interview pt 4

Lotta uses a typical long cane when moving, and utilizes her mental map together with auditory sense when navigating herself. She tells the differences between places by discerning the subtle changes in echo, reverb, background noise etc.

Scents also give her a lot of clues about her surroundings. Fresh baked buns, textiles in clothes shop, books in libraries, all give their unique scent.

The trip was not completely out of problems though. Once she got into a over hang by the path, which is not detectable by traditional canes. She got a bit confused also in the parking lot, which is quite open with few directional cues.

Then we've been to Clas Ohlson, a hardware store located in downtown Umea. With the assistance of the staff there, and the printed picture of the items they wanted to buy, the shopping goes pretty smoothly, although the shop is a little over crowded for her to move without collision.

Afterwards, we went on to shop some textiles. Again with her mental map we found the shop easily. Actually she's been leading the way most of time! When we got into the textile shop, a nice scent of textile confirms once more that we were in the right place.

some points:

the tactile pavement is not always available. In fact they're available only in a very little area downtown, where the ground is heated up thus no snow would be covering.



acquiring information about the items is difficult for visually impaired, and sometimes even for a normal sighted person. I couldn't read most of the stuff in swedish, for example. With the optical magnifier, Thomas is able to read most of the stuff, but not for Lotta, since she can't see anything. Though there's a big boycott against RFID for privacy concerns, I would really like them being used here.