Using Computer Simulations to Investigate the Potential Performance of 'A to B' Routing Systems for People with Mobility Impairments

TL;DR

This paper uses large-scale computer simulations to evaluate 'A to B' routing systems for people with mobility impairments, highlighting the importance of barrier minimization and proposing simulation-based performance metrics.

Contribution

It introduces a simulation-based approach to assess routing system performance and emphasizes barrier minimization over avoidance for improved accessibility.

Findings

Barrier minimization is more effective than barrier avoidance.

Simulations can serve as real-world performance metrics.

Over 460 million simulated journeys demonstrate the approach's scale.

Abstract

Navigating from 'A to B' remains a serious problem for many people with mobility impairments, due to the need to avoid accessibility barriers. Yet there is currently no effective routing tool that is regularly used by people with disabilities in order to effectively avoid accessibility barriers in the built environment. To explore what is required to produce an effective routing tool, we have conducted Monte-Carlo simulations, simulating over 460 million journeys. This work illustrates the need to focus on barrier minimization, instead of barrier avoidance, due to the limitations of what can be achieved by any accessibility documentation tool. We also make a substantial contribution to the concern of meaningful performance metrics for activity recognition, illustrating how simulations can operate as useful real-world performance metrics for information sources utilized by navigation systems.