Wayfinding Information Access System for People With Vision Loss

The greatest mobility problems for people with severe visual impairment are caused by gaps in available information about the environment -- environmental cues needed for orienting to salient landmarks in the surrounding environment and for wayfinding. Such informational cues are of great import because persons with severe visual impairment can become hopelessly lost if they cannot keep track of where they are at any given moment as they move along.

A newly developed long-range Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag reader might completely solve this problem. Previously, passive (i.e., not battery powered) RFID tags could only be read from a distance of 16 inches or less. This new tag reader can read multiple tags up to 18 feet away, and indicate the direction and range of each tag. At a cost of under 10 each, 250 RFID tags would have to be placed around an environment to equal the cost of 1 Braille sign ($25), yet the value-added in terms of available information at a distance is incredible: every object (landmark, door, water fountain, exit sign, chair, table, etc.) within a range of 18 feet would be able to "announce" its presence.

Visible signage equivalency could be achieved overnight. Further, Interface, Inc., a commercial floor manufacturer is now adhering RFID tags to the protected underside their 50X50 cm floor tiles. Using such flooring and the new long-range readers, a very elegant and affordable indoor GPS-like guidance system can be realized through triangulation of these RFID floor tiles. In the long run, as this RFID flooring infrastructure fills in, the most ideal solution could result, as it would enable the development of easily-managed building databases containing everything users would need to know to orient to new buildings and find their way around with ease. Users would never be lost, as they would always know their current location and heading. In addition, such a building database would be much easier to maintain, as opposed to updating individual RFID tags, when building tenants move or renovations take place. Interface is very interested in supporting our research, and is donating 2500 square feet of their RFID flooring to the VA for this purpose.

The Research Questions to be answered by the herein proposed research are:

1. How should environmental information be organized and parsed according to actual needs so that persons can be provided with needed information without inundating them with useless and/or distracting information in the process?
2. How should a user interface be structured to offer needed information in an easily controlled and useable fashion?