EchoLearn

EchoLearn is an experimental pedagogy and mobile VR simulator activating the blind and visually impaired community's equal access to echolocation distance education.

Users in the experience can directly perceive 3D objects and spatial settings in VR by emitting virtual mouth-clicks and interpreting their simulated and customizable sound reflections.

Through the VR exercises, they can learn to associate sound reflections with basic physical attributes, recognize daily objects, and navigate life-like scenarios through echolocation.

Context

Thesis Project at Parsons School of Design, Sept.'20 - May' 21

Echolocation Consultant

Thomas Tajo

Instructors

John Roach, Barbara Morris, Anezka Sebek, Anna Harsanyi

Tag

#Accessibility   #Entertainment

Human Echolocation

Although it is well-known as a navigational method by animals like bats and whales, echolocation is also a direct perceptual and navigational technique used by a subset of blind individuals for their improved independence and mobility.

By interpreting the echoes of their mouth-clicks, echolocation users can perceive their surrounding objects and understand features such as the size, shape, location, distance, motion, and surface texture of objects.

Human echolocation lets blind man 'see'
Video courtesy of CNN

Echolocation Education

Echolocation is advocated by international organizations like Vision Inclusive and Visioneers, which provide onsite echolocation training to blind and visually impaired individuals. The dominant onsite training pedagogy starts from trusting hearing, recognizing everyday objects, and then navigating environments through echolocation.

Echolocation Training 1
Video courtesy of Great Big Story

Echolocation Training 2
Video courtesy of Great Big Story

Accessible Interactive Media

The blind and visually impaired individuals can access most of the smartphone functionalities through built-in screen readers like the Voiceover of iOS and TalkBack of Android, which describe visual elements and interaction affordances on display. Auditory descriptions help sightless users navigating their screen using simple, standardized hand gestures.

Through onsite observations, sightless individuals tend to own high-quality headphones for advanced acoustic enjoyment. As configuring headphones with motion sensors is a current trend of hearables manufacturers, it gives a chance to develop immersive acoustic experiences based on headphone head tracking for sightless audiences without causing their extra device purchase.

Although echolocation has its promise as advanced navigational skills for sightless individuals’ improved independence, echolocation education and advocacy are yet to be constrained due to two reasons:

Scarcity Of Qualified Instructors

Resulting in the unattainability of educational resources, worsen by the global pandemic

Beginners’ Untrained Hearing

Unable to distinguish and interpret information from subtle sound reflections

In response to that, I collaborated with Thomas Tajo, a Belgium-based echolocation educational authority, proposing EchoLearn as an distance education solution.

Strategically, it provides...

EchoLearn may intervene from the early stages in vision deterioration or vision loss as an onboarding & transitional training method until a beginner is ready for advanced onsite training.

Through elicitation interviews with Thomas Tajo, we identified patterns of the onsite training pedagogy and reproduced the five common practices in EchoLearn’s VR exercises.