Alan Scott, assistant professor of psychology, recently published two articles in a special issue of the Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness.
The special issue celebrates the 50th anniversary of the founding of university training of orientation and mobility specialists.
The first paper, “Nonvisual cues for aligning to cross streets,” reports evaluations of the effectiveness of various underfoot tactile surfaces and additional potential cues for providing necessary information to blind pedestrians regarding the orientation of crosswalks with respect to curb ramp starting positions.
In “Walking between the lines: Nonvisual cues for maintaining headings during street crossings,” Dr. Scott and his colleagues detail their findings related to the effectiveness of in-road tactile cues and audible beaconing technologies designed to provide heading information to blind pedestrians during the course of street crossings. The articles appear in Volume 105, Issue 10 (Oct-Nov, 2011).
Both articles were jointly authored with Billie Louise Bentzen and Janet Barlow, principals of Accessible Design for the Blind, David Guth and Richard Long of Western Michigan University, and Christopher Cunningham of the Institute for Transportation Research and Education at North Carolina State University.