Supporting Independent Travelling for People with Visual Impairments in Buildings by Harmonizing Maps on Embossed Paper and Pin-Matrix Devices for Accessible Info-Points

Orientation in unknown buildings is a grand challenge for people with visual impairments in planned as well as in spontaneous scenarios. Therefore, it is necessary to develop solutions that support the whole travelling chain - on the one side the planning process for trips at home and on the other side the orientation process at a building. While different approaches exist for both contexts, in this paper we present a concept using two approaches together for planning and carrying out trips to unknown buildings. We focus on the one hand on tactile printed or embossed maps and on the other hand on digital tactile pin-matrix displays. The first type is suitable for pre-journey planning activities, while the second technology is designed for on-site use. Both approaches are able to provide spatial and configurational knowledge for the tactile sense. Based on this, we describe in this paper how both types could be harmonized to facilitate access to indoor maps in the given scenarios. We present prototypes for tactile indoor maps on embossed paper and demonstrate how a interaction on pin-matrix device can be designed and implemented to be used together and allow similar interaction with both.We propose providing dynamic maps as accessible info-points in buildings. Special focus is on the challenge of splitting tactile indoor maps into multiple views or sheets and how this can be achieved in a similar way with both methods.