Mobility can be defined as “the ability to move or be moved freely and easily”. Despite the advances in ICT, where mobile devices and smart objects (including sensors and internet of things technologies) become even more pervasive and powerful, mobility, and, in particular, accessible mobility is still an issue difficult to address, both in the indoor and outdoor environment. In fact, these two contexts let emerging different structural problems impacting the mobility of people with impairments under different aspects. Just to present some examples: architectural barriers can block the mobility of people with mobility impairments and elderly people, both in the indoor and outdoor spaces; missing accessible information can make hard enjoying a building or a urban path by vision impaired people; people with cognitive disabilities can face difficulty in orienteering due to the difficulty in using the wayfinding systems that can be perceived as complicated and unstructured.

The goal of this special thematic session is to create an opportunity to put together experts investigating this topic of interest, and to discuss challenges and open issues in providing accessible mobility, considering both limitations in the current technologies (such as Bluetooth Low Energy technology accuracy for indoor context) and methodologies (such as relying on voluntary crowdsourcing or, on the contrary, on official sources as unique sources of information), and unexplored possibilities (such as innovative low-cost and non-intrusive sensing technologies).

In case you are interested to submit in this session, please contact: Catia Prandi (catia.prandi2 (at) unibo.it) or Silvia Mirri (silvia.mirri (at) unibo.it)