[Accessibility] Tagging traffic signals

[Nolan Darilek]

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Hi folks.

Hermes, my accessible navigation platform, is getting far enough along
that I'll likely soon be considering ways for its users to contribute to
OSM rather than just take from it. To that end, I'm brainstorming
accessibility-related tags and trying to arrive at some sort of
consensus with anyone else who might be working in this space. One of my
main goals with this project is to not create walled gardens, and to
have my and others' data work well together. Since the subset of those
of us wishing to use OSM accessibly is small indeed, it seems even more
important to standardize on non-haphazard ways of representing
accessibility features.

Since my platform is targeted at blind/VI travelers, and since I use it
regularly, I'm focusing on my own pain points first. The biggest one is
traffic signals. Basically, when I arrive at an intersection, I can tell
that there is a light but have no clue whether or not there is a
push-button signal and, as such, whether I am expected to use it.
Furthermore, Austin in its infinite wisdom has a smattering of both
audible and inaudible signals, and while I can generally identify wen
crossing is safe, I lose time determining whether I should wait for an
audible cue or should just go when it sounds safe to do so.

Does any method for tagging such features exist? If not, can we agree on
one that works for everyone?

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Disabilities#Blind.2FVisual_impairment describes
acoustic="traffic_signals", but that kind of sucks IMHO. First,
shouldn't it be inverted such that "traffic_signals" is the key and
describes a set of possible values?

Next, this assumes that all traffic signals are audible. It doesn't
convey the presence of a non-audible indicator that I may still be
expected to press.

I realize that OSM is free-form and that I can just do my own thing, but
I'd really rather try to at least standardize, especially since I'll be
giving users tools to send edits back to OSM. So I suggest the
following, and if folks like it then I'll update the wiki accordingly:

traffic_signal="audible" for a node representing an intersection with an
audible signal
traffic_signal="visual" for intersection nodes with non-audible signals

Are there any other signal types that I may have omitted? The above
assumes that all signals are visual, which I suppose could be a flawed
assumption. :)
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