What if you search for directions from place A to place B while you are only able to use a keyboard as input and navigation device on websites?
MAIN_web, an Austrian initiative for media accessibility, asked to try and navigate the web only by using the tab key. I tried to get directions on three popular mapping sites: Google, Microsoft Live Maps and Mapquest. That’s how it went…
Google Maps initially focuses on the search bar and you can start typing the search query right away. Use “to” between both addresses and Google reads it as search for directions between 2 places. No tab yet needed (“enter” triggered the search) to get the first results. Unfortunately there are more options for one of both places and Google suggested some alternative addresses. Hoping down to the right suggestion took about 33 tabs. After that, the right directions showed up on the map, together with textual descriptions beside. The problem then was that it’s not possible to look up detailed views of the route only by navigating with the keyboard though.
The site doesn’t focus on the search bar. It takes 9 tabs to reach the point where you can start typing the search query. The search engine didn’t understand “to” as search for directions, so I had to enable direction search first: 7 more tabs. From there you hop 19 tabs around the page to access the “start” field and one more to enter the “end” address. One address wasn’t found immediately, but the suggested correct address was only 4 tabs away. As before, the result page shows the route on the map and descriptions, but it’s not possible to access further or more detailed information on certain route items by only using the keyboard.
Mapquest puts the focus on the search bar. For directions you have to use the form below on the page: 5 tabs away before you can start typing start and end locations in different form fields. As before, one address wasn’t unique and Mapquest offers several suggestions. Unfortunately there’s no way to access those by using the keyboard only, the page sends you around in circles in the header area. So no directions from Mapquest at all.
It’s an interesting experiment and gives a feeling about web accessibility. I checked some other (own) mapping sites too and I guess there are some things we should look into. At least the main information or purpose of a site should be accessible that way.
This is going to be a list-post, a must-have item on blogs as I read recently.
Last week I attended Richard Weait‘s OpenStreetMap presentation at the Boston LUG. He gave a good overview on what OSM is about, why it’s so fascinating and showed how to participate. Even though I’m a bit familiar with OSM for some time now, I learned a couple of new things about OpenStreetMap:
North America is only covered superficial. It looks good on a small scale, large areas appear mapped in OSM, but as you zoom in and look at it more closely you’ll find many problems. I’m not sure if motivation would be higher if people start mapping from scratch and “create” their own maps of their places instead of working on existing data and fix errors. On the other hand, the AND data donation of Indian and Chinese road data (mostly of poor quality) helped to create awareness and interest in mapping those countries, as some people mentioned during the discussion.
Germany has the largest OSM community. Not surprising that this country is among the first ones where OSM is integrated into business models (e.g. Geofabrik, WhereGroup or GDV).
Open Database License: the idea of Creative Commons transferred to suit database licensing.
“Edit wars” taking place in Cyprus about the default place names, shell scripts vs. manual edits.
OpenPisteMap: an OSM side project for ski slopes which adds hill shading and contour lines to OSM. One might think that it’s Austria’s #1 mapping project. Well, I’m afraid that’s not the case. Apparently not many fellow citizens have ever heard of it because we look like a desert in terms of available ski slopes at OpenPisteMap. Shame on us!
If you discover OSM flaws and can’t fix them directly on the map, then just go to and add a note in OpenStreetBugs.
Another interesting OpenStreetMap routing service I didn’t know before. It even considers elevation profiles for cyclists or pedestrians where available.
The parts of Cambridge I know so far are mapped fine (was a MassGIS data donation). The only thing I’m doing here in OSM is adding bike lanes to existing streets in my neighborhood. Since I really enjoy exploring this place by bike, that’s probably the most useful map layer to me.
Another option to integrate rendered OpenStreetMap images in a GIS desktop client or web application is to add OpenStreetMap as OGC compliant Web Map Service. For the European continent such a service is now provided by the German WhereGroup.
The service is available as a free basic WMS (GetCapabilities), updated biannually, and two commercial versions, updated daily, for specific map customization needs and high performances.
OpenStreetMap is on the way to become a serious alternative map source in professional GIS environments. The question how the professional GIS community responds to Creative Commons licensing will surely open some interesting debates anytime soon.
My favorite ArcMap extension Arc2Earth got updated and brings now rendered OpenStreetMap layers into ArcMap:
Previous versions supported map tile layers import from Virtual Earth, Yahoo! or Ask. Certainly a great feature which allows easy access to good and up-to-date base maps in many regions. The only problem is that without proper licensing it’s not possible to use them for commercial purposes. I’m not a lawyer, but as far as I understand the term commercial purpose, only loading and viewing those layers in ArcMap in a business environment (e.g. at the office) can already result in a license violation. Good license deals might not be such a problem at the enterprise level, for small businesses who need those maps here and there, it is quite often an issue.
Being able to load OpenStreetMap instead of Virtual Earth, etc. into ArcMap removes a lot of those licensing headaches.
As long as attribution and share alike work for you, you can basically do whatever you want with OpenStreetMap in ArcMap – copy, distribute, print, derive, etc.
There is a long list of other new features and fixes that come with the latest release of Arc2Earth. OpenLayers as additional viewer for exported map tiles is one of those which caught my attention.
The map development team at Flickr released some interesting new additions to their geo API: shapes – not yet real ESRI Shapefiles, even though they’re on their way (see code.flickr for more information on that).
Flickr shapes are, as I understand it, polygons of aggregated point clouds of photo locations sharing the same location name. For geotagging, Flickr uses a very smart method: once the user has placed a photo on the map, the system sets a place name next to the photo. At the same time Flickr offers name modifications if the user isn’t happy with the proposed name. A list of name alternatives shows up where the user can pick the one which sounds best. That way Flickr constantly receives user feedback on its geodata and can continuously refine its geoname system.
On the other end Flickr makes the collected data through its API available again (see flickr.places.getInfo). I queried Vienna and some neighborhoods to see what the shapes look like in the city I know best. Surprisingly the city boundary is more accurate than I’d have thought. Keep in mind that it’s just the result of people geotagging photos and not surveying an administrative border.
The red line is the Flickr shape, the white line is the city boundary in Google Earth.
To obtain proper Flickr shapes on smaller neighborhoods, a certain critical mass of geotags needs to be achieved. Especially tourist hotpots turn out to be a potential pitfall: there is a high share of users geotagging without good local knowledge. Locals, who usually know the area better, won’t move around tourist attractions and take pictures that much. The relatively small amount of more accurate geotags done by locals will vanish in the mass of inaccurate geotags.
The yellow shape is Stephansdom, probably mostly tagged by thousands of tourists. Although Stephansdom is supposed to be the city center, it’s still only a square around a church within the neighborhood Innere Stadt, the green shape. As the picture shows, the relation and location of both shapes is slightly shifted.
I think some sort of ranking mechanisms can help here – a proper method to determine how accurate and trustworthy a name and corresponding geotag are.
Anyways, the idea of crowdsourced geonames on Flickr is interesting and it’s generally fascinating to watch the development a photo gallery has gone through over the last years. [via geobloggers]
Second Light is a new development of MS research on Microsoft’s multi-touch device Surface. It basically allows to display additional information in some kind of hidden light layer above the Surface screen. That way, extra map layers, like labels, can be shown on top of a base map without covering geographic objects for instance. It seems to be an interesting option for visualizing and exploring geographic content – makes me wonder when we see Virtual Earth demoing on Surface.
The video below gives a quick demo of how Second Light works.
That’s what I actually had in mind: creating a local Sandbox in VMware for testing GeoServer in conjunction with other FOSS GIS software. As it turned out, it’s not necessary to set such a system up by myself. Ricardo Pinho did it already and made a VMware image already available:
GISVM is intended to be a full-feature GIS Workstation based exclusively on free GIS software: PostgreSQL, PostGIS, GeoServer, Mapserver, FWTools, QGIS/GRASS, gvSIG, uDIG and Kosmo, on Ubuntu Desktop.
Great work! Exactly what I wanted. It’s a huge time saver. GISVM gives you a feel what FOSS GIS software can do for you, without going through any installation and configuration hassles.
GISVM works well as sandbox in VMware Fusion (aff link) here on the MacBook (1 processor and 512MB RAM enabled) , although it asked for upgrading the image file and installing VMware Tools for better performance.
…preferable in OpenStreetMap as Helge from the NGO Laafisuggests and support development in Africa with unrestricted access to free public maps.
Google basically asks for the same thing, with one small difference: your edits go to Google, and not to Africa:
… By submitting User Submissions to the Service, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display, distribute, and create derivative works of the User Submission. …
Alex and I would like to take the opportunity and introduce, talk about and discuss our project timatio. And I would be interested in doing a session about OpenStreetMap – advantages, use case scenarios or licensing issues compared to other map sources for instance.
Great experiences at former BarCamps let me look forward to an interesting event next weekend. Be there!
What if you search for directions from place A to place B while you are only able to use a keyboard as input and navigation device on websites?
