The majority of information in the physical environment is conveyed visually, meaning that people with vision impairments often lack access to the shared cultural, historical, and practical features that define a city. How can someone who is blind find out about the sleek skyscrapers that dot a modern city\u2019s skyline, historic cannons that have been remade into traffic pillars, or ancient trees that uproot a neighborhood\u2019s sidewalks? We present FootNotes, a system that embeds rich textual descriptions of objects and locations in OpenStreetMap, a popular geowiki. Both sighted and blind users can annotate the physical environment with functional, visual, historical, and social descriptions. We report on the experience of ten participants with vision impairments who used a spatialized audio application to interact with these annotations while exploring a city. By sharing rich annotations of physical objects and areas, FootNotes helps people thoroughly explore a new location or serendipitously discover previously unknown features of familiar environments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The majority of information in the physical environment is conveyed visually, meaning that people with vision impairments often lack access to the shared cultural, historical, and practical features that define a city. How can someone who is blind find out about the sleek skyscrapers that dot a modern city\u2019s skyline, historic cannons that have been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13554,13553],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-499577","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-human-computer-interaction","msr-research-area-medical-health-genomics","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"ACM","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2018-10-8","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"500303","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"file","viewUrl":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2018\/08\/footnotes.pdf","id":"500303","title":"footnotes","label_id":"243109","label":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"text","value":"Cole Gleason","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Alex Fiannaca","user_id":36239,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Alex Fiannaca"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Melanie Kneisel","user_id":36209,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Melanie Kneisel"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Ed Cutrell","user_id":31490,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Ed Cutrell"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Meredith Ringel Morris","user_id":32884,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Meredith Ringel Morris"}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[199565],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[144928,283244,371909],"msr_project":[638733],"publication":[],"video":[],"download":[],"msr_publication_type":"inproceedings","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":638733,"post_title":"Accessible Mixed Reality","post_name":"accessible-mixed-realityanast","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2020-02-22 17:15:43","post_modified":"2021-07-07 11:23:07","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/accessible-mixed-realityanast\/","post_excerpt":"This project considers how to design emerging Mixed Reality technologies (including AR and VR) so that they are usable by and useful to people of all abilities. 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