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How do individuals who are blind locate, e.g. the ‘@’ in an email address, the black king on a chessboard or their own house on a map? To locate information in peri-personal (non-rotated) tabletop space is a two-phase process: Phase 1 is to detect and identify the target; Phase 2 is to discover its position. The present study investigated the relationship between Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the location process. Twenty-three individuals who are blind participated. Their accuracy in Phase 2 was affected by what strategy they had adopted in Phase 1; their location time was not. Three location strategies were identified in Phase 2 – the routeing strategy, the global view strategy, and the touch vision strategy: the location time and accuracy not affected by which strategy had been adopted. 50% adopted the same strategy for ranking (Phase 1) target-discriminating features and (Phase 2) target-locating cues in order of importance.

Original publication Download

DOI

10.1177/0264619617737122

Type

Journal article

Journal

British Journal of Visual Impairment

Publisher

SAGE Publications (UK and US)

Publication Date

01/2018

Volume

36 (1)

Pages

57 - 74

Keywords

Attention, Blind, Discrimination strategy, Haptic touch, Location strategy