Literature Reviews

Reviewed research papers, articles, and publications relevant to digital accessibility.

• PathFinder: Designing a Map-less Navigation System for Blind People in Unfamiliar Buildings

  Masaki Kuribayashi, Tatsuya Ishihara, Daisuke Sato, Jayakorn Vongkulbhisal, Karnik Ram, Seita Kayukawa, Hironobu Takagi, Shigeo Morishima, Chieko Asakawa (2023) — Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

  Map-based indoor navigation systems for blind travellers (CaBot, NavCog, BLE-beacon apps) work well when a prebuilt map exists, but building and maintaining those maps is labour-intensive and has only been done for a tiny fraction of the world's buil…

  • map-less navigation
  • blind navigation
  • indoor navigation
  • intersection detection
  • sign recognition
  • visual impairment
  • orientation and mobility
  • participatory design
  • shared control
  • assistive robotics
  • LiDAR
  • OCR

• Snap&Nav: Smartphone-based Indoor Navigation System For Blind People via Floor Map Analysis and Intersection Detection

  Masaya Kubota, Masaki Kuribayashi, Seita Kayukawa, Hironobu Takagi, Chieko Asakawa, Shigeo Morishima (2024) — Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (MobileHCI)

  Snap&Nav is a smartphone-based indoor navigation system for blind travellers that works in any building with a visible floor map, without requiring the building owner to pre-build a digital map, install BLE beacons, or deploy any other localisation i…

  • blindness and low vision
  • indoor navigation
  • wayfinding
  • map-less navigation
  • intersection detection
  • orientation and mobility
  • sighted assistance
  • mobile accessibility
  • computer vision

• WanderGuide: Indoor Map-less Robotic Guide for Exploration by Blind People

  Masaki Kuribayashi, Kohei Uehara, Allan Wang, Shigeo Morishima, Chieko Asakawa (2025) — Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '25)

  Kuribayashi and colleagues design WanderGuide, a suitcase-shaped robotic guide that supports blind people in recreational, open-ended exploration of indoor environments — wandering, browsing, window-shopping — rather than getting from A to B. The tea…

  • assistive robotics
  • indoor navigation
  • blindness and low vision
  • visual impairment
  • recreational exploration
  • map-less navigation
  • multimodal large language model
  • human-robot interaction
  • museum accessibility
  • image description