Follow up with TCAT on MDRC action items

[PhilNorman2]

Sent email to Nick Bolton with action items from Issue #25. Received response, and sent a request to meet further to understand AccessMap goals before doing further research.

[PhilNorman2]

Hi Nick,

I met with a local accessibility advocate last week, the Mobility Disability Resource Center, to discuss how AccessMap could serve their consumers. The meeting was productive, with a motorized wheelchair user present who used the app on her mobile phone and was happy that the app would route her on sidewalks connected to lowered curbs.

They did have some good questions/suggestions that I thought I would run by you.

1. Are there any plans to support visually impaired users of accessmap.io? The director of the Center is visually impaired and had several comments, including being able to audibly input start and end points, audible directions, support for iPhone voiceover and/or JAWs, step by step directions, etc.
2. Are there any plans to support the ingest of construction data, to allow users to avoid those areas?
3. Another suggestion was to include pedestrian crossing signals, including those that support audible signals. Hope this feedback is useful.

Phil OpenColumbus

[PhilNorman2]

That's super cool, Phil!

1. Yes, and we totally acknowledge that AccessMap currently sucks for anyone with a visual impairment (including not being very color blind friendly)! I think the website currently just reads out something like, 'this website isn't useful for someone with a visual impairment' if someone has an accessibility feature turned on for their browsers so that folks don't waste their time. Our two main challenges are (1) making sure we have actually useful info for people with a visual impairment, such as on-sidewalk landmarks and barriers, etc, and (2) making sure we can communicate these data in a way that's helpful. Our 'directions' in AccessMap are pretty bad and not at all helpful for someone with a visual impairment ("use the sidewalk for X meters" 7 times in a row). As part of a new collaboration, we're also trying to get some non-visual map navigation and audio feedback going. That said, we're super interested in talking to as many people as possible and with as much variation in experience as possible - some things may be relevant to a person with a visual impairment in your neck of the woods and not ours, for example - so it would be great to get in touch / keep in touch on this topic.

2. We used to do this in Seattle, actually! It didn't work super well because the dates and locations weren't as accurate as they should've been, and then our source of data died. So I'd say that supporting this in AccessMap is doable, but the devil is in the availability of accurate data.

3. This is a specific focus of our newly-funded work, actually! Our first step is to suggest changes to the tagging schemas on OpenStreetMap to support it. Would there be any chance of you and/or the MDRC would be interested in providing input and/or support for our proposals? For example, it's not currently possible to separately map whether a crossing is marked and whether it has signals, which leads to confusion for mappers - and we're definitely missing signals and ground markings from the map as a result. One of our proposals is to separate these out into separate tags so they can be added independently.

Very helpful feedback, thanks again!

Best,

Nick

[PhilNorman2]

Hi Nick,

Thanks for the informative response! It just happens that we have 3 new volunteers with varying levels of user research experience. I was wondering if it would be a good idea for you to meet with them and me online and do a deeper dive on AccessMap user experience both current and planned and discuss ways we could help? I think we would be better armed before going out to the field that way and again there may be other ways we can contribute.

Phil