Increasing the density of local landmarks in wayfinding instructions for the visually impaired

Padmanaban R., Krukar J.

Abstract

Multiple approaches to support non-visual navigation have been proposed, of which traditional auditory turn-by-turn navigational systems achieved high popularity. Despite being modified according to the needs of visually impaired users, the underlying dataset communicated to the wayfinder is sourced primarily from traditional POI databases which are of limited use to blind navigators. This work proposes the use of environmental features spontaneously detected by blind navigators during their everyday locomotion as ‘local landmarks’ for enriching auditory navigational instructions. We report results of a survey which served to identify such environmental features. Consequently, we propose a list of potential local landmarks for the blind. Next, in a usability study, we demonstrate that enriching traditional turn-by-turn auditory instructions with local landmarks can improve the subjective satisfaction and confidence in navigation. Results indicate that the improvements seem to be achieved even without increasing the subjective complexity of the instructions. Finally we discuss how using local landmarks to enrich auditory navigational instructions can benefit visually impaired users.

Projects the publication originates from