Basic issues concerning visually impaired people's use of haptic displays (original) (raw)

Haptic displays present a potential solution to the old problem of rendering pictorial information about 3D aspects of an object or scene to people with vision problems. The aim of the paper is to discuss some basic issues of importance for the usefulness of these displays for visually impaired people: (1) The overview of a virtual object or scene available for exploration with only one point at a time, (2) The limited spatial resolution of haptics, (3) The potential effects of learning, (4) The necessity of simplifying pictorial information, (5) The enhancement of tactile information with auditory and visual information.