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Navigation assistive technologies have been designed to support individuals with visual impairments during independent mobility by providing sensory augmentation and contextual awareness of their surroundings. Such information is habitually provided through predefned audio-haptic interaction paradigms. However, individual capabilities, preferences and behavior of people with visual impairments are heterogeneous, and may change due to experience, context and necessity. Therefore, the circumstances and modalities for providing navigation assistance need to be personalized to different users, and through time for each user. We conduct a study with 13 blind participants to explore how the desirability of messages provided during assisted navigation varies based on users' navigation preferences and expertise. The participants are guided through two different routes, one without prior knowledge and one previously studied and traversed. The guidance is provided through turn-by-turn instructions, enriched with contextual information about the environment. During navigation and follow-up interviews, we uncover that participants have diversifed needs for navigation instructions based on their abilities and preferences. Our study motivates the design of future navigation systems capable of verbosity level personalization in order to keep the users engaged in the current situational context while minimizing distractions.
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An Independent and Interactive Museum Experience for Blind People
Museums are gradually becoming more accessible to blind people, who have shown interest in visiting museums and in appreciating visual art. Yet, their ability to visit museums is still dependent on the assistance they get from their family and friends or from the museum personnel. Based on this observation and on prior research, we developed a solution to support an independent, interactive museum experience that uses the continuous tracking of the user’s location and orientation to enable a seamless interaction between Navigation and Art Appreciation. Accurate localization and context-awareness allow for turn-by-turn guidance (Navigation Mode), as well as detailed audio content when facing an artwork within close proximity (Art Appreciation Mode). In order to evaluate our system, we installed it at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and conducted a user study where nine blind participants followed routes of interest while learning about the artworks. We found that all participants were able to follow the intended path, immediately grasped how to switch between Navigation and Art Appreciation modes, and valued listening to the audio content in front of each artwork. Also, they showed high satisfaction and an increased motivation to visit museums more often
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- Award ID(s):
- 1637927
- PAR ID:
- 10308748
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 16th International Web for All Conference
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3315002.3317557
