Abstract
In workplaces or publicly accessible buildings, escape routes are signposted according to official norms or international standards that specify distances, angles and areas of interest for the positioning of escape-route signs. In homes for the elderly, in which the residents commonly have degraded mobility and suffer from vision impairments caused by age or eye diseases, the specifications of current norms and standards may be insufficient. Quantifying the effect of symptoms of vision impairments like reduced visual acuity on recognition distances is challenging, as it is cumbersome to find a large number of user study participants who suffer from exactly the same form of vision impairments. Hence, we propose a new methodology for such user studies: By conducting a user study in virtual reality (VR), we are able to use participants with normal or corrected sight and simulate vision impairments graphically. The use of standardized medical eyesight tests in VR allows us to calibrate the visual acuity of all our participants to the same level, taking their respective visual acuity into account. Since we primarily focus on homes for the elderly, we accounted for their often limited mobility by implementing a wheelchair simulation for our VR application.
Highlights
In this work, we investigate the influence of vision impairments on the recognizability of escape-route signs
To provide a highly immersive environment, we introduce an interactive, controlled test environment including a wheelchair-based type of locomotion, and use highquality lighting simulation. – we provide an analysis of the data obtained from our user study in comparison with the values prescribed by international standards and European norms
The results of our user study comprise data collected from maximum recognition distance (MRD) measurements as well as a questionnaire completed by each participant
Summary
We investigate the influence of vision impairments on the recognizability of escape-route signs. The results of the conducted user study suggest that current norms specifying the positioning of escape-route signage should be adapted for certain buildings like homes for the elderly, where a larger average loss of visual acuity can be expected among the residents than in the general population. They are placed according to norms or standards that specify both the maximum recognition distance (MRD) and viewing angles of a sign as well as important areas where they have to be placed. In places like retirement homes, where one can expect an increased percentage of people to have impairments that reduce their visual MRD, the standards provided by the norms might not be sufficient to allow for successful emergency response. We decided to focus on the most common symptom associated with age-related vision impairments and eye diseases, which
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