”Is it There or Not?” Why Augmented White Canes Do Not Need to Provide Detailed Feedback about Obstacles

Abstract

Visually impaired people (VIP) need information about upcoming obstacles to avoid harmful collisions. This initial study explored whether augmented white cane (AWC) users could distinguish between and deemed a higher granularity of information about the elevation height of obstacles useful for travelling. Four VIP evaluated a prototype AWC capable of communicating the vertical location of obstacles at three different granularities: 1) binary, 2) torso or above, 3) knee-, waist- or head-level. VIPs walked towards an obstacle elevated at three different heights a total of 12 times per condition in random order. The VIPs preferred binary feedback and did not want early alerts to upcoming obstacles since they wanted to physically interact with obstacles in order to navigate their environment. This contradicts the conventional AWC designs, which communicate in detail the horizontal distances to obstacles using continuous or high-granular vibration feedback.