Support by Visually Impaired: A Proposal for a System to Present Walkability on Maps Using White Cane Data

Since visually impaired people cannot rely on their sense of sight, they use other senses, such as hearing touch, and smell, more keenly than sighted people. They may also have superior senses and skills to sighted people. However, most previous studies on visually impaired people considered them as people who receive support, such as in transportation, reading, and writings. We consider visually impaired people as “givers” of support rather than “recipients” of support and explore frameworks that utilize the abilities and skills of the visually impaired to support sighted people. We recognize that visually impaired people use a white cane to search for easy-to-walk areas without steps and obstacles. Accordingly, we propose a system that supports sighted people by presenting the walkability of sidewalks on a map based on the white cane operation history of visually impaired people. We first conducted a survey and two preliminary studies, and then derived system requirements based on the findings. Next, we designed a system based on these requirements and confirmed that the system detects some behaviors related to walking difficulty from the history of white cane operations.