Mobility interfaces for the visually impaired: what's missing?

Individuals with visual impairments must rely on information from their other senses to provide them with obstacle preview. Although the long cane has become the most common primary device for detecting obstacles on the ground, other systems have gained acceptance by cane users who already have a high degree of travel ability as secondary mobility devices to detect obstacles that are not ground-based. Echolocation, on the other hand, has been a method of localisation in the past that enables a traveller to orient themselves relative to obstacles in a room and successfully avoid them. Echolocation has recently been rejected due to environmental influences that make it more difficult in noisy environments and social restrictions imposed by orientation and mobility instructors. Localisation could be attained through downconverted ultrasound echoes in the auditory domain, thus echolocation by ultrasound. This paper examines the interfaces that are currently used to display information to visually impaired individuals.

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