PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

UniMaps is an accessible mobile application for indoor and outdoor navigation on Campus Bielefeld. This position paper describes the development and issues we faced and how we tackled them. UniMaps was initially developed in a student competition and has since then been further developed by students as an official university project. The development is done after the Universal De-sign principles and with the involvement of people with disabilities. The first issue we faced during the development was the large-scale indoor map data ac-quisition. We created a semi-automated approach which correctly reconstructs about 80% of the rooms and we are currently further improving it. The second issue which we faced was the indoor navigation. An indoor GPS localization is not possible and WiFi and bluetooth beacons allow only a coarse localization. In a current bachelor thesis, a step counter is implemented which uses the gyro sen-sor and is also compatible with wheelchair users. With a combination of the step counter and the different current coarse localization options we want to imple-ment fine localization which allows an intuitive navigation. The last big issue was the visualization of maps. There are different map styles from the OSM com-munity, but as far as we know there is no map styles which is accessible. In the future we are planning to design a map style which is accessible by design.