Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
skip to main content
10.1145/3544549.3585813acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PageschiConference Proceedingsconference-collections
Work in Progress

Evaluating Accessible Navigation for Blind People in Virtual Environments

Published: 19 April 2023 Publication History
  • Get Citation Alerts
  • Abstract

    Blind people that want, and play digital games will often find barriers and a lack of accessibility features available when exploring virtual environments. Prior work has found navigation to be the primary barrier players face, and the one players develop the most coping mechanisms to overcome. In this paper, we explore a set of techniques that augment or are even embedded in the game design to facilitate navigation and spatial awareness of virtual environments. We conducted a user study where seven blind participants faced a number of navigational tasks in a virtual environment with these techniques and shared their perspectives on the experience. We contribute with an exploration of a catalog of techniques used to facilitate the navigation of virtual spaces and a reflection of their impact on players’ experience, highlighting avenues for future work in the field.

    Supplementary Material

    MP4 File (3544549.3585813-talk-video.mp4)
    Pre-recorded Video Presentation

    References

    [1]
    Ronny Andrade, Melissa J. Rogerson, Jenny Waycott, Steven Baker, and Frank Vetere. 2019. Playing Blind: Revealing the World of Gamers with Visual Impairment. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300346
    [2]
    Matthew T. Atkinson, Sabahattin Gucukoglu, Colin H. C. Machin, and Adrian E. Lawrence. 2006. Making the Mainstream Accessible: Redefining the Game. In Proceedings of the 2006 ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Videogames (Boston, Massachusetts) (Sandbox ’06). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 21–28. https://doi.org/10.1145/1183316.1183321
    [3]
    Erin Connors, Elizabeth Chrastil, Jaimie Sanchez, and Lotfi Merabet. 2014. Action video game play and transfer of navigation and spatial cognition skills in adolescents who are blind. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8 (2014), 133. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00133
    [4]
    Yvonne A. W. De Kort and Wijnand A. Ijsselsteijn. 2008. People, Places, and Play: Player Experience in a Socio-Spatial Context. Comput. Entertain. 6, 2, Article 18 (jul 2008), 11 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/1371216.1371221
    [5]
    Douglas A. Gentile, Craig A. Anderson, Shintaro Yukawa, Nobuko Ihori, Muniba Saleem, Lim Kam Ming, Akiko Shibuya, Albert K. Liau, Angeline Khoo, Brad J. Bushman, and et al.2009. The Effects of Prosocial Video Games on Prosocial Behaviors: International Evidence from Correlational, Longitudinal, and Experimental Studies. Personality & social psychology bulletin 35, 6 (Jun 2009), 752–763. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167209333045
    [6]
    Kathrin Gerling and Laura Buttrick. 2014. Last tank rolling: exploring shared motion-based play to empower persons using wheelchairs. In Proceedings of the first ACM SIGCHI annual symposium on Computer-human interaction in play(CHI PLAY ’14). Association for Computing Machinery, 415–416. https://doi.org/10.1145/2658537.2661303
    [7]
    Aaron Gluck, Kwajo Boateng, and Julian Brinkley. 2021. Racing in the Dark: Exploring Accessible Virtual Reality by Developing a Racing Game for People who are Blind. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting 65, 1 (2021), 1114–1118. https://doi.org/10.1177/1071181321651224 arXiv:https://doi.org/10.1177/1071181321651224
    [8]
    David Gonçalves, Manuel Piçarra, Pedro Pais, João Guerreiro, and André Rodrigues. 2023. “My Zelda Cane”: Strategies Used by Blind Players to Play Visual-Centric Digital Games. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580702
    [9]
    David Gonçalves, André Rodrigues, Mike L. Richardson, Alexandra A. de Sousa, Michael J. Proulx, and Tiago Guerreiro. 2021. Exploring Asymmetric Roles in Mixed-Ability Gaming. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445494
    [10]
    Dimitris Grammenos. 2008. Game over: Learning by Dying. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Florence, Italy) (CHI ’08). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1443–1452. https://doi.org/10.1145/1357054.1357281
    [11]
    Isabela Granic, Adam Lobel, and Rutger C. M. E. Engels. 2014. The benefits of playing video games. The American Psychologist 69, 1 (Jan 2014), 66–78. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034857
    [12]
    João Guerreiro, Yujin Kim, Rodrigo Nogueira, SeungA Chung, André Rodrigues, and Uran Oh. 2023. The Design Space of the Auditory Representation of Objects and Their Behaviours in Virtual Reality for Blind People. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (2023).
    [13]
    Orly Lahav and David Mioduser. 2008. Construction of cognitive maps of unknown spaces using a multi-sensory virtual environment for people who are blind. Computers in Human Behavior 24, 3 (2008), 1139–1155. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2007.04.003 Instructional Support for Enhancing Students’ Information Problem Solving Ability.
    [14]
    Vishnu Nair, Jay Karp, Samuel Silverman, Mohar Kalra, Hollis Lehv, Faizan Jamil, and Brian Smith. 2021. NavStick: Making Video Games Blind-Accessible via the Ability to Look Around. 538–551. https://doi.org/10.1145/3472749.3474768
    [15]
    Vishnu Nair, Shao-en Ma, Ricardo E. Gonzalez Penuela, Yicheng He, Karen Lin, Mason Hayes, Hannah Huddleston, Matthew Donnelly, and Brian A. Smith. 2022. Uncovering Visually Impaired Gamers’ Preferences for Spatial Awareness Tools Within Video Games. In Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Athens, Greece) (ASSETS ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 6, 16 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3517428.3544802
    [16]
    Vishnu Nair, Shao-en Ma, Hannah Huddleston, Karen Lin, Mason Hayes, Matthew Donnelly, Ricardo E Gonzalez, Yicheng He, and Brian A. Smith. 2021. Towards a Generalized Acoustic Minimap for Visually Impaired Gamers. In The Adjunct Publication of the 34th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (Virtual Event, USA) (UIST ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 89–91. https://doi.org/10.1145/3474349.3480177
    [17]
    Christina Oumard, Julian Kreimeier, and Timo Goetzelmann. 2021. Preliminary Analysis on Interaction Characteristics with Auditive Navigation in Virtual Environments. In The 14th Pervasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments Conference (Corfu, Greece) (PETRA 2021). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 514–520. https://doi.org/10.1145/3453892.3461654
    [18]
    David W. Schloerb, Orly Lahav, Joseph G. Desloge, and Mandayam A. Srinivasan. 2010. BlindAid: Virtual environment system for self-reliant trip planning and orientation and mobility training. In 2010 IEEE Haptics Symposium. 363–370. https://doi.org/10.1109/HAPTIC.2010.5444631
    [19]
    Yuhang Zhao, Edward Cutrell, Christian Holz, Meredith Ringel Morris, Eyal Ofek, and Andrew D. Wilson. 2019. SeeingVR: A Set of Tools to Make Virtual Reality More Accessible to People with Low Vision. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300341

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)SocialCueSwitch: Towards Customizable Accessibility by Representing Social Cues in Multiple SensesExtended Abstracts of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3651109(1-7)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)From Teleportation to Climbing: A Review of Locomotion Techniques in the Most Used Commercial Virtual Reality ApplicationsInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2024.2372151(1-21)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
    • (2023)MetaverseMetaverse Applications for Intelligent Healthcare10.4018/978-1-6684-9823-1.ch003(93-158)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2023

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI EA '23: Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 2023
    3914 pages
    ISBN:9781450394222
    DOI:10.1145/3544549
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 19 April 2023

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. accessibility
    2. accessible virtual environments
    3. blind
    4. design guidelines
    5. people with visual impairments

    Qualifiers

    • Work in progress
    • Research
    • Refereed limited

    Funding Sources

    • Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

    Conference

    CHI '23
    Sponsor:

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%

    Upcoming Conference

    CHI PLAY '24
    The Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play
    October 14 - 17, 2024
    Tampere , Finland

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)219
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)28

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)SocialCueSwitch: Towards Customizable Accessibility by Representing Social Cues in Multiple SensesExtended Abstracts of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3651109(1-7)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)From Teleportation to Climbing: A Review of Locomotion Techniques in the Most Used Commercial Virtual Reality ApplicationsInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2024.2372151(1-21)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
    • (2023)MetaverseMetaverse Applications for Intelligent Healthcare10.4018/978-1-6684-9823-1.ch003(93-158)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2023

    View Options

    Get Access

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Full Text

    View this article in Full Text.

    Full Text

    HTML Format

    View this article in HTML Format.

    HTML Format

    Media

    Figures

    Other

    Tables

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media