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This workshop will bring together researchers and practitioners interested in the use of technology to support people with disabilities and older people. This workshop will consider both indoor and outdoor navigation in the real world, as well as navigation in virtual and augmented reality. Technologies such as GPS, robotics and AI have provided many advances in independent, safe navigation for these groups, but there are new technologies always emerging and many challenges to be addressed. Participants at the workshop will have a chance to present their research and interests in the area, which may cover the technologies and methods used and the user groups of relevance. The workshop will synthesize the current challenges and opportunities in the area, current areas of research and gaps in the research portfolio as well as issues of importance which are not currently being addressed. Finally, it will seek to undertake and document a comprehensive literature review of recent research, as the research is published in many diverse journals and conferences. This will serve as a useful resource for researchers and develop a roadmap for future developments in the area.
Key Information and Dates
Key Information and Dates
Submission Deadline: June 1st 2025 (AoE)
Notification to Participants: June 9th 2025
Workshop registration deadline: June 23rd 2025. Note a dedicated workshop registration is required for each accepted paper.
Workshop Date: TBC 8th or 9th September 2025
Format: In person at Interact 2025 + online
Duration: Full Day
Organisers
Organisers
Helen Petrie, Gerhard Weber and Anna Bramwell-Dicks
Call for Participation
Call for Participation
Navigation can be a problem for anyone from time to time. Whether it is trying to find one’s way in an unfamiliar town or in the country, in a complex office building, or a hospital, airport or museum. Increasingly, we need to navigate through virtual environments as well as real ones. For people with disabilities and older people, these situations can be particularly challenging. This in turn means that disabled and older people may miss opportunities for work and leisure, are less independent and have poorer quality of life overall. Technologies have provided exceptional advances in relation to navigation for everyone, from GPS guidance and digital maps to beacon-based audio guides in museums. These developments have also been very important to disabled people, for example providing pedestrian navigation systems for visually disabled people. Other technologies have support people with physical disabilities, for example power wheelchairs with autonomous navigation and exoskeletons for mobility. However, many gaps remain and new technologies are constantly emerging which might be put to use to help older and disabled people. This workshop will be an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to discuss recent research on technologies for navigation for disabled and older people, the gaps in research which could be addressed, as well as methodological issues and different approaches.
Topics
Topics
The workshop will address all current and recent topics of research on the use of technology for navigation for disabled and older people, be it outdoor navigation, both urban and rural, indoor navigation, navigation in large public spaces (airports, hospitals, train and bus stations, museums etc.), be it in the real world or a virtual world. It will also address a range of adjacent issues to actual navigation research, including but not limited to:
Indoor, outdoor navigation, obstacle detection and avoidance
accessibility of public transport
route planning and understanding and using maps, both physical and digital
navigating with autonomous vehicles
training for navigation in both the real and virtual worlds
methodological and ethical issues in research on this topic
Submissions
Submissions
We invite participants to submit a position paper with a maximum length of 2000 words (in any format) by email to helen.petrie@york.ac.uk, describing your interest or research in this topic. We welcome submissions based on early-stage research ideas as well as those based on more developed projects.
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