Swiss Federal Railways and the University of Basel co-designed 'SBB Inclusive', a Bluetooth-beacon and GPS app closing the real-time information gap for blind and visually impaired train travellers, via a five-stage participatory process with 60+ participants.
9 advisory board members
Participatory design workshop advisory board
34 visually impaired travellers
Proof-of-concept testers
4 blind usability testers
Usability testing participants
60 SBB employees
Internal SBB staff workshops reach
Details
Maturity
Established
Promoter
Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) & University of Basel
Period
2018-2020
Keywords
railways, transport, digital accessibility, assistive technology
Context
Travellers with visual impairments face persistent information gaps on train journeys: departure boards and onboard announcements are rarely available in accessible acoustic or tactile form.
Objectives
Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) and the University of Basel set out to close this real-time information gap by co-designing an accessible travel app with blind and visually impaired travellers themselves.
Activities
A five-stage participatory design process ran from 2018 to 2020: two problem-identification workshops with a nine-member advisory board representing different disabilities; two hackathons, including a blind developer, testing Bluetooth beacons for onboard announcements and GPS geofencing for platform and departure data; a proof-of-concept phase with 34 visually impaired travellers, 10 further participants shadowed on real journeys, and a 14-respondent questionnaire; a design phase with usability testing by 4 blind users on HTML/CSS prototypes; and three internal workshops with 60 SBB employees to build organisational understanding of accessible design. The resulting app, SBB Inclusive, is screen-reader compatible and shipped for iOS (SwiftUI) and Android (Flutter).
Conclusions
The design process was published in the peer-reviewed proceedings of ICCHP 2020. The published record documents the design and participatory-research process itself rather than independent post-launch usage statistics, so sustained impact depends on SBB continuing to maintain and promote the app after its initial launch.
Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
SBB and University of Basel research/design team, 9-member advisory board representing different disabilities, a blind developer included in the technical hackathons
Conditions for success
Co-design with target users at every stage, from problem identification to usability testing
Inclusion of a blind developer in technical feasibility hackathons
Internal organisational-culture workshops (60 staff) to build buy-in beyond the design team
Common failure modes
Sustained impact depends on SBB continuing to maintain and promote the app after launch; no independent post-launch usage evidence is yet available
Where it fits
Governance type
national rail operator and university research partnership
Scale
national rail network (Switzerland)
Income level
high-income
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