Investigating the Effect of Exploring Multimodal Maps at Different Orientations on Blind User’s Cognitive Maps and Sense of Directions

Abstract

Maps have been used in different ways to facilitate traveller in way finding. Depending on the traveller’s ability to translate the direction on the map of the real world, maps are normally read in different orientations. Some travellers have the ability to rotate the map mentally without having to change its original orientation while some require the map to be aligned with the direction to their intended paths as discovered in the literature. Blind people are not excluded from using maps. A multimodal map has been introduced to enable blind people to learn maps. However, the exploration of the maps using the multimodal map is restricted to a static orientation. Therefore, this study investigates the map exploration by the blind participants under two conditions; static and rotation. The aim of this study is to examine the effect of exploring maps at different orientations on blind user’s cognitive maps and sense of directions. The findings of this study show the difference in the pointing accuracy of the participants in static and rotatable conditions approach significant. Results also show that blind people have the ability to build a cognitive map of the maps learned in the rotatable condition. However, the sense of direction is not correlated with the pointing accuracy for the blind participants in this study. This paper also concludes by discussing the potential of including a rotation feature on a multimodal map in order to facilitate blind people in map exploration.