Using Crowdsourcing to Improve Accessibility of Geographic Maps on Mobile Devices

The continuous growth of the use of technology and mobile applications means that more people have access to information published on the web, including geographic information. However, for visually impaired people interaction is difficult if maps are not accessible. For this reason, in this paper we analyze accessibility barriers of webpages with geographic content presented on mobile devices. With the purpose of showing an alternative to improve accessibility in these pages, this study proposes the use of a technique called crowdsourcing, i.e., a group of people that voluntarily access to webpages and provide information about physical accessibility and a general description in each map element (point, line or polygon). This description is written into the Scalable Vector Graphics Tiny (SVG Tiny) code. SVG Tiny is used to represent geographic maps with HTML. In this way, screen readers can interpret the descriptions to visually impaired people, thus making maps more accessible. KeywordsWeb accessibility, map, crowdsourcing, geographic information, SVG Tiny, mobile devices.