Listen to It Yourself! Evaluating Usability of 'What's Around Me?' for the Blind

摘要

Although multiple GPS-based navigation applications exist for the visually impaired, these are typically poorly suited for in-situ exploration, require cumbersome hardware, lack support for widely accessible geographic databases, or do not take advantage of advanced functionality such as spatialized audio rendering. These shortcomings led to our development of a novel spatial awareness application that leverages the capabilities of a smartphone coupled with worldwide geographic databases and spatialized audio rendering to convey surrounding points of interest. This paper describes the usability evaluation of our system through a task-based study and a longer-term deployment, each conducted with six blind users in real settings. The findings highlight the importance of testing in ecologically valid contexts over sufficient periods to face real-world challenges, including balancing quality versus quantity for audio information, overcoming limitations imposed by sensor accuracy and quality of database information, and paying appropriate design attention to physical interaction with the device.