Abstract
Visually impaired people (VIP) feel a lack of aid for their facilitated urban mobility, mainly due to obstacles encountered on their routes. This paper describes the design of AudioMaps, a prototype of cartographic technology for mobile devices. AudioMaps was designed to register the descriptions and locations of points of interest. When a point is registered, the prototype inserts a georeferenced landmark on the screen (based on Google Maps). Then, if the AudioMaps position is next to (15 or 5 m from) the previously registered point, it sends by audio the missing distance and a description. For a preview, a test area located in Monte Carmelo, Brazil, was selected, and the light poles, street corners (name of streets forming the intersections), and crosswalks were registered in AudioMaps. A tactile model, produced manually, was used to form the first image of four sighted people and four VIP, who completed a navigation task in the tested area. The results indicate that both the tactile model and the audiovisual prototype can be used by both groups of participants. Above all, the prototype proved to be a viable and promising option for decision-making and spatial orientation in urban environments. New ways of presenting data to VIP or sighted people are described.
Highlights
Humans have a need to connect with the environment in which they live, through everyday activities
The perception of the outside world is driven by information captured by sensory systems, as reported by Gibson [2]: auditory, haptic, olfactory, gustatory, and visual
Since people rely on sensory organs to form their inner knowledge of the environment, language is an essential factor for the apprehension of body space and, subsequently, space-environment
Summary
Humans have a need to connect with the environment in which they live, through everyday activities. Many computing devices for VIP were designed with the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) [21,22] These technological advances, have not been accompanied by an adequate investigation of human–computer interactions (e.g., designing navigational aids for people who form different cognitive maps for navigation) [23,30]. The spatial representations underlying navigation performance can be abstracted from different perceptual modalities [29,33,34,35] Such skills can be tested through cognitive maps, and two ways of evaluating them are highlighted: knowledge of routes and knowledge of configuration of spaces. The efficiency of each group of volunteers was analyzed according to previous knowledge of the study area
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