Pre-journey Visualization of Travel Routes for the Blind on Refreshable Interactive Tactile Displays

摘要

In this paper we report on our continuing research of an audio-tactile system for visualizing travel routes on modern interactive refreshable tactile displays for blind users. The system is especially well suited for pre-journey route learning. Similar to systems for sighted users, e. g. online map services like Google Maps, we utilize an audio-tactile interactive map based on a concept from third-party research work and freely available geographic data. The system was implemented as a prototype for a touch-sensitive tactile display. Our main research interest is to explore audio-tactile concepts for displaying routes on a slippy map. We therefore developed a catalogue of ideas currently featuring tactile textures and indications for the route's course, waypoint symbols, audio indications etc. We summarize the results of an initial user test which indicates that the route visualization with our set of strategies is feasible and justifies further research.