Indoor wayfinding has remained a challenge for people with disabilities in unfamiliar environments. With some accessible indoor wayfinding systems coming to the fore recently, a major application of interest is that of emergency evacuation due to natural or man-made threats to safety. Independent emergency evacuations can be particularly challenging for persons with disabilities as there is usually a requirement to quickly gather and use alternative wayfinding information to exit the indoor space safely. This paper presents the design and evaluation of an inclusive emergency evacuation system called SafeExit4All that empowers people with disabilities (in addition to the general population) to independently find a safe exit under emergency scenarios. The Safe-Exit4All application drives an underlying accessible indoor wayfinding system with the necessary emergency evacuation system parameters customized to an individual's preferences and needs for exiting safely from a premise. Upon receiving an emergency alert, a user accesses the SafeExit4All system through an app on their smartphone that has access to real-time information about the threat, and simply follows on-screen turn-by-turn navigation instructions towards the closest safe exit. Human subject evaluations show Safe-Exit4All to be effective not just in terms of reducing evacuation time, but also in providing guidance that results in users taking deterministic, shorter, and safer paths to the exit most suitable for them.
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Towards accessible and inclusive navigation and wayfinding
This paper presents a brief overview of the various (related) research the author has been involved with in the area of navigation and wayfinding for people with visual impairments. The first major piece of research presented is that of the building and deployment of a beacon-based indoor navigation and wayfinding system called GuideBeacon for people with visual impairments. The second major piece of research presented is a broader community-based effort called CityGuide to enable various location-based services (including navigation and wayfinding) in both indoor and outdoor environments for people with disabilities. The paper concludes by summarizing a specific challenge in the area that warrant future research attention.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1737433
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10123207
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Workshop on Hacking Blind Navigation at CHI 2019
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- The DOI is not currently available.
