Improving Urban Accessibility Data Collection through Enhanced User Experience in a Crowdsourcing Web Application

To support people’s independent travel and reduce their stress in travel planning, DoorFront.org was developed to collect large-scale accessibility data of (NYC) storefronts using crowdsourcing, Google Street View (GSV), and artificial intelligence (AI). The collected data includes useful visual knowledge, such as bounding boxes of various storefront objects in GSV images and their corresponding geographical locations. With this data, the development of assistive apps for orientation and mobility training or real-time navigation becomes possible, which greatly facilitates independent travel for people with visual impairment. However, collecting a high-quality large-scale urban accessibility dataset requires numerous volunteers to participate. In this paper, we aim to engage more volunteers and improve their user experience by designing and developing gamification functionalities and user interfaces that showcase volunteer contributions.