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Assessing Mobility of Blind and Low-Vision Individuals Through a Portable Virtual Reality System and a Comprehensive Questionnaire

Isaksson-Daun, Johan LU orcid ; Jansson, Tomas LU and Nilsson, Johan LU (2024) In IEEE Access 12. p.146089-146106
Abstract

Blind or low-vision (BLV) individuals often have reduced independent mobility, yet new aids fails in increasing it, are not adopted enough, or both. A major cause is a severe deficiency in how mobility aids are assessed in the field: there are no established methods or measures and those used often have poor relevancy, insight affordances, and reproducibility; probing how actual BLV participants regard a proposed aid and how they compare to current aids is rare; and crucially, tests feature too few BLV participants. In this work two tools are introduced to alleviate this: a portable, large-scale-exploration, virtual reality (VR) system; and a comprehensive, aid-agnostic questionnaire focused on BLV mobility. The questionnaire has been... (More)

Blind or low-vision (BLV) individuals often have reduced independent mobility, yet new aids fails in increasing it, are not adopted enough, or both. A major cause is a severe deficiency in how mobility aids are assessed in the field: there are no established methods or measures and those used often have poor relevancy, insight affordances, and reproducibility; probing how actual BLV participants regard a proposed aid and how they compare to current aids is rare; and crucially, tests feature too few BLV participants. In this work two tools are introduced to alleviate this: a portable, large-scale-exploration, virtual reality (VR) system; and a comprehensive, aid-agnostic questionnaire focused on BLV mobility. The questionnaire has been validated once with eight orientation and mobility experts and six BLV respondents. Further, both it and the VR system have been applied in aid assessment with 19 BLV participants in a separate study. The VR system is to our knowledge the first in the field designed for portable evaluation, helping considerably in recruiting adequate numbers of BLV participants, for instance by allowing for testing in participants' homes; while also supporting reproducible and motivated tests and analyses. The questionnaire provides a systematic method to investigate respondents' views of numerous important facets of a proposed mobility aid, and how they relate to other aids. These tools should assist in achieving a widely adopted aid that meaningfully improves its users' mobility.

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author
; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Blindness, electronic travel aids, low vision, mobility aids, patient-reported outcome measures, sensory substitution, sensory supplementation, virtual environments, virtual reality, visual impairment
in
IEEE Access
volume
12
pages
18 pages
publisher
IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
external identifiers
  • scopus:85186158125
ISSN
2169-3536
DOI
10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3471177
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
a7b6dad2-39a6-48ba-ba4f-c3c7876bb9e1
date added to LUP
2025-01-15 14:33:49
date last changed
2025-04-04 14:55:58
@article{a7b6dad2-39a6-48ba-ba4f-c3c7876bb9e1,
  abstract     = {{<p>Blind or low-vision (BLV) individuals often have reduced independent mobility, yet new aids fails in increasing it, are not adopted enough, or both. A major cause is a severe deficiency in how mobility aids are assessed in the field: there are no established methods or measures and those used often have poor relevancy, insight affordances, and reproducibility; probing how actual BLV participants regard a proposed aid and how they compare to current aids is rare; and crucially, tests feature too few BLV participants. In this work two tools are introduced to alleviate this: a portable, large-scale-exploration, virtual reality (VR) system; and a comprehensive, aid-agnostic questionnaire focused on BLV mobility. The questionnaire has been validated once with eight orientation and mobility experts and six BLV respondents. Further, both it and the VR system have been applied in aid assessment with 19 BLV participants in a separate study. The VR system is to our knowledge the first in the field designed for portable evaluation, helping considerably in recruiting adequate numbers of BLV participants, for instance by allowing for testing in participants' homes; while also supporting reproducible and motivated tests and analyses. The questionnaire provides a systematic method to investigate respondents' views of numerous important facets of a proposed mobility aid, and how they relate to other aids. These tools should assist in achieving a widely adopted aid that meaningfully improves its users' mobility.</p>}},
  author       = {{Isaksson-Daun, Johan and Jansson, Tomas and Nilsson, Johan}},
  issn         = {{2169-3536}},
  keywords     = {{Blindness; electronic travel aids; low vision; mobility aids; patient-reported outcome measures; sensory substitution; sensory supplementation; virtual environments; virtual reality; visual impairment}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{146089--146106}},
  publisher    = {{IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.}},
  series       = {{IEEE Access}},
  title        = {{Assessing Mobility of Blind and Low-Vision Individuals Through a Portable Virtual Reality System and a Comprehensive Questionnaire}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3471177}},
  doi          = {{10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3471177}},
  volume       = {{12}},
  year         = {{2024}},
}