audited more than 3,700 miles of DC sidewalks.
Researchers plan to use the data collected from Project Sidewalk to create a tool that offers route directions tailored to a person's particular mobility challenges.
"People tasked with improving infrastructure can start to use it to triage their work or verify their own data," says University of Maryland professor Jon Froehlich.
To expand nationwide, researchers are experimenting with computer learning and automated image processing. They say computers eventually could be tasked with identifying easier problems, such as missing curb ramps, so human labor can be saved for more nuanced problems and data verification.
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Abstracts Copyright © 2016 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA
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