Efficacy of electronic travel aids for the blind and visually impaired during wayfinding.

ABSTRACT: Independent traveling remains challenging for blind and visually impaired (BVI) individuals. While the white cane is effective at detecting ground-level obstacles, it provides no information about elevated obstacles or object characteristics. Recent technologies have been designed to support navigation as well as object detection. In our study, we compared the performance of 13 BVI participants who separately used two secondary electronic travel aids (ETAs) versus cane use alone. One ETA was a camera-based mobility vest (NOA), and the other was an ultrasonic sensor-based wearable (BuzzClip). Participants completed an obstacle avoidance task with both ETAs and an object detection task using two versions of NOA's object-finding functionality. Quantitative performance measures and semi-struct

SUBMITTER: Pittet CE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12909938 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature