skip to main content
10.1145/1535654.1535684acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication Pagesw4aConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Getting mobile with mobile devices: using the web to improve transit accessibility

Published: 20 April 2009 Publication History

Abstract

The current model for public transportation in urban environments poses many limitations for travelers who are blind or visually impaired. Small communities are serviced by transit authorities with constrained budgets. Accordingly, few resources are available for accessibility reform. Larger communities have begun to implement services that take advantage of modern technologies; however, the majority of these services are targeted at the population at large with little regard for these special interest groups.
In this paper, we define an approach based on best practices to support web accessibility, and incorporate new technological advances in mobility to provide a solution that complements the current transportation model. Problems of adapting existing web content, and end-user customizability are addressed. Preliminary evaluation includes feedback received from the blind community, and consultation with small-scale transit authorities. We believe that the most effective solution, in terms of cost and user satisfaction, will rely on ever-pervasive wireless internet connectivity, accessible web services, and adaptive mobile devices.

References

[1]
Human rights and public transit services in ontario. Technical report, Ontario Human Rights Commission, March 2002.
[2]
C. L. Chen and T. V. Raman. AxsJAX: a talking translation bot using google IM: bringing web-2.0 applications to life. In W4A '08: Proceedings of the 2008 international cross-disciplinary conference on Web accessibility (W4A), pages 54--56, New York, NY, USA, 2008. ACM.
[3]
A. Chuter and Y. Yesilada. Relationship between mobile web best practices (MWBP) and web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG). W3C working draft, W3C, July 2008. http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-mwbp-wcag-20080703/.
[4]
A. K. Dey. Understanding and using context. Personal Ubiquitous Comput., 5(1):4--7, 2001.
[5]
C. Li and K. Willis. Modeling context aware interaction for wayfinding using mobile devices. In MobileHCI '06: Proceedings of the 8th conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services, pages 97--100, New York, NY, USA, 2006. ACM.
[6]
S. McGlashan, D. Burnett, and J. Carter. Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) Version 2.0. Technical report, W3C, March 2004.
[7]
B. McVicar. Blind city resident upset with busing decision. http://www.accessibilitynews.ca.
[8]
T. V. Raman. Cloud computing and equal access for all. In W4A '08: Proceedings of the 2008 international cross-disciplinary conference on Web accessibility (W4A), pages 1--4, New York, NY, USA, 2008. ACM.
[9]
D. Salber, A. K. Dey, and G. D. Abowd. The context toolkit: aiding the development of context-enabled applications. In CHI '99: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages 434--441, New York, NY, USA, 1999. ACM.
[10]
T. W. Sanchez. The Connection Between Public Trans it and Employment The Cases of Portland and Atlanta. Journal of the American Planning Association, 65(3):p284--288, 19990601.
[11]
W. Seager and D. S. Fraser. Comparing physical, automatic and manual map rotation for pedestrian navigation. In CHI '07: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages 767--776, New York, NY, USA, 2007. ACM.

Cited By

View all
  • (2020)Designing for Blind UsersUser-Centered Software Development for the Blind and Visually Impaired10.4018/978-1-5225-8539-8.ch001(1-25)Online publication date: 2020
  • (2012)ABLE TransitProceedings of the 2012 Seventh International Conference on Broadband, Wireless Computing, Communication and Applications10.1109/BWCCA.2012.72(402-407)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2012
  • (2011)The barriers to and benefits of use of ICT for people with visual impairmentProceedings of the 6th international conference on Universal access in human-computer interaction: design for all and eInclusion - Volume Part I10.5555/2022591.2022644(452-462)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2011
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Getting mobile with mobile devices: using the web to improve transit accessibility

      Recommendations

      Comments

      Information & Contributors

      Information

      Published In

      cover image ACM Other conferences
      W4A '09: Proceedings of the 2009 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibililty (W4A)
      April 2009
      189 pages
      ISBN:9781605585611
      DOI:10.1145/1535654
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

      Sponsors

      • The Mozilla Foundation
      • Google Inc.
      • Microsoft: Microsoft
      • Zakon Group

      In-Cooperation

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 20 April 2009

      Permissions

      Request permissions for this article.

      Check for updates

      Author Tags

      1. accessibility
      2. mobile devices
      3. mobile web
      4. public transportation

      Qualifiers

      • Research-article

      Conference

      W4A '09
      Sponsor:
      • Microsoft

      Acceptance Rates

      Overall Acceptance Rate 171 of 371 submissions, 46%

      Contributors

      Other Metrics

      Bibliometrics & Citations

      Bibliometrics

      Article Metrics

      • Downloads (Last 12 months)11
      • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)3
      Reflects downloads up to 30 Jan 2025

      Other Metrics

      Citations

      Cited By

      View all
      • (2020)Designing for Blind UsersUser-Centered Software Development for the Blind and Visually Impaired10.4018/978-1-5225-8539-8.ch001(1-25)Online publication date: 2020
      • (2012)ABLE TransitProceedings of the 2012 Seventh International Conference on Broadband, Wireless Computing, Communication and Applications10.1109/BWCCA.2012.72(402-407)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2012
      • (2011)The barriers to and benefits of use of ICT for people with visual impairmentProceedings of the 6th international conference on Universal access in human-computer interaction: design for all and eInclusion - Volume Part I10.5555/2022591.2022644(452-462)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2011
      • (2011)Enhancing independence and safety for blind and deaf-blind public transit ridersProceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/1978942.1979424(3247-3256)Online publication date: 7-May-2011
      • (2010)Improving public transit usability for blind and deaf-blind people by connecting a braille display to a smartphoneProceedings of the 12th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility10.1145/1878803.1878890(317-318)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2010

      View Options

      Login options

      View options

      PDF

      View or Download as a PDF file.

      PDF

      eReader

      View online with eReader.

      eReader

      Figures

      Tables

      Media

      Share

      Share

      Share this Publication link

      Share on social media