Enhancing Accessibility in Mobile Navigational Services

摘要

The success of the Wii and of the iPhone together with the persisting problem of displaying information on the small screens of mobile devices is currently pushing the development of non-visual interaction channels such as gestures, tactile/haptic interaction and sound. This development presents both potential and risk, since new channels of interaction may result either in improved or reduced accessibility. The HaptiMap project [1] is targeted on introducing accessibility as a key component in the development of mobile interfaces to reduce the risk of introducing new technologies that are unavailable to significant parts of the population. We have chosen to focus on geospatial information since this is an area which traditionally makes heavy use of the visual channel. We make use of "Inclusive Design/Design for All" [2] - an approach where we put as our goal to increase the number of persons who are able to use mainstream mobile map services by making the applications easier to use also for persons with visual impairments.