Empowering science parks for disabled persons using Boxes
IV. EMPOWERING DISABLED USERS WITH BOXES: AN APPLICATION IN AN ACCESSIBLE PARK
As we could notice from the literature review on interaction with hybrid cities, few applications addressed
the access by people with disabilities. Accessibility is enforced by law in several countries, however, we believe that as researchers in a new paradigm for citizenship, it is our duty to think of solutions that are universal from scratch.
In this section, we highlight Boxes features that accounts for its universal access. In Boxes, we distribute accessibility between the environment and the user.
The empowered environment provides universal content, by demanding that all content has equivalent versions from the moment the user loads the content in a box. This means that Boxes contents have alternative and equivalent versions: image descriptions, captioned video and sign language videos.
From the content consumer point of view, users can inform their profile. Based on the user choices, the app changes its operation configuration. When the user opens a box, he will receive the contentin formats suitable to his profile.
Boxes empowers people with visual impairment with a tool that is able to augment the physical space with audio information and guidance, promoting accessibility by hybridizing the environment.
For instance, for blind users or those preferring sound output, besides the regular sound operation of the smartphone, information about existing boxes location changes to a compass-like interface, which delivers direction of movement towards nearest box via sound guidance.
Thinking of Boxes as a city empowerment tool, we develop a proof-of-concept (POC) for understanding human-Boxes interaction in a science park. This POC has implemented accessibility using Boxes, but a larger study with users was not concluded by the time of this publication.
Our hypothetical park is a research and educational facility, promoting cultural and educational entertainment activities for students of all ages,
especially regarding natural and environmental sciences. Some activities and exhibitions are in open space; others are organized inside buildings. Buildings are surrounded by vegetation and lakes, and trails lead users from one exhibition to another. Exploring the space to find an exhibition is an important factor of motivation.
Even though we have a real park behind this description, it is easy to notice that it fits several similar facilities throughout the world.
Because the park receives regularly the visit of fundamental and high school students, some of which with disabilities, we consider that this is an interesting location for evaluating the use of Boxes for enhancing the disabled student experience. In order to limit the focus of the experiment, we propose the use of Boxes by visual impaired users, both blind and low vision.
Instead of presenting a tactile map for blind students to find their way in the exhibition, we place boxes in places along the trails; also, we placed boxes besides interesting trees and bushes, near outdoor equipments and exhibitions and in buildings entrance. We have placed boxes also close to public facilities like bathrooms, drinking fountains and restaurants, as well as emergency and information stations.
Geofences are programmed in order to progressively
disclose boxes, forming paths in thespace.If all boxes
are disclosed at once, users may lose the motivation to explore the place. Exceptions are the public facilities, which have a different drive.
Content associated to each box varies depending on the designed experience. Boxes along the path are mainly directional, but they allow users to leave messages for other users, as well as retrieving messages left for them. They are analogous to “treasure maps”, pointing to directions where the user path can enter the geofence of a few other boxes.
Boxes placed near vegetation contains information about parts of plants –format of leaves, flowers, size of trunks and invite users to explore the plant by touching it. This is done similarly for touchable artworks and static equipment. In places with historical importance, videos recalling the historical fact are input tothe box. Again, people can leave their impressions and instructions for other groups.
Boxes placed near interactive equipment present a brief description of the equipment and the science principles it demonstrates. It allows people to leave their comments on the experience. Maintenance notices and safety warnings are also available as content. Also, it gives directions guiding users to proceed to other exhibitions.
Close to building entrance, where several different exhibitions take place, boxes are more informative than directional, first because trained monitors welcome and lead all students and, second, because indoor location system fails to deliver the desired user experience.
When visitors arrive at the park, they listen about Boxes concept and application. Devices for accessing
boxes are Android tabletswith wi-fi access to the web and native accessibility features.Boxes apps can also be downloaded to the personal devices, if desired.
Recalling the assertions we have identified previously in this paper, we can comment on Boxes as an accessible hybrid city application.
Boxes provideusers’ guidancefor visual impaired
users both by providing accessible content and by providing a directional aid, so that the designed navigation can be performed and the content can be consumed.
Boxes provide adaptation of spatial information to users’ interests, capabilities or cognitive styles, presenting information on the suitable format and also by distributing the park information formerly only available from the monitors.
Gamification can be used in Boxes, but useful information is often sufficient to stimulate engagement
of users to the application.
Boxes notification approach implies that users can find relevant information even though they are not explicitly looking for it.
V. CONCLUSION
The use of technology as an interfacing tissue to the urban tissue, which is made of human and physical threads, fusing the two layers to empower both citizens and spaces with information that will be available for everyone, every time and everywhere is what makes a hybrid city.
We have used Boxes as geolinked virtual containers
of digital information to achieve empowerment for both urban spaces and people.
Next step in this research is to use this POC to understand how people with and without disabilities need and seek for information in a hybrid city, and answer
some important questions for hybrid cities:
• Georeferenced information creation and sharing, between people with different abilities;
• Understanding how people in general and persons with disability, in particular, discriminate useful
and relevant information in a hybrid envirnoment; • Identification of outdated and/or irrelevant
information in order to destroy it and avoid information overload;
• Diagnosing naturality and intuitiveness in the concept of geolinks;
• Determining the ideal separation of geofences to
support visual impaired user autonomous navigation while keeping the behaviour of information foraging.
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