Hey, What's Going On?

Highly Automated Vehicles offer a new level of independence to people who are blind or visually impaired. However, due to their limited vision, gaining knowledge of the surrounding traffic can be challenging. To address this issue, we conducted an interactive, participatory workshop (N=4) to develop an auditory interface and OnBoard- a tactile interface with expandable elements - to convey traffic information to visually impaired people. In a user study with N=14 participants, we explored usability, situation awareness, predictability, and engagement with OnBoard and the auditory interface. Our qualitative and quantitative results show that tactile cues, similar to auditory cues, are able to convey traffic information to users. In particular, there is a trend that participants with reduced visual acuity showed increased engagement with both interfaces. However, the diversity of visual impairments and individual information needs underscores the importance of a highly tailored multimodal approach as the ideal solution.