LuzDeploy: A collective action system for installing navigation infrastructure for blind people

Abstract

Providing navigation assistance to people with visual impairments often requires augmenting the environment with after-market technology. However, installing navigation infrastructure in large environments requires a critical mass of trained personnel. Recruiting, training and managing participants for such a task is difficult. LuzDeploy is a computational method to recruit, instruct and orchestrate volunteers to perform physical crowdsourcing tasks. We use LuzDeploy to orchestrate volunteers to install physical infrastructure for the navigation assistance of people with visual impairments. Our system provides on-the-go enrollment so that volunteers can participate to the collective action whenever they have time, coming and leaving as needed. Providing automated instructions also allows to avoid instructing participants directly, so experts do not need to be available on-site.