Barrier-free walk: A social sharing platform of barrier-free information for sensory/physically-impaired and aged people

Abstract

Assistive instruments such as slopes or textured paving blocks are installed in order to help elderly, sensory impaired and/or physically impaired people, who have any inconvenience to move outside. Though these precipitous situations of barrier-free progress affects their migration pathway for their destination, new barrier-free information are difficult to be known quickly because of local information disclosure. It is necessary to develop a comprehensive system which appropriately acquires and arranges scattered barrier-free information, and then presents information intuitively. Our study aims at developing the platform “Barrier-free walk” which can obtain and present information depending on users' situations including users' disorders and places, and can share barrier-free information provided by users. This paper reports concept design, implementation progress of the platform, and the result of needs survey in visually impaired people.