Research state: Challenge
Features of the environment that were not intended as navigation infrastructure are often still used as useful and important landmarks by people with sight loss
If a feature of the environment is detectable by them and always in the same place it can be used as a navigational landmark for someone with vision impairment. This is particularly true for Long Cane users who absorb a great deal of information from their environments from their cane tip.
Implications:
Because of their reliance on personal landmarks that may not be obvious environmental changes can affect people with sight loss in unpredictable ways.
Opportunities:
The features that make personal navigational landmarks recognisable could be used to inform the design of new navigational infrastructure.