Challenges experienced by disabled people when traveling on and interacting with an autonomous bus

ABSTRACT: Traveling on and interacting with an autonomous bus confronts disabled passengers with a handful of different and unknown challenges in terms of accessibility. To address this, a user journey was developed that includes the challenges for disabled passengers when traveling and interacting with an autonomous bus. The user journey provides a chronological list of occurring challenges for passengers with a disability. With the help of three qualitative studies in which four bus operators, ten bus drivers and 25 disabled passengers participated, the challenges of the user journey could be identified and some important requirements for possible solutions could be determined. By identifying the challenges, solutions can now be developed so that disabled passengers can travel on an autonomous bus and therefore the accessibility of autonomous buses can be increased.