FindMyWay: Toward Developing an Accessible Wayfinding Application for Visually Impaired in an Indoor Space

Due to the limitations of satellite-based navigation systems, such as GPS, indoor wayfinding has been very challenging for people with disabilities. Unfamiliarity and infrastructure complexity in an indoor space could put an additional burden on people in their wayfinding, who have various types of disabilities such as vision, mobility, hearing, etc. An accessible wayfinding application could be of great help to them in navigating an indoor space. To fulfill the wayfinding needs of visually impaired persons in an indoor space, an iOS application named “FindMyWay” has been developed in this work based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons. FindMyWay provides both exploration and navigation features for the visually impaired for indoor wayfinding. This work incorporated a parallel processing approach into the app while implementing both exploration and navigation functionalities. The exploration feature provides customized information about a point of interest (PoI) in an indoor space based on user preference. On the other hand, the navigation feature provides guidance to reach a destination in a multi-floor environment. The preliminary results indicate the effective performance of the app while navigating an indoor space.