Understanding In-Situ Use of Commonly Available Navigation Technologies by People with Visual Impairments
Vaishnav Kameswaran, Jatin Gureja, Joyojeet Pal, Sile O'Modhrain, Tiffany L. Ye, Jon Froehlich, Leah Findlater, Meredith Ringel Morris · 2020 · ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS) · doi:10.1145/3373625.3416995
Summary
This paper presents a qualitative study investigating how people with visual impairments use commonly available navigation technologies in their daily lives. Conducted by researchers at Microsoft Research and the University of Michigan, the study involved semi-structured interviews with 23 participants who had visual impairments, 10 of whom also completed week-long diary studies documenting their navigation experiences. Rather than evaluating a single navigation app in isolation, the research examines how people combine multiple technologies and mobility aids to navigate real-world environments. The study captures rich detail about how participants use mainstream apps like Google Maps and Apple Maps alongside specialized tools such as BlindSquare, Nearby Explorer, Microsoft Soundscape, Aira, Be My Eyes, and Seeing AI. Participants also relied on traditional mobility aids including white canes and guide dogs. The research context is important: navigation technology for people with visual impairments has evolved significantly, with many apps now freely or cheaply available on smartphones, yet most prior research evaluated individual technologies in controlled settings rather than examining how people actually assemble and switch between tools in everyday life. The central contribution is the concept of "complementarity" — a framework for understanding how people strategically combine navigation technologies because each provides different types of information, modalities, and levels of granularity. The authors draw on environmental psychology concepts of route knowledge (turn-by-turn sequential directions) and survey knowledge (spatial understanding of an area) to analyze how different tools serve different informational needs.
Key findings
The study identified distinct patterns in how participants combined technologies. Google Maps was the most widely used app, valued for route planning and turn-by-turn directions (route knowledge), but participants noted it lacked ambient environmental information. BlindSquare and Soundscape filled this gap by providing points-of-interest announcements and spatial audio cues that built survey knowledge — understanding of what surrounds the user rather than just the next turn. Participants strategically switched between technologies at different navigation stages. Route planning often involved Google Maps or Apple Maps, while active navigation might layer in BlindSquare for intersection announcements or Soundscape for audio beacons placed at destinations. At decision points or when encountering unexpected obstacles, participants turned to remote sighted assistance through Aira or Be My Eyes. The white cane remained essential for immediate obstacle detection — a granularity level that no app could replace. Three key dimensions of complementarity emerged: information type (route vs. survey knowledge), modality (speech, spatial audio, haptic feedback), and granularity (macro-level route guidance vs. micro-level obstacle detection). Participants valued technologies that provided information in different modalities so they could layer inputs without cognitive overload — for example, spatial audio from Soundscape combined with speech directions from Google Maps. The research also revealed practical barriers including Bluetooth audio latency when switching between apps, inconsistent accessibility of map interfaces, and the cognitive load of managing multiple apps simultaneously.
Relevance
This paper offers a paradigm shift for navigation technology design: rather than trying to build a single comprehensive navigation app, designers should focus on how their tool complements existing ones. The complementarity framework has practical implications for any team developing assistive navigation features — it suggests designing for interoperability, supporting seamless app switching, and being explicit about what information type and modality a tool provides. For accessibility practitioners, the findings underscore that people with disabilities are sophisticated technology users who actively curate and combine tools to meet their needs. This challenges deficit-based design approaches and supports the importance of user research that examines technology use in context rather than in lab settings. The study also highlights that mainstream apps like Google Maps, while not designed specifically for accessibility, play a central role in the navigation ecosystem and would benefit from improved accessibility features. Organizations developing location-based services should consider how their apps fit into this broader complementary toolkit rather than assuming users rely on a single navigation solution.
Tags: visual impairments · navigation · wayfinding · assistive technology · complementarity · mobile accessibility · qualitative research