Overview

The GRAB project has allowed the development of a new Haptic & Audio Virtual Environment to allow blind and visually impaired persons to have access to the three-dimensional graphic computer world through the senses of touch (using a new dual-finger haptic interface) and augmented by audio input and voice commands.

The new environment provides an integrated platform for the design and development of audio-haptic applications in different fields (architecture, art, aeronautics, medicine,..) as well as their fruition in a realtime interactive manner. In order to prove the validity of the approach, the project was specifically focused on the development of three applications selected for their promising positive impact on the life quality of visual impaired people: an adventure game, a city map explorer and a chart explorer.

Both the new environment and the new applications were tested by visually impaired people with different profiles (congenitally blind people, advantageously blind people, partially sighted people,..) to evaluate the usefulness and potential of these developments. The results of this validation were very positive. Overall, it seems the GRAB system is feasible for these kinds of applications, although some features require some adjustments to create future usable tools.