Indoor navigation by blind people: behaviors and challenges in unfamiliar spaces and buildings

Abstract

A lot of visually impaired people have suffered from being left out of the activities that can discourage them from going out for any social activities and interactions, which are usually related to navigation. Regardless outdoors, travelling inside public spaces are a different story as many environmental cues cannot be used and have their own set of difficulties. Some technologies have come into play helping these people to have freedom in navigation (e.g., accessible map, indoor navigation systems, wearable computing devices, etc.). However, technologies like accessible maps or indoor navigation system are insufficient to fulfill the independent navigation gap due to additional information is required (obstacles, barriers, and accessibility). To promote the indoor navigation and create better use of technologies for visually impaired people, it is essential to understand the facts, and actual problems that they experience, and what behaviors and strategies they use to overcome any problems, which apparently led to this study. 30 visually impaired people and 15 experts were recruited and asked to give interviews regarding the behaviors, strategies, and challenges found with indoor navigation, especially public spaces e.g., universities, hospitals, malls, museums, and airports. The findings from this present study reveal that navigating inside buildings and public spaces full of unfamiliar features is too difficult to attempt the first time for a number of reasons, reducing their confidence in independent navigation.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Gary Wills: orcid.org/0000-0001-5771-4088

Catalogue record

Export record

Altmetrics