Using augmented reality to support the understanding of three-dimensional concepts by blind people
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Claudio Kirner
,
Tereza Gonçalves Kirner
Abstract
Describing real and imaginary three-dimensional scenes from the observer’s viewpoint is an intuitive activity for visually non-impaired people, but it is difficult for congenitally blind people, since it involves abstract concepts, such as perspective, depth planes, occlusion, etc. This paper discusses these problems and presents physical environments and procedures supported by an augmented reality tool in order to help blind people to understand, describe and convert three-dimensional scenes into two-dimensional embossed representations. To verify how blind people can acquire these concepts, we developed an augmented reality application that worked as an audio spatial tutor to make the perspective-learning process easy. The application was tested with 10 congenitally blind people, who learned to understand the perspective concepts and who reported on the experience. Finally, we discuss the learning method and technical aspects, suggesting ways to improve the augmented reality application and how it can be released.
©2011 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin New York
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Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial
- Disability, virtual reality, ArtAbilitation and music
- Reviews
- Customising games for non-formal rehabilitation
- Aphasic theatre or theatre boosting self-esteem
- Warriors’ Journey: a path to healing through narrative exploration
- CaDaReMi. An educational interactive music game
- Extending body and imagination: moving to move
- Original Articles
- Making music with images: interactive audiovisual performance systems for the deaf
- An infrared sound and music controller for users with specific needs
- Sound=Space Opera: choreographing life within an interactive musical environment
- Cognitive effects of video games on old people
- Providing disabled persons in developing countries access to computer games through a novel gaming input device
- Voice articulatory training with a talking robot for the auditory impaired
- Using augmented reality to support the understanding of three-dimensional concepts by blind people
- Augmented reality application for the navigation of people who are blind
- Case Report
- Unintentional intrusive participation in multimedia interactive environments
- Listening to complexity: blind people’s learning about gas particles through a sonified model
