A system for helping blind children acquire spatial awareness

Abstract

Blind children, particularly congenitally blind children, find it difficult to understand their surroundings. Spatial awareness requires the ability to recognize shapes, to perceive locations and directions in space, and to match one space with another space (like a map). To help congenitally blind children acquire spatial awareness, we developed a computerassisted instruction (CAI) system. This system consists of a personal computer, an image-capture board, and a camera with three charge couple devices. There are four tasks – object selection (circle, triangle and square), object location, a tic-tac-toe game, and Hukuwarai (arranging face parts). The last two tasks are included so that blind children may enjoy performing them. A blind user is asked to arrange blocks of different shapes according to vocal commands presented by the system. When the user completes the arrangement task, the camera captures a picture of the block layout. The system analyzes the shape and location of each block by image processing and outputs the result as speech expressing whether the arrangement is correct or not, and any correction, if necessary. The system achieves a rapid response of less than two seconds and has a simple interface requiring only mouse clicking. By repeating tasks using auditory corrections instead of getting help from sighted persons, the user acquires spatial awareness independently. We conducted experiments with five subjects, including three congenitally blind students, and two sighted children who were blindfolded. All of the subjects were interested in the system and the tasks, especially those involving games. We hope that the proposed system will help blind children gain spatial awareness.