Introduction -
Dr John Gill (Chairman, PhoneAbility)

Past, Present and Proposed Projects in Sweden -
Dr Jan-Ingvar Lindström

The Swedish National Post & Telecom Agency has initiated a study on Navigating, Alarming and Positioning systems for people with disabilities. The study has been performed by the Department of Speech, Music and Hearing at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in close cooperation with the Swedish Handicap Institute.

The study comprises a historical background, state-of-art investigation on technology and interesting activities in the field and interviews with a number of organizations of people with disabilities and various actors in the field. The study also includes a review of available systems, consideration of financial, legal and ethical matters and identification of possible trials during 2006.

The lecture will present the results of the study, including the proposed trials in three different cities in Sweden.

Mobilisation and Accessibility Planning for People with Disabilities -
Gary Randall, British Maritime Technology (BMT) Ltd

Many disabled users are prevented from accessing functionally and socially important activities such as shopping, visiting public parks, theatres etc. because of a lack of real-time accessibility knowledge. Currently the simplest of excursions can involve military scale planning to ensure that the planned journey is feasible. MAPPED will provide users with the ability to plan excursions from any point to any other point, at any time, using public transport, their own vehicle, walking, or using a wheelchair, taking into consideration all their accessibility needs. In addition to this, MAPPED will provide the users with location-based services tailored to their accessibility needs.

Older People Engaging with Navigation Technology -
Claudine McCreadie, King's College, London

The research that I shall talk about in my presentation is part of a multi-disciplinary project that has been funded under a programme designed to put people at the centre of communications and information technology <www.paccit.gla.ac.uk>. My colleagues at City and York Universities are applying new developments in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Location Based Services (LBS) to address the pedestrian navigational needs of two groups of people who are frequently excluded from the focus of commercial designers: older people and people with severe visual impairments. As a research fellow in the Institute of Gerontology, King's College London, I have been responsible for two components of the research specifically focused on older people. First, we investigated older people's activities and movements, and their views on the potential of a navigation aid, and secondly, in conjunction with my colleagues from City University, we have tested out two versions of a navigation device with a small sample of older people (age range 73 - 86). The conference paper will report on the findings from this user-focused work, with special reference to the issues raised by the older users in the field-work and their implications for further technical developments.

Movipolis: A Proactive, Personal, Multi-media Interpreter for the Sensory Impaired -
Luis Alcántara, Rigel, Spain

The Movipolis system helps creating a smart environment around sensory-impaired people that conveys to them in the appropriate format all the relevant information related to the surrounding objects and places. The mobile phone becomes a new interface to the environment that takes advantage of the healthy senses.
A number of combined tracking-communication beacons need to be strategically installed in certain places or vehicles to detect the proximity of the users. By making use of this network, a set of guiding rules and the knowledge accumulated of each user, an intelligent server decides whether to send multimedia messages and chooses the most appropriate ones.

The Movipolis system is not only a pro-active mechanism to alert users but also offers a cost-effective channel for user-server interaction through the Bluetooth gateways.