HSLU digitally testing urban obstacles
Lucerne - The «Achtung Barriere!» Project tests how people with disabilities experience cities and the obstacles that make their daily lives more difficult. To achieve this, mixed reality applications are used. The project is being carried out by the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU), Correctiv.Schweiz and zentralplus.ch.
The Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU), the investigative journalism collective Correctiv.Schweiz (the Swiss branch of Corrective, the German non-profit investigative organization) and zentralplus.ch, an online magazine based in Central Switzerland, have conducted a study into urban life, focusing on the obstacles that people with disabilities face on a daily basis. According to a press release, the aim of the «Achtung Barriere!» project is to make the reality of everyday life in urban environments for people affected by neurodivergencies tangible for others and to show how they perceive their environment.
In a first step, the project partners developed a virtual city tour. The digital application reportedly makes it clear «how challenging it is for people with visual impairments to cross the road and how much stress these situations cause». Secondly, immersive mixed reality (MR) experiences allow people to be «immersed in the scene» using special MR glasses and headphones, as the design researcher Tobias Matter, a specialist in augmented and mixed reality, explains. In this way, the multisensory overstimulation experienced by an autistic person, which is triggered by the «noise, movement and chaotic situation of a construction site», can be realistically replicated.
The research project, which is funded by the Gebert Rüf Foundation, also leans on the experiences of Lucerne inhabitants. The public can report their experiences in relation to urban obstacles via CrowdNewsroom.org, a research platform owned by Correctiv.
According to Pascal Ruedin, Head of Projects at the Civil Engineering Office, «there is friction between different perspectives, expectations and experiences at almost every streetcorner in the city». As a contact partner for the project, the city of Lucerne is striving to turn these differing perspectives into «a shared exchange». The results should ultimately create a basis for political decision-makers to «better understand spatial impacts» in relation to future urban planning decisions.
