Abstract
Feedback is one of the significant factors for the mental mapping of an environment. It is the communication of spatial information to blind people to perceive the surroundings. The assistive smartphone technologies deliver feedback for different activities using several feedback mediums, including voice, sonification and vibration. Researchers 0have proposed various solutions for conveying feedback messages to blind people using these mediums. Voice and sonification feedback are effective solutions to convey information. However, these solutions are not applicable in a noisy environment and may occupy the most important auditory sense. The privacy of a blind user can also be compromised with speech feedback. The vibration feedback could effectively be used as an alternative approach to these mediums. This paper proposes a real-time feedback system specifically designed for blind people to convey information to them based on vibration patterns. The proposed solution has been evaluated through an empirical study by collecting data from 24 blind people through a mixed-mode survey using a questionnaire. Results show the average recognition accuracy for 10 different vibration patterns are 90%, 82%, 75%, 87%, 65%, and 70%.
Highlights
Academic Editors: Shah Nazir and Mental mapping of an environment is essential for orientation and mobility [1]
We have developed a real-time feedback system specially designed for blind people to convey information to them based on vibration patterns
We have reported principal component factor analysis (PCFA) as it gives us better results as compared to others
Summary
Academic Editors: Shah Nazir and Mental mapping of an environment is essential for orientation and mobility [1]. Visual perception plays a dominant role in guiding people in an unknown environment and assisting them in performing their daily activities [4]. People with visual disabilities lack this information and face several challenges while visiting different places, e.g., bus terminals, academic buildings, shopping malls, and offices. They rely on other senses like touch, hearing, and haptic to explore these environments. Research on orientation and mobility in unknown spaces for blind people shows that spatial mapping and orientation skills should be endowed at two primary levels: perceptual and conceptual
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