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Like many parents, visually impaired parents (VIPs) read books with their children. However, research on accessible reading technologies predominantly focuses on blind adults reading alone or sighted adults reading with blind children, such that the motivations, strategies, and needs of blind parents reading with their sighted children are still largely undocumented. To address this gap, we interviewed 13 VIPs with young children. We found that VIPs (1) sought familial intimacy through reading with their child, often prioritizing intimacy over their own access needs, (2) took on many types of access labor to read with their children, and (3) desired novel assistive technologies (ATs) for reading that prioritize intimacy while reducing access labor. We contribute the notion of Intimate AT, along with a demonstrative design space, which together constitute a new design paradigm that draws attention to intimacy as a facet of both independently and collaboratively accessible ATs.
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Navigable Space and Traversable Edges Differentially Influence Reorientation in Sighted and Blind Mice
Reorientation enables navigators to regain their bearings after becoming lost. Disoriented individuals primarily reorient themselves using the geometry of a layout, even when other informative cues, such as landmarks, are present. Yet the specific strategies that animals use to determine geometry are unclear. Moreover, because vision allows subjects to rapidly form precise representations of objects and background, it is unknown whether it has a deterministic role in the use of geometry. In this study, we tested sighted and congenitally blind mice ( Ns = 8–11) in various settings in which global shape parameters were manipulated. Results indicated that the navigational affordances of the context—the traversable space—promote sampling of boundaries, which determines the effective use of geometric strategies in both sighted and blind mice. However, blind animals can also effectively reorient themselves using 3D edges by extensively patrolling the borders, even when the traversable space is not limited by these boundaries.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1924732
- PAR ID:
- 10368040
- Publisher / Repository:
- SAGE Publications
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Psychological Science
- Volume:
- 33
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 0956-7976
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 925-947
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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