Audiom: Developing an Indoor Non-Visual Mapping System

Project Abstract Indoor navigation for blind and visually impaired individuals (BVIs) within unfamiliar locations is typically an incredibly anxiety-provoking and stressful experience for numerous reasons, e.g., inaccessible signage including directories and venue maps, and if braille signs do exist, they are difficult to find, lack directional information, and are useless to the BVIs who do not read braille. For large areas, such as office buildings, stadiums, stores, malls, hospitals, museums, and hotels, BVIs must laboriously obtain extremely detailed directions beforehand or use human guides to navigate these independently. Indoor tactile maps are too expensive, too difficult to obtain, inaccessible to non-braille readers, often too complicated to understand, and only convey limited information. Digital maps requiring external devices, such as a vibration mouse, pin matrix, or force-feedback device are expensive to produce and acquire, which make these solutions impractical when discussing mass adoption or web accessibility. The result is an inordinate expenditure of time, money, and mental effort around navigation that significantly decreases quality of life and independence for BVIs. The majority of BVIs have repeatedly asked for maps to be part of wayfinding systems in wayfinding research, but there has been little research on digital non-visual maps, and no research evaluating how maps coupled with turn-by-turn navigation systems (TBTNS) can enhance the wayfinding ability of BVIs. To solve these problems, a digital cross-sensory map viewer called Audiom-Indoor will be developed to show indoor data that can be used with a TBTNS to enhance wayfinding for BVIs. Audiom-Indoor, unlike expensive tactile maps that are rarely available and on hand when needed, will be available on any device with a web browser, and be accessible to the many BVIs who are non-braille readers. Users will be able to explore data through an interactive auditory and text virtual reality interface that only require headphones, in contrast to other map viewers that generally only have one modality on one platform. Aim 1 will co-design (participatory design) and develop a proof of concept of a digital auditory indoor map viewer with BVIs outlined above. Goodmaps, the TBTNS partner, will make any needed modifications to their existing data set of the study location, the American Printing House for the Blind (APH) Offices. Aim 2 will evaluate the Goodmaps TBTNS alone, and with Audiom at APH. In each condition, BVI participants will travel a route aided by the tool, then again unaided by the tool. The proposed aims will establish both a new approach for digital non-visual map viewers, and measure the effect maps have when used with a TBTNS. If digital maps do positively enhance wayfinding with a TBTNS, it will facilitate greater independent travel, leading to a higher quality of life for BVIs.