Assessment of tactile languages as navigation aid in 3D environments

Abstract

In this paper we present the design and evaluate alternative tactile vocabularies to support navigation in 3D environments. We have focused on the tactile communication expressiveness by applying a prefixation approach in the construction of the tactile icons. We conducted user experiments to analyze the effects of both prefixation and the use of tactile sequences on the user’s performance in a navigation task. Results show that, even if tactile sequences are more difficult to process during the navigation task, the prefixed patterns were easier to learn in all assessed vocabularies.