An Audio-Tactile System for Visually Impaired People to Explore Indoor Maps

Nowadays, a great amount of information is communicated in visual form. This excludes visually impaired people from easily accessing that information. A consequence is that they tend to limit their mobility due to lack of information. The goal of this work is to make indoor maps more accessible to help blind people preparing a trip to unknown buildings. In our approach, we further developed an interactive audio-tactile system to facilitate access to indoor maps. A study with blind participants showed that the prototype was well accepted and easy to use. The participants were able to achieve accurate mental models of the provided maps. A further comparison with sighted participants using visual maps showed no significant differences in the ability to describe the maps.