Two Decades of Touchable and Walkable Virtual Reality for Blind and Visually Impaired People: A High-Level Taxonomy
Although most readers associate the term virtual reality (VR) with visually appealing entertainment content, this technology also promises to be helpful to disadvantaged people like blind or visually impaired people. While overcoming physical objects’ and spaces’ limitations, virtual objects and env...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2020-11-01
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| Series: | Multimodal Technologies and Interaction |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2414-4088/4/4/79 |
| _version_ | 1797547605968814080 |
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| author | Julian Kreimeier Timo Götzelmann |
| author_facet | Julian Kreimeier Timo Götzelmann |
| author_sort | Julian Kreimeier |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Although most readers associate the term virtual reality (VR) with visually appealing entertainment content, this technology also promises to be helpful to disadvantaged people like blind or visually impaired people. While overcoming physical objects’ and spaces’ limitations, virtual objects and environments that can be spatially explored have a particular benefit. To give readers a complete, clear and concise overview of current and past publications on touchable and walkable audio supplemented VR applications for blind and visually impaired users, this survey paper presents a high-level taxonomy to cluster the work done up to now from the perspective of technology, interaction and application. In this respect, we introduced a classification into small-, medium- and large-scale virtual environments to cluster and characterize related work. Our comprehensive table shows that especially grounded force feedback devices for haptic feedback (‘small scale’) were strongly researched in different applications scenarios and mainly from an exocentric perspective, but there are also increasingly physically (‘medium scale’) or avatar-walkable (‘large scale’) egocentric audio-haptic virtual environments. In this respect, novel and widespread interfaces such as smartphones or nowadays consumer grade VR components represent a promising potential for further improvements. Our survey paper provides a database on related work to foster the creation process of new ideas and approaches for both technical and methodological aspects. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-10T14:46:27Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-12f2db6e545c40c5aa4b9350bf3548a3 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2414-4088 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-10T14:46:27Z |
| publishDate | 2020-11-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Multimodal Technologies and Interaction |
| spelling | doaj.art-12f2db6e545c40c5aa4b9350bf3548a32023-11-20T21:17:07ZengMDPI AGMultimodal Technologies and Interaction2414-40882020-11-01447910.3390/mti4040079Two Decades of Touchable and Walkable Virtual Reality for Blind and Visually Impaired People: A High-Level TaxonomyJulian Kreimeier0Timo Götzelmann1Nuremberg Institute of Technology, D-90489 Nuremberg, GermanyNuremberg Institute of Technology, D-90489 Nuremberg, GermanyAlthough most readers associate the term virtual reality (VR) with visually appealing entertainment content, this technology also promises to be helpful to disadvantaged people like blind or visually impaired people. While overcoming physical objects’ and spaces’ limitations, virtual objects and environments that can be spatially explored have a particular benefit. To give readers a complete, clear and concise overview of current and past publications on touchable and walkable audio supplemented VR applications for blind and visually impaired users, this survey paper presents a high-level taxonomy to cluster the work done up to now from the perspective of technology, interaction and application. In this respect, we introduced a classification into small-, medium- and large-scale virtual environments to cluster and characterize related work. Our comprehensive table shows that especially grounded force feedback devices for haptic feedback (‘small scale’) were strongly researched in different applications scenarios and mainly from an exocentric perspective, but there are also increasingly physically (‘medium scale’) or avatar-walkable (‘large scale’) egocentric audio-haptic virtual environments. In this respect, novel and widespread interfaces such as smartphones or nowadays consumer grade VR components represent a promising potential for further improvements. Our survey paper provides a database on related work to foster the creation process of new ideas and approaches for both technical and methodological aspects.https://www.mdpi.com/2414-4088/4/4/79virtual realityblind and visually impaired peoplesurveyaccessibility |
| spellingShingle | Julian Kreimeier Timo Götzelmann Two Decades of Touchable and Walkable Virtual Reality for Blind and Visually Impaired People: A High-Level Taxonomy Multimodal Technologies and Interaction virtual reality blind and visually impaired people survey accessibility |
| title | Two Decades of Touchable and Walkable Virtual Reality for Blind and Visually Impaired People: A High-Level Taxonomy |
| title_full | Two Decades of Touchable and Walkable Virtual Reality for Blind and Visually Impaired People: A High-Level Taxonomy |
| title_fullStr | Two Decades of Touchable and Walkable Virtual Reality for Blind and Visually Impaired People: A High-Level Taxonomy |
| title_full_unstemmed | Two Decades of Touchable and Walkable Virtual Reality for Blind and Visually Impaired People: A High-Level Taxonomy |
| title_short | Two Decades of Touchable and Walkable Virtual Reality for Blind and Visually Impaired People: A High-Level Taxonomy |
| title_sort | two decades of touchable and walkable virtual reality for blind and visually impaired people a high level taxonomy |
| topic | virtual reality blind and visually impaired people survey accessibility |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2414-4088/4/4/79 |
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