Blind Nav

Blind Nav is a blind-game useful to train navigation skills in visually impaired people with fun. The project was developed for the 'Sound in Interaction' course at the University of Milan and was inspired by the  ‘Legend of Iris’ game and its related paper. 

Introduction

The purpose of this project involves the creation of the game that you can download from this page and the collection of user data useful for the production of a final statistical report. For this reason, at the end of the game you will be asked to fill in a short questionnaire and to upload the file containing the data collected automatically during the game. All operations will be guided starting from the game.

In case you need to manually reach the questionnaire page, you can find it here [english] and here [italian].

Requirements

Stereo headphones 🎧 or speakers 🔊 and a gamepad 🎮 would be required to play Blind Nav. If you don't have a gamepad, here you can find the mapping between the most important functionalities on the gamepad and on the mouse & keyboard:

Gamepad	Mouse & Keyboard	Functionality
Left trigger	Left click	Repeat presentation during the tutorial
Right trigger	Right click	Next presentation during the tutorial
Start	Esc	Quit the game
Select	R	Reset the character
Left stick	WASD	Move the character
Directional keys	Directional keys	Adjust the channel volumes
Hold B	Hold Z	Skip the tutorial

⚠️DISCLAIMER⚠️

The game could be results difficult and frustrating. The reason is that we tried to make the experience as close as possible to reality. Please be patient and try to finish all the levels. Your contribution will be precious for this research in the field of accessibility for the visually impaired people. Thank you.

Key concepts

• Targets: the goal during the game is to reach a sequence of targets only by hearing sounds while avoiding hitting some obstacles.
• Voices
  • Helper voice: This is the voice that will help the player throughout the overall experience. Its sounds are reproduced without spatiality.
  • Target voice: This is the same as the Helper Voice, but calls the player continuously and its sounds are played spatialized, emitted from the target positions in the direction of the player.
• Obstacles
  • Environmental: They consist of all the objects that make up the virtual world, such as fences, houses, etc. They do not emit any sound, so the player can  only try to memorize their position after hitting them.
  • Safe: If the player touches them, the character's position is reset to a few meters from the obstacle. They make sounds.
  • Dangerous: If the player touches them, the character's position is reset to the last target position reached. They make sounds.
  • Mobile / Fixed: Safe and dangerous obstacles can be moving or stationary, while environmental ones are only stationary.

MacOS users

The MacOS version can not be tested and for this reason is not available. A Mac can run the Windows version with Wine. It was tested and it's fully working.