Virtual Environments for People Who Are Visually Impaired Integrated into an Orientation and Mobility Program

People who become visually impaired face great difficulties and limitations in independent travel in the process of losing sight. Orientation and mobility (OM Seki & Sato, 2011) showed that users required strong attention to auditory feedback. Technological advances in haptic interface technology have enabled blind people to explore new spaces and thus expand their spatial knowledge (Lahav & Mioduser, 2004; Parente & Bishop, 2003). These research results validated the potential of virtual environments for OM Lahav, Siddarth, Schloerb, & Srinivasan, 2008). BlindAid was developed to allow totally blind individuals or blindfolded people with low vision to explore unknown spaces in advance. The BlindAid system provided the virtual environments that the participants explored in this experiment (see Figure 1). The BlindAid application software runs on a personal computer (Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz) running Windows XP and equipped with a haptic device (SensAble Technologies, Desktop Phantom) and stereo headphones (Sennheiser, HD580). A simple graphic display allows sighted persons to observe the user's movements in the virtual environment. …