Informed Consent Form

Study Title

Leveraging Human-in-the-Loop Crowdsourcing for Richer Perception Data in Streetscape Evaluation

Invitation

You are invited to take part in a research study. Participation is entirely voluntary. Please read this form carefully and take as much time as you need to decide. You may ask the researcher any question before agreeing.

Purpose of the Study

This study investigates how a crowdsourcing platform that provides artificial intelligence (AI) assistance shapes the experience of annotating pedestrian obstructions in street-level images, and how the annotations collected can be used to improve an automated obstruction model. Your contributions help build data on sidewalk accessibility in Metro Manila.

Who May Participate

You may participate if you are at least 18 years of age, have basic digital literacy, and have access to a web browser on a computer, tablet, or smartphone. No prior experience in computer vision, mapping, or accessibility assessment is required.

What Participation Involves

If you agree, you will:

• create an account and complete a short demographic profile;
• complete a brief guided tutorial on how to use the annotation interface;
• annotate street-level images by marking obstructions, judging whether each object blocks pedestrian movement, rating severity, and answering scene-level questions about the sidewalk;
• complete a short workload questionnaire (the NASA Task Load Index) after selected sessions; and
• optionally complete a brief exit questionnaire at the end of the study.

You participate remotely, at times of your own choosing, for as long and as often as you wish over the study period.

Time Commitment

Participation is self-directed and open-ended. You choose how many images to annotate in each session and how often to return. There is no minimum or maximum, and there is no fixed endpoint to your involvement other than the close of the study period.

Voluntary Participation and Right to Withdraw

Your participation is voluntary. You may stop at any time, without notifying the researcher and without giving a reason. Stopping carries no penalty or consequence of any kind. You may also request that your data be deleted at any time by contacting the researcher, and your data will be removed unless it has already been irreversibly aggregated for analysis.

Risks and Discomforts

The risks of participation are minimal and no greater than those of ordinary computer use. Extended annotation may cause mild eye strain or fatigue; you are free to rest or stop at any point. You will not be shown any distressing content, and the imagery contains no identifiable people, as faces and vehicle license plates are automatically blurred by the image provider before publication.

Benefits

There is no direct personal benefit to you. Your contributions support research on sidewalk accessibility and may inform future planning and accessibility efforts in Metro Manila.

Compensation

This is a volunteer study. You will not receive payment or any other compensation for participating.

Confidentiality and Data Handling

Your privacy is protected as follows:

• You are identified only by a pseudonymous identifier. No personally identifying information is attached to your annotations or activity logs.
• Your demographic responses are stored separately from your annotation and interaction data and are linked only through that pseudonymous identifier.
• The data collected includes your annotations, the interface actions you take, the time you spend, the type of device, browser, and screen size you use, and your questionnaire responses.
• All data is stored on university-managed infrastructure and retained only for the duration of the study and its subsequent analysis.
• Results will be reported in aggregate in a thesis and any resulting publications. No individual contributor will be identifiable in any output.
• The annotations you produce may form part of a research dataset used in future accessibility research, in de-identified form.

Withholding of Certain Study Details

To keep your responses natural, some specifics of the study are not described in full here. This does not affect your safety or your data in any way. A complete explanation (a debriefing statement) will be sent to all enrolled contributors at the end of the study.

Questions and Contacts

If you have questions about the study, you may contact the researcher, Francis Bawa, at francis_bawa@dlsu.edu.ph.

Consent Declaration

By selecting "I have read and understood this form and agree to participate," you confirm that:

• you are at least 18 years of age;
• you have read and understood this form;
• your questions, if any, have been answered; and
• you agree to participate voluntarily and understand that you may withdraw at any time without penalty.