Experimental Analysis of a Spatialised Audio Interface for People with Visual Impairments

Abstract

Sound perception is a fundamental skill for many people with severe sight impairments. The research presented in this paper is part of an ongoing project with the aim to create a mobile guidance aid to help people with vision impairments find objects within an unknown indoor environment. This system requires an effective non-visual interface and uses bone-conduction headphones to transmit audio instructions to the user. It has been implemented and tested with spatialised audio cues, which convey the direction of a predefined target in 3D space. We present an in-depth evaluation of the audio interface with several experiments that involve a large number of participants, both blindfolded and with actual visual impairments, and analyse the pros and cons of our design choices. In addition to producing results comparable to the state-of-the-art, we found that Fitts's Law (a predictive model for human movement) provides a suitable a metric that can be used to improve and refine the quality of the audio interface in future mobile navigation aids. CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → HCI theory, concepts and models; Laboratory experiments; Sound-based input / output; Pointing devices; Empirical studies in accessibility.

An innovative smart glass for blind people using artificial intelligence

“…The main drawback of the system is high power consumption. Lock et al [16] investigated a multimodal user interface that uses sound andvibration alarms to transmit navigation information to target users. The main drawback is that you need to run arcore, which is not supported on all smartphone devices.…”