Sonification of Navigation Instructions for People with Visual Impairment

Abstract

Navigation assistance services for people with visual impairment pose the challenge of providing accurate guidance through non-visual navigation instructions.This paper proposes two techniques based on the use of non-speech audio instructions, to guide the user during navigation assistance, and in particular during turns and straight paths.The techniques were evaluated in a real-world environment with nine participants having severe visual impairment. Experimental results showed that one of the proposed techniques is significantly more effective than a baseline approach adopted in existing solutions, in terms of navigation accuracy during turns and straight paths.Thus, this technique is a practical and effective solution to the problem of non-visual navigation assistance for people with visual impairment.

Keywords: visual impairment, mobility, navigation assistance, Sonification