Hi, I posted an issue in the OpenLayers queue to improve the accessibility of maps in Drupal. OpenLayers is widely used by governmental organisations and so it is useful to have a look at the acessibility.
I started reading about maps for blind people and it seems not that easy to make them accessible. So I started wondering, are there websites who successfully implemented a map? What is the best way for governments who wants to include maps (housing, building projects, environmental information, floor plan etc)?
ah, snap, you found this. Some interesting projects there for sure.
I've always thought that an SVG file embedded with rich semantic markup (especially concerning POIs and routing) would be a good basis for accessible map "rendering". They could be rendered visually (even include user stylesheets) or in tactile form, and contextual text/spoken annotations could be provided using the embedded data. This could work both exploring a map on a desktop/computer, and in on-the-ground navigation using a device.
Osmarender is an SVG-based rendering of OSM maps, which I think is still visually focussed but includes at least one active developer with an interest in visually impaired users.
I'm certainly not pimping this, because it's very early exploratory crap: I have started an alternate SVG rendering of OSM data which will include this kind of embedded data (both as class attribute values and RDFa), as well as addressing some other aspects I don't like about working with Osmarender. It may never reach maturity. At present I have significant changes and improvements still on my desktop machine. They haven't been merged because I kind of lost my thread after an earthquake hit in February.
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Making maps accessible for blind people
I started reading about maps for blind people and it seems not that easy to make them accessible. So I started wondering, are there websites who successfully implemented a map? What is the best way for governments who wants to include maps (housing, building projects, environmental information, floor plan etc)?
I read about a view options to make maps accessible:
1. list or tabbing of all the points (but that gives no clue about the relative positions and the map itself)
2. give audio directions how to get somewhere (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_for_the_visually_impaired)
3. make the map accessible for tactile tablets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_Tactile_Tablet (watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDsCOpLDd9 and this research paper http://www.public.asu.edu/~zwang56/TactileMap_ASSETS09.pdf)
4. make the map accessbile by geospecific audio information (speech, water for a river, birds for a park etc) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2slBkxaxI5Y)
This is out of reach to implement this specific for the Drupal community as this is all in research phase, but I am interested to know if there are developments we should be aware of? OpenLayers in combination with Open Street Map is a save choice, as it is all open source and gives raw data that can be converted.
For OpenStreetMap more
For OpenStreetMap more information can be found here http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_for_the_blind
Here is an OSM interface project that gives users the possiblity to walk through a map by giving directions. http://www.amauro.map.at/
Background information here: http://www.ceit.at/ceit-alanova/projekts/amauromap
OSM accessibility group
ah, snap, you found this. Some interesting projects there for sure.
I've always thought that an SVG file embedded with rich semantic markup (especially concerning POIs and routing) would be a good basis for accessible map "rendering". They could be rendered visually (even include user stylesheets) or in tactile form, and contextual text/spoken annotations could be provided using the embedded data. This could work both exploring a map on a desktop/computer, and in on-the-ground navigation using a device.
Osmarender is an SVG-based rendering of OSM maps, which I think is still visually focussed but includes at least one active developer with an interest in visually impaired users.
I'm certainly not pimping this, because it's very early exploratory crap: I have started an alternate SVG rendering of OSM data which will include this kind of embedded data (both as class attribute values and RDFa), as well as addressing some other aspects I don't like about working with Osmarender. It may never reach maturity. At present I have significant changes and improvements still on my desktop machine. They haven't been merged because I kind of lost my thread after an earthquake hit in February.