Keywords

1 Introduction

Collaborative rating sites for the accessibility of places have become essential resources that many users consult to learn about the accessibility of a place before visiting the site. However, the utilization of such platforms has not grown due to different reasons ranging from technical challenges, aligned with variability in the perceived value of subjective ratings, as noted in [2], to the limitation in the scope of people who are willing to participate in evaluating and rating the accessibility of places [1].

In this paper, we aim to review the existing crowdsourcing applications and the accessibility features that are included in such platforms and identify the geographic coverage, reach and popularity of the in se platforms in the community of persons with disabilities (PwDs). Therefore, we investigate two main research questions: “What are the features offered by the existing crowdsourcing platforms for accessibility?” and “How the selected platforms motivated a large population to participate in evaluating the accessibility of a place?”

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes related work on crowdsourcing accessibility for the built environment, followed by a technical review of existing crowdsourcing applications in Sect. 3. Following that, Sect. 4 describes the use cases and scenarios described in the scenario-based persona method. We conclude in Sect. 5 with key contributions and future directions for research.

2 Related Work on Crowdsourcing Accessibility

In this section, we describe crowdsourcing as a concept, and we zoom into the scope of crowdsourcing for accessibility as a specific area of interest. As noted by Qui et al. in [3], “Crowdsourcing leverages the diverse skill sets of large collections of individual contributors to solve problems”. Figure 1 illustrates how crowdsourcing platforms systematically account for the different goals of information seekers, information contributors (content contributors), and platforms, and their interactions.

Fig. 1.
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Crowdsourcing models and interaction design for different users

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We start in Sect. 2.1 with a focus on human-computer interaction HCI design consideration for crowdsourcing platforms, then we present a brief overview of the crowdsourcing technology designed specifically for PwDs to make the design of complex tasks easier and more efficient in Sect. 2.2.

2.1 HCI Design Consideration for Crowdsourcing Platforms

Since HCI is an essential aspect of crowdsourcing platforms, designers should consider motivating principles to encourage and retain user engagement, whether they are PwDs or beyond their scope. Moreover, it is important to ensure that the design is technically and functionally usable by people with disabilities. From the user experience perspective, the platform interface should be easily navigated and interacted with. Also, platform designers should consider that the interface can attract large users and meet the needs of different types of users; for example, visually impaired users need a non-visual interface. From the system design perspective, the outputs produced by the crowd of people must be meaningful and reliable since these platforms may depend on unknown users with novice backgrounds, which in turn makes low-quality outputs. Moreover, most of the crowdsourcing platforms lack high-quality outputs and are ineffective against data manipulation and cheating [4]. Besides, crowdsourcing platforms encounter challenges in sustaining the participation of the crowd [5].

Therefore, research has explored different methods to engage with the target user populations, filter out bad contributors, and produce high-quality output in crowdsourcing platforms [5, 6]. Examples include using specific, measurable physical properties to identify the accessibility of a place instead of using 5-stars rating schemes to highlight issues such as the reliability of the gathered data for quality control [4].

2.2 Crowdsourcing Accessibility for PwDs

Collaborative rating platforms for accessibility of places drive a large number of decisions for PwDs. For example, caregivers rely on accessibility information and ratings to ensure a place is accessible before selecting a restaurant or cafe when they go out with a PwD. Typically, these platforms offer discrete information ranging from the accessibility of a specific part of a place, such as its entrance or seating to facilities and services or subjective ratings of accessibility posted via visitors.

3 Accessibility Platforms and Apps

In this section, we describe the technical features and services of existing accessibility crowdsourcing applications. For each platform, we describe the main functionality, the compatibility of the applications with different platforms, the supported languages, and the geographical coverage of the platforms. Besides, we focus on how these platforms utilize the power of the “crowd” to facilitate large scale review tasks that are costly or time consuming with traditional methods. Moreover, we describe the accessibility ratings that are embedded in popular applications (e.g. Foursquare, Google Map). Table 1 compares the main features offered by the crowdsourcing platforms for accessibility.

Table 1. The table summarizes the main functionality of the platforms.
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3.1 Crowdsourcing Accessibility Applications

Jaccede [7] is a collaborative platform launched in 2006 aimed to help people with reduced mobility to search accessible places and allow them to share information about accessibility anywhere. Users can contribute by describing the accessibility of public places as a place entrance, indoor, outdoor, and additional information about services and facilities.

Recently, Jaccede’s founders launched a new mobile application called Jaccede Challenge works with the crowdsourcing app Jaccede. They employ gamification in the app in order to attract people to enrich the maps with accessibility information to places. The application allows users to play a game of exploration and challenges, where users can form teams and get points by adding information about the accessibility of places.

Apart from its platform, Jaccede also aims to raise awareness of the social inclusion of PwD. They are regularly organizing activities and events on accessibility to raise awareness and to get new members. It can be considered an important step to increase the popularity of such platforms and encourage the community to contribute to it.

WheelMap [8] is an online map for finding wheelchair accessible places, launched in 2010. The platform uses a traffic light system to rate the wheelchair accessibility of a place. ِAccordingly, it shows the venue colors on the map based on their level of accessibility. In addition, they provide descriptive text under each color to help users assess accessibility more accurately. As green means that the entrance and all rooms are reachable without steps, and orange means that the entrance contains one step with 3 inches high. This description can help in avoiding the subjectivity in evaluation. On the other hand, the platform has a news page to get the community engaged. It opens volunteers to help in enhancing the content to support multiple languages.

WheelMate [9] was launched in 2012. It allows users who use wheelchairs to find, rate, review, and add accessible restrooms or parking around the world. However, users cannot edit or report the inaccuracy of the existing entries. Thus, if a place or an establishment improved its accessibility or someone entered incomplete or false information, there is no way to edit it by the users.

AXS Map [10] is a crowdsourcing platform for accessible places powered by Google Maps API. It was founded in 2012 by Jason DaSilva, who had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis [11]. The main motivation behind creating this app is to help PwDs after the increasing difficulties that Jason DaSilva faced when navigating through his daily life. AXS Map uses a 5-star schema to rate the accessibility of the entry and toilet of a place. In order to engage more community members and enrich the platforms with places’ accessibility information, AXS Map founded AXS Marathons. Which are events that are held regularly in which community members come together using AXS Map to map the accessibility of the places and it has been held in over 50 US cities.

Ability App [12] is a web platform launched in 2015. It is mainly based on community reviews to help people with mobility, vision, hearing, and cognitive impairments to find and rate accessible places all around the world. The platform allows users to browse accessible places through a list of categories, explore the map, or search by place name. A list of place names with an accessibility rating score appears based on the 5-score schema. For each place, four primary disability categories appear: mobility, vision, hearing, and cognitive, each of them has its unique number of features to rate 36, 31, 19, and 31, respectively. Users can assess the accessibility features of a place using a smiley face system: a happy, neutral, and sad face which indicates a specific accommodation in place. Although the application is comprehensive for all types of disability, too much information is requested in an evaluation which could be a time-consuming task and people might be discouraged to complete them.

AccessNow [5] was launched in 2017. It provides an interactive map for people with different disabilities to rate, review, find, and add accessible places and establishments using the traffic light system —A green pin: fully accessible, yellow pin: partially accessible, and red pin: not accessible—. Besides, the AccessNow users can specify the accessibility features that are provided by the rated place (e.g., accessible parking, braille, and accessible restroom). However, this application does not offer a way to edit or report the inaccuracy of the existing entries. Thus, if a place or an establishment improved its accessibility or someone entered incomplete or false information, there is no way to edit it by AcessNow users.

Access Earth [13] is a platform founded by Matt Macan in 2017, who has a physical disability himself. The application shows the nearest places and tells the users whether it is rated by others or simply asking them to rate the accessibility of the place.To assess the accessibility of a place, the app displays a number of yes or no questions. For example, “Are the doors wide enough for wheelchair access? − 32 in. wide”. This type of question is inflexible and may be confusing to users when rating a place.

iAccess Life [14] was launched in 2019. It allows users who use wheelchairs to find accessible places and establishments that accommodate their needs. Users can rate, review, and find places around the world based on the accessibility of the place’s entrance, restroom, interior, and parking. Users can assess the accessibility of a specific place using the 5-star rating schema. In order to encourage people to contribute, this application provides users with a referral code to share it with their friends. It also allows users to gain insights on the total referrals and places that a user has rated using the lifetime activity dashboard.

Sociability App [15] is a free app that was developed in 2019. The application main feature is to help people with physical disabilities to get information about “venues accessibility” in three main areas which are entrance (i.e. ramp access, door width and stairs), toilets and space (i.e. interior space and pathways) by showing the nearest venues around the area and which accessibilities it support or by searching for the desired venue and get the accessibility info based on that. The application uses great color-coded icons to help easily understand the level of accessibility the venue supports. The user can contribute to enhancing the content by adding access info for the places they are visiting. This app is still on a beta stage and it is expected to be officially launched at the end of 2020.

3.2 Accessibility Rating in Popular Applications

Some travel apps and restaurant rating apps include accessibility information in their rating platforms, albeit in a limited way which falls short from conveying the important details for PwDs (e.g. parking, ramps, entrances, accessible routes, toilets, elevators). For example, Foursquare and Yelp have recently added the wheelchair accessibility feature to their apps. It allows adding information about the wheelchair accessibility to the venues, but without mentioning any other details. Also, they did not set specific standards on which wheelchair accessibility was assessed. This could cause a reliability problem with this information because the evaluation may be subject to personal opinions. Recently, Google has added a wheelchair accessibility feature to Google Maps, allowing users and business owners to contribute by adding accessibility information of entrance, toilets, seating, parking, and elevator. This, in turn, is a major contribution, in order to overcome the limitations of previous applications, by adding more details about places.

4 Use Cases for Crowdsourcing Platforms

Research has shown that putting the wisdom of the crowd ‘to good use’ in the context of accessibility platforms is feasible, desirable, and viable. These platforms facilitate leveraging the potential and resources of today’s digitally connected, diverse, and distributed community of PwDs, their caregivers, and assistive technology (AT) enthusiasts. Although there are existing crowdsourcing platforms that enable a collaborative space to share information on accessibility, it is still challenging to realize a variety of scenarios a user might encounter while using application software. Personas and scenarios are considered to gather insights on the features that could enhance the accessibility of an accessibility crowdsourcing platform. In this section, we leverage personas and scenarios as one of the potential ways to capture such user experiences aligned with the approach in [16, 17] and depicted in Fig. 2, which describes several use cases and scenarios of use for these platforms via target user populations. A set of personas and a variety of scenarios associated with each persona are built and categorized to capture the common themes that arise during the identified scenarios. These personas are later used to derive the user-based feature requirements for the application software. Table 2 shows some of the built personas. The scenario-based personas combine the concepts of personas and scenarios in user-centered design [17]. Including persons with disabilities in large participatory innovation projects together with professional innovators such as developers, designers, engineers or clinicians often puts a strain on the person with disabilities who might not like to be the focus of attention. The artefacts depicted in Fig. 2 encapsulate the synthesized findings from user research and provide a communication tool for developers and stakeholders throughout the product design process from ideation to design, development and deployment. PwDs were part of knowledge gathering, idea generation, and concept development for this platform and the designers gave form to the ideas that emerged from the co-design process.

Fig. 2.
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Tangible scenario-based personas for crowdsourcing users and content contributors

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Table 2. Persona description in different scenarios
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5 Conclusion

This study sheds light on how accessibility crowdsourcing platforms and mobile applications offer intriguing new opportunities for accomplishing different kinds of tasks or achieving broader participation from the PwD communities than previously possible. Moreover, it described different use cases through the lens of scenario-based personas. For future work, we will investigate the limitations of these applications, and how to motivate people beyond the scope of PwDs to participate in such platforms. In addition, we will conduct a usability study and investigate more in the limitations and weaknesses of the existing platforms.