VR interactive environments for the blind: Preliminary comparative studies.

People living with impaired vision rely upon other sensory inputs in order to learn the configuration of a new space. This research project asks 2 questions: what types of acoustic cues are used to mentally represent a given environment without the visual channel? And is it possible to accurately model these cues computationally [in a Virtual Reality (VR) space] to provide an easy mechanism for someone with visual impairment to learn the configuration of a new environment in advance of being introduced to it? In this poster, three preliminary comparative studies are presented which focus on the ability of blind and sighted individuals to detect walls and obstacles within an environment, relying only on the auditory sense.