Gamepad vibration methods to help blind people perceive colors

Visually impaired people, completely or partially blind cannot perceive the surrounding environment as normal healthy people can. Not knowing how colors and shapes look like is a serious penalty and they have to live with it an entire life. It is known that the human brain adapts and compensates with greater capabilities for hearing and touch when vision is low or missing, that is why blind people develop special skills and perform so good when it comes to music and kinetotherapy. Based on this information we are proposing a method that explains colors using vibrations. In this paper we would like to present a new way of transforming an image to vibration by using the capabilities of an Xbox gamepad. During the study on real blind volunteers, this kind of approach proved to be very effective and promising, allowing them to slightly understand how an image, painting or friend looks like. Author