Abstract
Orientation in unknown environments is challenging for people with. Especially in indoor environments, there are very few systems that support navigation but almost none for orientation. Thus, we propose a grammar for generating German textual descriptions of indoor environments for users with blindness. We utilize an egocentric approach taking into account the user’s location and orientation in the building. To investigate what word order is preferred, we compare descriptions generated by three different grammars. We also examine what strategies people with blindness pursue to orient themselves in buildings. We test our concept in an online user study with people with blindness. Our study shows that egocentric information should be brief, always following the same structure and allow for customization.
A. Constantinescu, E.-M. Neumann—Equal contribution.
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Notes
- 1.
OpenStreetMap. https://www.openstreetmap.org, Retrieved February 01, 2022.
- 2.
Blindsquare. https://www.blindsquare.com/, Retrieved 3 February 2022.
- 3.
BFW Smartinfo. http://smartinfo.bfw-wuerzburg.de/, Retrieved 3 February 2022.
- 4.
RightHear. https://www.right-hear.com/, Retrieved 3 February 2022.
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Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (BMAS) under the grant number 01KM151112.
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Constantinescu, A., Neumann, EM., Müller, K., Jaworek, G., Stiefelhagen, R. (2022). Listening First: Egocentric Textual Descriptions of Indoor Spaces for People with Blindness. In: Miesenberger, K., Kouroupetroglou, G., Mavrou, K., Manduchi, R., Covarrubias Rodriguez, M., Penáz, P. (eds) Computers Helping People with Special Needs. ICCHP-AAATE 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13341. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08648-9_28
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