Design of Audio-Augmented-Reality-Based O&M Orientation Training for Visually Impaired Children

Abstract

Orientation and Mobility training (O&M) is a specific program that teaches people with vision loss to orient themselves and travel safely within certain contexts. State-of-the-art research reveals that people with vision loss expect high-quality O&M training, especially at early ages, but the conventional O&M training methods involve tedious programs and require a high participation of professional trainers. However, there is an insufficient number of excellent trainers. In this work, we first interpret and discuss the relevant research in recent years. Then, we discuss the questionnaires and interviews we conducted with visually impaired people. On the basis of field investigation and related research, we propose the design of a training solution for children to operate and maintain direction based on audio augmented reality. We discuss how, within the perceptible scene created by EasyAR’s map-aware framework, we created an AR audio source tracing training that simulates a social scene to strengthen the audiometric identification of the subjects, and then to verify the efficiency and feasibility of this scheme, we implemented the application prototype with the required hardware and software and conducted the subsequential experiments with blindfolded children. We confirm the high usability of the designed approach by analyzing the results of the pilot study. Compared with other orientation training studies, the method we propose makes the whole training process flexible and entertaining. At the same time, this training process does not involve excessive economic costs or require professional skills training, allowing users to undergo training at home or on the sports ground rather than having to go to rehabilitation sites or specified schools. Furthermore, according to the feedback from the experiments, the approach is promising in regard to gamification.