Accessible Communications of the Needs of Persons with Disabilities

Building codes are often written in complex legal language, making them difficult to understand. While diagrams can help, they often lack standardization and fail to convey the intent of the requirements. To help architects, engineers, contractors, and inspectors to understand the intent and specifics of requirements, we aim to develop a set of best practices for creating successful instructional diagrams. After completing a baseline study of existing diagrams of accessibility requirements, we will propose a set of accessible diagram principles for both the creation and automated compliance testing of diagrams. We will then apply those principles and create and test an open source library of validated visual learning components for building codes. This work will benefit the construction industry overall and Trax in particular to augment the licensed codes and standards in the Trax Codes product.

Faculty Supervisor:

Jian Zhao

Student:

Partner:

Trax

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Information and cultural industries; Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Waterloo

Program: