The Effects of Walk-in-Place and Overground Walking on the Acquisition of Spatial Information by People With Visual Impairment in Virtual Reality Wayfinding

Although virtual reality (VR) wayfinding systems are available for people with visual impairment, there is a lack of studies providing the choice of VR environments can affect their spatial information acquisition. To address these issues, we designed two VR-based wayfinding systems for people with visual impairment. We compared the efficacy of walk-in-place, where the user walks in a virtual environment by walking on a treadmill in the real world, and overground walking, where the user walks in a virtual environment by walking in a constrained analogous real walking space without walls and obstacles. By conducting user experiments on these two VR-based wayfinding systems, we evaluated how people with visual impairments acquired spatial information regarding paths and obstacles. Our results showed that people with visual impairment memorized the paths more accurately after the wayfinding with walk-in-place than with the overground walking. Conversely, they memorized the obstacles on the path more accurately after the wayfinding task with the overground walking than the walk-in-place. Lastly, we discussed the rationale for these results of task on the walk-in-place and the overground walking.