Article

A challenge to individuals with cognitive impairments in wayfinding
is how to remain oriented, recall routines, and travel in unfamiliar areas in a
way relying on limited cognitive capacity. While people without disabilities
often use maps or written directions as navigation tools or for remaining
oriented, this cognitively-impaired population is very sensitive to issues of
abstraction (e.g. icons on maps or signage) and presents the designer with a
challenge to tailor navigation information specific to each user and context.
METHODS: This paper describes an approach to providing distributed cognition
support of travel guidance for persons with cognitive disabilities. A solution is
proposed based on passive near-field RFID tags and scanning PDAs. A prototype is
built and tested in field experiments with real subjects. The unique strength of
the system is the ability to provide unique-to-the-user prompts that are
triggered by context. The key to the approach is to spread the context awareness
across the system, with the context being flagged by the RFID tags and the
appropriate response being evoked by displaying the appropriate path guidance
images indexed by the intersection of specific end-user and context ID embedded
in RFID tags. RESULTS: We found that passive RFIDs generally served as good
context for triggering navigation prompts, although individual differences in
effectiveness varied. The results of controlled experiments provided more
evidence with regard to applicabilities of the proposed autonomous indoor
wayfinding method. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that the ability to adapt
indoor wayfinding devices for appropriate timing of directions and standing
orientation will be particularly important.

Langue : ANGLAIS