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Orientation and mobility assisted by the voice navigation for the visually impaired－A case study on the turn-by-turn voice navigation for the blind and the persons have low vision－

Kakuya Naito，Yuya Igarashi，Hirokazu Sadakiyo and Tetsuya Yamada

In this paper, to clarify the behavior of orientation and mobility using the turn-by-turn voice navigation for the visually impaired people, we build the system as follows: a) we used a smartphone and the BLE beacons. b) The system reached high level localization accuracy that is 1-3 meters average error. c) The navigation of this system provided the wayfinding information such as direction, distance, landmark and spatial information. We conducted the user evaluation test with 12 blind and visually impaired people in order to assess the availability of this system. In this test, the participants walked the outside and inside routes. The results of the test are as follows: 1) all participants could reach the destination by themselves. 2) It was difficult to walk by only direction and distance information because of the localization error. The participants could find the correct direction and route by using the landmarks and the spatial information. 3) The navigation information of the landmarks that is detectable to the travelers in their route (wall, flooring, stairs, doors and handrails) was useful to all participants. In contrast, the navigation information of the landmarks that is not encountered by the travelers in their route (water sounds and the size of the room) was useful to only some participants.