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@Article{PRESENCE95-vws, 
  author =       {Don Stredney and Wayne Carlson and J. Edward {Swan~II} and Beth Blostein}, 
  title =        {The Determination of Environmental Accessibility and ADA Compliance 
                  through Virtual Wheelchair Simulation}, 
  journal =      {PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments}, 
  note =         {First Special Issue on The Application of Virtual Environments to 
                  Architecture, Building, and Large Structure Design}, 
  month =        {Summer}, 
  year =         1995, 
  volume =       4, 
  number =       3, 
  pages =        {297--305}, 
  abstract =     { 
The widespread use of power wheelchairs has greatly increased the requirements 
for accessibility of buildings and other architectural structures to handicapped 
persons.  In addition, recent advances in microcomputer technology have made 
possible increasingly sophisticated power wheelchair interfaces, such as halo, 
puff and sip, and muscle control mechanisms, which can provide mobility for an 
even larger portion of the handicapped population.  Finally, the ADA (the 
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990) requires handicapped accessibility for 
(almost) all public structures. 
We have developed a virtual structure prototyping system that allows navigation 
by a person using a power wheelchair.  The system is a tool for three groups of 
people: 1) for architects and designers, it provides structure visualization 
that can both improve the handicapped accessibility of building designs and test 
a structure for ADA compli-ance; 2) for wheelchair users, it provides more 
appropriate device fitting and training with wheelchair control mechanisms; and 
3) for health care professionals, it provides evaluations of wheelchair users. 
The system consists of an instrumented, joystick-driven power wheelchair 
connected to a high-performance graphics workstation; it simulates the actual 
speed and maneuverability of the particular wheelchair within a virtual 
structure.  The display generates realistic interiors containing multiple light 
sources and surface textures and is viewed in stereo through lightweight 
polarized glasses.  The system maintains a hierarchical data structure which 
detects collisions between the virtual wheelchair and the environment. 
In this paper we discuss 1) the system's user interface, 2) the system's 
hardware and software configuration, 3) the impact of the system on the 
architectural design process, and 4) future system additions.  In the last 
section we also discuss some implications of virtual manipulation for enabling 
technology. 
}, 
}