Echo-house: Exploring a virtual environment by using echolocation

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Author(s)
Andrade, R
Baker, S
Waycott, J
Vetere, F
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2018
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Show full item recordAbstract
The graphics-intensive nature of most virtual environments (VEs) prevents many people with visual impairment from being able to successfully explore them. A percentage of the population of people with visual impairment are known to use echolocation -sound waves and their reflections- to better explore their surroundings. In this paper, we describe the development of an echolocation-enabled VE (Echo-House) and evaluate the feasibility of using echolocation as a novel technique to explore this environment. Results showed that echolocation gave participants an improved sense of space in the VE. However, the evaluation also ...
View more >The graphics-intensive nature of most virtual environments (VEs) prevents many people with visual impairment from being able to successfully explore them. A percentage of the population of people with visual impairment are known to use echolocation -sound waves and their reflections- to better explore their surroundings. In this paper, we describe the development of an echolocation-enabled VE (Echo-House) and evaluate the feasibility of using echolocation as a novel technique to explore this environment. Results showed that echolocation gave participants an improved sense of space in the VE. However, the evaluation also identified a range of orientation and mobility issues and found that participants needed additional support to gain confidence in their use of echolocation in the VE. Our findings suggest that with proper support, echolocation has the potential to improve access to VEs for people who are blind or visually impaired by revealing features that would be otherwise inaccessible.
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View more >The graphics-intensive nature of most virtual environments (VEs) prevents many people with visual impairment from being able to successfully explore them. A percentage of the population of people with visual impairment are known to use echolocation -sound waves and their reflections- to better explore their surroundings. In this paper, we describe the development of an echolocation-enabled VE (Echo-House) and evaluate the feasibility of using echolocation as a novel technique to explore this environment. Results showed that echolocation gave participants an improved sense of space in the VE. However, the evaluation also identified a range of orientation and mobility issues and found that participants needed additional support to gain confidence in their use of echolocation in the VE. Our findings suggest that with proper support, echolocation has the potential to improve access to VEs for people who are blind or visually impaired by revealing features that would be otherwise inaccessible.
View less >
Conference Title
OzCHI '18: Proceedings of the 30th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction
Copyright Statement
© ACM, 2018. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in OzCHI '18: Proceedings of the 30th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction, ISBN: 978-1-4503-6188-0, https://doi.org/10.1145/3292147.3292163