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Modelling the Creation of Verbal Indoor Route Descriptions for Visually Impaired Travellers

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Book cover Technological Trends in Improved Mobility of the Visually Impaired

Part of the book series: EAI/Springer Innovations in Communication and Computing ((EAISICC))

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Abstract

Within the field of computer-supported indoor navigation for visually impaired people, the generation of effective verbal route descriptions and directions to be given to the visually impaired person remains challenging. This paper provides a formal and innovative model for the creation of indoor verbal route descriptions (VRDs) with the iterative methodologies from user-centred design, focused on those with visual impairment (VI), and emphasising sufficient evaluation. As one step towards fully automated generation of verbal directions, four sighted persons were tasked with generating VRDs for two routes at Saarbrücken University. The generated VRDs were evaluated with feedback by 11 VIs. This was used to improve the VRDs which were evaluated again by 3 VIs, with the set of 7 directions having the overall result rated as medium. Implications and main pitfalls of the current model are discussed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Spatial cognition is concerned with the acquisition, organisation, utilisation and revision of knowledge about spatial environments (Center 2016).

  2. 2.

    Global frames of reference allow to locate other places within the same frame of reference, as for example, using latitude/longitude values (Kitchin et al. 1997, p. 233).

  3. 3.

    Steps 2 and 3 are repeated until the target destination is reached.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Hali Lindsay and Alarith Uhde for helpful feedback and proofreading on an earlier version of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Saarbrücken, Germany

    Johannes Tröger, Sarah Schnebelt & Jan Alexandersson

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  1. Johannes Tröger
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  3. Jan Alexandersson
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Correspondence to Johannes Tröger .

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  1. ARC4DigiT – Applied Research Center for Digital Transformation, Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo, Viana do Castelo, Portugal

    Sara Paiva

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Tröger, J., Schnebelt, S., Alexandersson, J. (2020). Modelling the Creation of Verbal Indoor Route Descriptions for Visually Impaired Travellers. In: Paiva, S. (eds) Technological Trends in Improved Mobility of the Visually Impaired. EAI/Springer Innovations in Communication and Computing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16450-8_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16450-8_15

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