Abstract:

This paper reports two experiments which compared the effectiveness of different methods for introducing blind and visually impaired people to the spatial layout of urban environments. In Experiment 1, 30 blind and visually impaired adults learnt a long and complex route through an area of central Madrid (Spain) either by direct experience or by a combination of direct experience and a tactile map or a combination of direct experience and a verbal description of the area. Performance on measures of practical spatial knowledge and of representational spatial knowledge was significantly better in participants in the tactile map condition. In Experiment 2, 10 participants learned a similar route in an area of Sheffield (Britain) using either just a tactile map or by direct experience. No significant difference was found between the two conditions using the same measures as in Experiment 1.