The Effectiveness of Straight Line Walk Application Used on Straight-Walking Skills for Blind Students

Abstract

Some studies explore the needs and problems in navigating on the blind person, the ability to walk in a straight line and avoid the tendency to veer. Difficulties that often occur from the tendency to turn is that when traveling straight on the road or open area where environmental information is not good enough to be considered a clue for the visually impaired to help them in maintaining a straight line route. The development of aids for the visually impaired in this era is growing rapidly, both tools to help navigate using global internet-based positioning system and tools to train straight walking using a compass-based system like straight line walks. The purpose of this research is to see the effectiveness of the straight line walk application for visually impaired students walking skills. This research is based on the absence of special attention from the school with the veering phenomenon that occurs in blind students, and its effect which endangers students (such as tripping, crashing into trees, and even walking towards the middle of the highway). This research used the experimental approach with SSR A-B design method. The results showed a decrease in turning distance on the three subjects after being given intervention by using the straight line walk application. Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that the training program using the straight line walk application can improve the skills of walking straight on blind students.

Impact of a Vibrotactile Belt on Emotionally Challenging Everyday Situations of the Blind

“…Behaviourally, we conducted the straight-line walking task. This was designed to mimic the crossing of a large street or a square as especially challenging situations for the blind [12]. Our results revealed a better performance with the tactile belt in compass mode, which provides constant information of the north cardinal direction, in comparison to the road-crossing mode.…”

“…One well-known problem in this context is the detection of and correction for involuntary body turns as well as estimating the degree of intentional body turns, e.g., after walking around an obstacle or before making a turn [8]. There is a variety of aiding devices for the visually impaired, most notably the white cane (e.g., [9,10]), navigation applications for the smartphone (e.g., [11,12]) and auditory compasses [13][14][15]. Further developments of the white cane enable obstacle detection also from a greater distance [16][17][18].…”

Literature Review: Orientation and Mobility Assistive Technology for Students with Visual Impairment

“…In addition, the impact of vision loss may be implied by limitations in independent mobility (Lamoureux et al, 2004). Orientation and mobility abilities is the ability of individuals to move from one place to the destination safely (Yosfan Azwadi, 2004;Rahayu & Sunardi, 2018). Furthermore, in order to get to their destination safely they need tools.…”