A mobile interactive maps application for a visually impaired audience

Abstract

Existing spatial information resources on the Web are graphically-orientated and are usually presented through interactive maps. As a consequence, in most of the cases, visually impaired users and especially blind users have very restricted access while they find it extremely difficult to recognize this kind of visual representation. Multimodal and mobile interactive maps could be a solution for presenting the spatial information resources to visually impaired people. In this paper, we present an interactive multimodal map application by investigating ways of presenting alternative formats that would replace visual information. Open Touch/Sound Maps is an Android mobile application, which enforces the accessibility of interactive maps for the visually impaired users. Multimodal interaction including sonification, Text-To-Speech (TTS) and vibration feedback enables access to OpenStreetMap data for the visually impaired and blind users using a common mobile device.