"Pray before you step out": describing personal and situational blind navigation behaviors

Abstract

Personal navigation tools have greatly impacted the lives of people with vision impairments. As people with vision impairments often have different requirements for technology, it is important to understand users' ever-changing needs. We conducted a formative study exploring how people with vision impairments used technology to support navigation. Our findings from interviews with 30 adults with vision impairments included insights about experiences in Orientation & Mobility (O&M) training, everyday navigation challenges, helpful and unhelpful technologies, and the role of social interactions while navigating. We produced a set of categorical data that future technologists can use to identify user requirements and usage scenarios. These categories consist of Personality and Scenario attributes describing navigation behaviors of people with vision impairments. We demonstrate the usefulness of these attributes by introducing navigation-style personas backed by our data. This work demonstrates the complex choices individuals with vision impairments undergo when leaving their home, and the many factors that affect their navigation behavior.