A study of collaboration via a digital space accessible to adolescents with visual impairment

The aim of this study is to observe whether the improvement of tactile digital space allows the visually impaired adolescents to interact and collaborate. A total of 12 participants (average age: 14 years 9 months) have to interact in pairs through a tactile device and have to solve a common task in a shared digital space. Contextualization of the environment and two sorts of tactile stimulation are proposed to the participants. The results and a semi-structured interview show that the subjects were able to set up an effective collaboration (strategies for following each other), which were facilitated by tactile feedback incorporating a degree of “parallelism” which makes it possible to perceive the direction of the movement of the other subject.

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