Smart Map Augmented: Exploring and Learning Maritime Audio-Tactile Maps without Vision: The Issue of Finger or Marker Tracking

Abstract

Background: When exploring audio-tactile nautical charts without vision, users could trigger vocal announcements of a seamark’s name thanks to video tracking. In a first condition they could simply use a green sticker fastened at the tip of a finger and in a second condition they could handle a small handy green object, called the marker. Methods: In this study, we attempted to compare finger and marker tracking conditions to complete spatial tasks without vision. More precisely, we aimed to better understand which kind of interaction was the most efficient to perform either localization or estimation of distance and direction tasks. Twelve blindfolded participants realized these two spatial tasks on a 3D-printed audio-tactile nautical chart. Results: Results of the localization tasks revealed that in finger condition, participants were faster in finding geographic elements, i.e., seamarks. During estimation tasks, no differences were found between the precision of distances and direction estimations in both conditions. However, spatial reasoning took significantly less time in marker condition. Finally, we discussed the issue of the efficiency of these two interaction conditions depending on the spatial tasks. Conclusions: More experimentation and discussion should be undertaken to identify better modalities for helping visually impaired persons to explore audio-tactile maps and to prepare navigation.