Summary of Towards the implementation of the first Arabic wayfinding and accessible indoor navigation solution for people with visual impairments in Qatar

The ability and capability to do indoor navigations and to navigate in the urban spaces is a right for all the people living  there. But while performing outdoor navigations, it is a lengthy and long process and and it is also the strong area of the research or investigation and has developed give strong solutions to the, but the solutions for the indoor navigation are still limited.

Indorr navigations are complicated and tough for the persons who are physically harmed or damaged and that can be in the form of any wound or any disability like blindness. People who are physicaly harmed or damaged and have some disabilities should use some specific techniques and methods atht can help them to make them familiar with their surrounding environment to set themselves with the unkown environment and to navigate locations in the environment so that they can get to their required spots. Although the white guide canes and guide dogs help thesmelves to navigate and raom around in their desired places but still they have to face some challenges while they are navigating and roaming around in the indoor areas and environments, because the indoor environments are complex.

The need to solve this problem right now is to introduce tools that can help the impaired and physically disabled people when they are facing some difficult situations when they try to avoid and evacuate from some emergency and difficult situations. But if these tools are nort introduced then they eventually have to depend on the sighted people when to want to visist a place that is unfamiliar to them or when thay rae in any critical; situation or facing any emergency.

But if we see this from a technical point of viewwe have to find some solutions for the physically disabled and impaired people,ane this needs a higher accuracy level to identify the proper locations for these people to avoid any dangers, some customized plannings should be done to develop some algorithms related to the the path planning and during the customized planning of the paths we should consider some proper landmarks and preferences that can be easily accessible by the impaired people. But if the technologists, researchers, the stake holdrs and the innovators want to develop new tools and aids for the impaired and physically disable people, theyshould first identify the problems and the complexity and the diversity of the difficuylties and cahllanges that are faced by the impaired or disabled people.

Theis project and its proposal establish on the results and findings that are gained from the assessments that have been taken from the physically disabled and impaired people.

The idea is to implement a prototype of an audio-based indoor navigation in a shopping mall in the State of Qatar. Through this experience, people with visual impairment can navigate inside the shopping mall independently and without any personal assistant. In addition to this, people with visual impairment can easily access to information provided in real time by sensors set up in different locations in the venue.

The mission and vision of the proposed project is aligned with several points of the Qatar Vision 2030 that aims to establish a smart city accessible to everyone.

Introduction of Towards the implementation of the first Arabic wayfinding and accessible indoor navigation solution for people with visual impairments in Qatar

In the State of Qatar, there are almost more than three thousand people with visual impairments[1] and cannot navigate easily in massive public spaces such as shopping malls, airports, stadiums, hospitals, etc. Traditional navigation systems, available on interactive maps or printed flyers, are inadequate for navigation since they are inaccessible, especially for people with visual impairments which affects their overall shopping experience.

One of the challenges that were found by the visually  harmed people is that to find theirn way in the environment that is unfimilar or unknioown to them, this sis also called as  way finding. New environments pose a huge challenge for them to perceive their surroundings without asking strangers for assistance. People with visual impairment cannot rely on signs, maps, or directories to get a sense of the size and configuration of the new places.  ​

The purpose of this project is to implement an accessible wayfinding system, in Arabic and English, for the people who are physically harmed and damaged due to some reasons in one of the famous malls  in Qatar (Mall of Qatar[2]) as a pilot project. The wayfinding system  is a process that guides the people that how to find way in an unknown place and this system improves there understanding and knowledge about the space[3].

An accessible wayfinding system for people with visual impairment relies on indoor audio-based navigation, delivered to end-users through mobile applications connected to beacons already setup in the venue. Beacons are small devices that share information to connected devices of specific areas or surroundings.

The idea is that when a visitor with visual impairment approaches a specific location inside the Mall, the associated app will use the broadcasted nearest beacon information to find their location on the map and would guide the visitor to the desired destination by giving them real time turn by turn audio instructions. Effective wayfinding systems for people with visual impairment contributes to  a sense of privacy and being safe and secure in an environment and a sense of well being isw also included in this. The pilot project will provide an independent living ways and experience for the people who are  visually damaged and harmed, are physically impaired.

Shopping venues, localized to suit the Qatari culture, and would in fact promote Qatar as an accessible tourist destination.

State of the Art of Towards the implementation of the first Arabic wayfinding and accessible indoor navigation solution for people with visual impairments in Qatar

Navigation is basically following a route and this is studied and performed in the outdoor places like on roads and outide communities., but now the technology has become advanced and now there have been literatues and studies on the indoor navigations as well that has started round about 30 years ago Mnay literature revies have been doen on this tehnology, we should utilize the knowledge so that we can gain the knowledge about the indoor navigation and how it is utilized. The aim and purpose of theis area State of the Art is to identify the different aspects of the the indoor navigation and how it is us4d in the complex areas, such as the shopping malls and we can identify the aspects by reviewing and considering the research that has been carried out in the past years.

In the 1980’s different experimental researches have been carried out on its own about the aspects of the indoor navigation. In one of the the published articles of Thorndyke and Hayes-Roth  that was published in 1982. In their article they have focused on comparing the information and knowledge about the larege indoor areas like the two wing corporation headquartwers in Sant Monica, and they have gain the image through some njavigation processes or with the help of the maps. They have discussed in their article tthat spatial information differs when we get the informations from maps and whenh we get the information by visiting the indoor areas or spaces. This work has also discussed about the other areas rather than only discussing about the indoor areas and this work also identified about different techniques that are still in use.

Another important set of the research papers have been gained was from the laboratory of a persona called Tommy Garling that was located in Umea a country of Sweden. The researcher Garlin who wrote an article in 1983. And the article he wrote was one of the most famous artuicles and has many citations from peer scholars. In his article, he first identify different ways in a very systematiuc way to find  ways in and through different buildings. Visual access, familiarity and orientation in between the different locations helped the visitors to give directions about the certain locations. But as the vsistors visit the same building for the four times the visitors show no contrast because their visibility has increased due to visiting the same building.

But against the above research, the researcher Moesar depicted in 1988 that it is very difficult to find locations and nagivate in the ares where the indoors have complex structures like the hospitals. In a very interesting research, that was conducted in an hospital which have five stories, the students and the nurses of the hospital failed to implement indoor navigation, even the nursaes have been working there since the past two years. Inexperienced participants were selected to identify the floor plans of the buildings that outruned the experienced nurses of the hospital, but they adviced that only experience is not enough to gain any knowledge regarding the indoor navigation, when indoor structure is complex. It is an important task to know that when we are performing indoor navigation the structure of the indoor place matters a lot, that how complex the structure is.

The research which is carried out during this period focuses mainly on the buiding’s structure and some specific tools that re important for navigation such as the maps and collectively this type of data. But another researcher Levine (1982) has made an argument that if we properly use the You Are Here signs and maps we can get the desired information and we can lead tpo our destinations. He further discuseed in his article that if we do not place the YAH signs properly in the buildings and they are not placed on the walls properly then it will create vagueness. Further he explained in an example that if we place the YAH maps along the walls but not in the c3ntre of the wall it will  enhance the readability  and interpretation of the map. And it is exceptional that how the different malls and different hotels have placed the maps on their walls the same way the map is placed on the walls in the environment. (Klippel et al., 2006).

Some people ask that if we can predict the problems of the impaired people just by observing and focusing on some specific areas like the surrounding environment in which the impaired people are living and the processes otf navigation. (Li & Klippel, 2012). The structure of the building is very important, if the structure of building is not properly developed and has visual access that is poor, the individual or the person avbility to nagivate in the building will be low and the structure of the building is complex that is not easily understandable,in this way we can say that the person or individual might get lost and how can we utilize the knowledge and information to develop better navigation tools. And according to all these factors, the complexity of tye buildings and the complex physical environment results in getting lost. But we have examined the aspect of getting lost in the buildings with the spatial learning and the reasoning strategies and  the differencews that occur between the different users that are living in the building.(Carlson et al., 2010; Hölscher et al., 2013).

According to the different researches it is found that there are several different aspects of the experience of navigation and the building structure and that contributed ij the errors that ocured during the indoor navigation.

The following is a furnished list of the factors that access to errors in navigation for tough indoor environments (Carlson et al., 2010; Hölscher et al., 2013; Li & Klippel, 2012):

Optic access

Individual spatial ability

Navigation help

The mental Maps Users Device

Spacial Learning

Reasoning Methods

Physical Environment and Building Structure

Inspite of the use of GPS world wide as an advanced technology for the fieled survey and the outdoor navigation but still there not have been much development in the introducing tools and aids for the indoor navigation. It has found that some proposals are in process for the development of new positioning systems that can work in indoor areas and spaces (e.g., Kaemarungsi& Krishnamurthy, 2004),But therer are some questions that are raising on the privacy and the access of the outdoor systems and in the most of the parts it surpasses the outdoor systems.

The Final question arises here is that what is an indoor space? And how it differs from an outdoor space ?  A recent COSIT workshop checked the transitional spaces, such as outdoor spaces (Kray et al., 2013 ), likewise the building with more restricted areas such as a hospital differs from a building belonging to public or private spaces. The same is the case with natural outdoors who differ in terms of navigation to the basic indoor spaces.

[1]https://www.psa.gov.qa/ar/statistics1/pages/topicslisting.aspx?parent=Social&child=SpecialNeeds