[Accessibility] Introduction to the list (Sean Barbeau)

Tue Oct 6 18:51:34 BST 2009

Hello all and Lulu-Ann,

I just wanted to write and introduce myself as well.  I work at the same
research center as Ed, and my interest is primarily in Location-based
Services for cell phones.  OpenStreetMap has caught our interest as the
largest repository for pedestrian geographic information. 

As Ed mentioned, we created a Java Micro Edition application called the
"Travel Assistance Device (TAD)" for GPS-enabled cell phones that
prompts a transit rider with "Get Ready..." and "Pull the Cord Now!"
audio, visual, and tactile prompts to help them get off the bus at the
appropriate stop.  Trips are planned via a website, and saved to the
cell phone for later use.  For those that are interested, I'm putting a
few links below so you can read more.  We're currently working with USF
to examine the best way to publically release and support the
application, and plan to do field tests outside of Tampa soon.  I'll
forward more information as we receive it.  If your transit agency is
interested in participating in the field tests, please contact me.

USDOT UTC Spotlight November 2008 - Travel Assistant Device (TAD)
<http://utc.dot.gov/news/November2008-SouthFlorida.pdf> 

Metro Magazine - Travel Software to Aid Disabled Riders
<http://www.metro-magazine.com/Article/Story/2009/02/Travel-Software-to-
Aid-Disabled-Riders.aspx> 

APTA Bus & Paratransit 2009 - Travel Assistance Device presentation
<http://www.locationaware.usf.edu/pdf/TAD%20APTA%202009.pdf> 

I'm looking forward to learning more about OpenStreetMap and the tagging
system that will support accessible pedestrian trip planning.  We hope
to eventually expand development to a pedestrian GPS-enabled mobile
phone application, but first we'll tackle the basics of what is required
in the dataset to support multimodal trip planning.  We're working to
engage others at our university, and the transit community in general,
to build more interest in OSM as a possible platform for future
innovation.

Thanks,

Sean

Sean J. Barbeau, M.S. 

Research Associate 

Center for Urban Transportation Research 

University of South Florida 

4202 E. Fowler Avenue, CUT100 

Tampa, FL 33620-5375 

(813) 974-7208 

(813) 974-5168 (fax) 

http://www.cutr.usf.edu

barbeau at cutr.usf.edu

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Introduction to the list (Ed Hillsman) (Lulu-Ann at gmx.de)

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Message: 1

Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:10:52 +0200

From: Lulu-Ann at gmx.de

Subject: Re: [Accessibility] Introduction to the list (Ed Hillsman)

To: accessibility at openstreetmap.org

Message-ID: <20091005121052.210710 at gmx.net>

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Hello list members!

Hello Ed,

welcome to the list!

First of all, I can only speak for myself, not for the whole OSM
community or the list.

> Amazingly, our university does not have a map for general distribution

> that shows sidewalks and crosswalks. 

This can be changed immediately :-)

This is how Tampa' Campus looks right now:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=28.05586&lon=-82.41847&zoom=15&layers=
B000FTF

> Our office of disability services is also interested,  

> and we are looking at how to enter data to support the needs of  

> disabled users as well as to favor the generation of routes that  

> pedestrians will find appealing in our car-centric campus and  

> surroundings. 

Great, I guess that's the right spirit, and the right mailing list!

Hope you can encourage some disabled students to join the mapping

or at least do some testing.

> We probably will need to clarify the use of some tags,  

> and create some additional tags, to do this. 

Yes, a lot of tags need to be proposed, but unfortunately it's not
always easy to find a good solution.

You can just try out your new tag inventions and then present success
and problems in the wiki and on the talk mailinglist (and here, of
course).

> For example, we know that  

> unless vehicle speed on a street is very low (30 kph), pedestrians  

> feel safer if there is a planting strip or parkway to act as a  

> psychological buffer between the sidewalk and the street than if there

> is not; the present tagging system does not seem to represent this  

> space. 

Correct and not.

US American buffer green (as I got to know it in my visits) is often so
wide you can tag it as an area.

There is a controverse discussion on the wiki and on the "talk" mailing
list about "lanes and lane groups":

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/lane_and_lane_group

I guess the green buffers could be one of the "lanes" to define.

> We will need to clarify how to represent pedestrian crossings  

> of streets, which the Maryland example seems to have paid little  

> attention to (for example, although they coded stairs, I do not find  

> anything in their campus data on curb cuts or on inclines, which with

> the extent of stairways on the campus should be of importance). 

The wheelchair routing project of University of Bonn, Germany has given
example how to tag for wheelchair needs. Unfortunately the pages are not
completely translated to English. Who can help ?

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Wheelchair_routing

> I have  

> friends who can ascend shallow stair inclines but not steep ones, so  

> we would like to code inclines for stairs as well as sidewalks. 

Not the incline - the angle does not help to determine the hight of a 

step. If you have a fix incline, you can have few long high steps or
many small short steps. That's still a big difference.

I would recommend to tag step hights.

> And we  

> will need to decide how to integrate the treatment of sidewalks with  

> parking lots, which occupy a lot of space on our commuter campus and  

> which often serve as de facto pedestrian ways as students take short- 

> cuts across them; some sidewalks run along the perimeter of the  

> parking lot rather than originating or ending at the lot, and some of

> the bounding sidewalks have no curbs because the parking spaces  

> immediately adjacent to them are reserved for drivers with
disabilities.

Sounds to me like highway=service, foot=yes, and connected
highway=footway.

What problem is caused with the lowered or not lowered curbs? 

Can you give an example of a routing problem?

> You won't find any evidence of this on the map for our campus yet.  

> We've purposely asked students interested in OSM to hold off working  

> with the campus until we get a student project going to upload a file

> of campus infrastructure that they can then field check and clean up.

> So the few features coded on the campus came from people learning how

> to use GPS for mapping, or how to use Potlatch.

I don't like this "don't map now" for several reasons:

1. It does not help to complete the map fast.

2. You do not have the right to stop someone from mapping. Nobody has.
Nobody can reserve an area for oneself to map. That's not OSM spirit.

3. When someone comes who does not listen to your advice and starts
mapping, then your students will be angry or disappointed. Any tourist
can! All you do is taking away the "we were the first" feeling. And you
are burdening the basic work on the shoulders of the project people, who
will want to work on details, not on drying their clothes because they
had to go mapping in fall to have data to work on.

4. I don't think the upload of a campus infrastructure helps a lot.

If it does, scan it, use it. Right now. Scanning and using the old map
takes an hour, the reading how to do it included. So not a minute delay
to stop your students from stepping out the door and mapping the campus.
They won't be back before one hour. If you have copyright issues with
your campus infrastructure map, it will usually take longer to clarify
them than to map the whole campus alone.

OpenStreetMap is not a project with a start and an end. OpenStreetMap
lives. Please DON'T STOP IT because you want work to be left for any
project. The work will be much more interesting if the basics are done
and you can concentrate on working on the details about accessibility.

The footways already mapped are in the map for one month today.

Your campus map could already be finished for approximately two weeks
considering the standard tagging, and you could already have expericence
on the contradictions of micro mapping for disabled persons, that you
can share with others around the world.

> We also have preliminary approval for a project this fall to develop a

> prototype multimodal trip planner (bike to bus to walk), using OSM as

> the data platform.

For that you would not want anybody else to hold some students back from
mapping bus stops, would you? ;-)

> We are still awaiting final approval before we can  

> begin, so what we do now is on our own time. Once the project starts,

> I imagine that my colleague will subscribe to the list as well. He has

> worked with location-aware services for developmentally-disabled bus  

> riders (using a cell phone to prompt riders when to request a stop and

> when to get off the bus). 

Great idea - if you include local services, like RFID at bus stops or
similar, please consider to realize them as plug-ins, so in other areas
other local services can take the place.

Can you post the website of the project with the bus stops, please?

Is it an open software license?

> We plan to draw heavily on his experience  

> and computer-science expertise in this project and the campus routing

> service. My role is more in the geography and the human/social  

> interaction with the built environment.

I hope you are not loosing out of sight the interaction with the OSM
community - that's much more important than using the software.

You can always draw heavily on the OSM user's experience ans
computer-science expertise alswell. :-)

If you invent new tags and can not convice the community, your work will
not be proceeded.

I think there should not be any "campus routing service". There should
be a worldwide routing service with one campus as a pilot area. ;-)

> I would welcome hearing from and working with others who have similar

> interests.

Here is a link to "OSM for the blind", that want's to improve tagging
for blind persons. At the moment only using the software Loadstone-GPS:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/For_the_blind

I hope more persons from the list take the opportunity to introduce
themselves!

Thanks, Ed!

Regards

Lulu-Ann

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