AR Escape Room to Support the Rehabilitation of People with Visual Impairment

Supervisors: Denis Lalanne, Simon Ruffieux, Yong Joon Thoo

Contact person: Simon Ruffieux

Student: Cédric Membrez

Project status: Finished

Year: 2023

Rehabilitation is crucial for individuals with visual impairments, enabling them to enhance their residual vision and achieve greater independence in daily activities. Rehabilitation centers employ personalized training methods using both paper-based and digital exercises. Specialists in these centers welcome new technologies that can aid in rehabilitation and motivate their clients throughout the challenging process. However, the details of low vision rehabilitation training are often poorly documented and unfamiliar to outsiders. In my thesis, I collaborated with an association dedicated to assisting individuals with visual impairments, conducting a formative study to gain valuable insights into low vision rehabilitation. I synthesized these insights into a model for gamifying rehabilitation tasks. Additionally, I explored the application of augmented reality technology in low vision rehabilitation, an area that has seen limited use. As part of this exploration, I developed an augmented reality escape room to explore the usability and accessibility of different interaction methods. The results highlighted the significant impact of interaction modalities on the time required and the number of errors made when solving the escape room. Through my exploratory work, I found that the augmented reality headset used hold great potential, emphasizing the importance of providing customizable apps and experiences to individuals with visual impairments.

Keywords: augmented reality, people with visual impairment, rehabilitation, escape room, gamification.

Document: report.pdf