VisionWay Accessibility | NCT07713979

NCT07713979

Overview

NCT ID: NCT07713979
Lead Sponsor: Ohio State UniversityOTHER
Official Title: VisionWay: Accessibility-Aware Path Selection for Wayfinding
Brief Summary: The challenge of outdoor wayfinding, critical for People with Visual Impairments (PVI), consists in helping users safely walk to a pre-determined nearby destination. The main focus of existing solutions from research and industry is to leverage the user's smartphone to receive safe moving directions either from a remote operator or smart app. However, multiple paths may exist to connect users with their destination, each one with unique characteristics in terms of accessibility and safety. Unfortunately, little to no attention has been paid in helping PVI decide, before even starting to walk, which path to take based on their accessibility. Thus, a barrier identified is that the followed path may not be accessible because sidewalk features such as potholes, uncontrolled crossing, interrupted sidewalks, and objects are not known in advance. The investigators' goal is to develop a mobile live, local, outside map framework called VisionWay, customized for PVI-user as a wayfinding tool to analyze, before starting to walk, the accessibility of candidate paths and choose one to the destination.

Status and Timeline

Status: Recruiting
Last Update Posted: Jul 20, 2026Actual
Start Date: Feb 26, 2026Actual
Primary Completion Date: Sep 1, 2027Estimated
Completion Date

Participation Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study: Adult (18-64)Older Adult (65+)
Sexes Eligible for Study: All
Accepts Healthy Volunteers?: No
Eligibility Criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

At least 18 years old

Able to provide informed consent

Vision worse than 20/200, encompassing PVI with severe and profound impairment as well as total blindness.

Group 1 Inclusion:

- PVI meeting general inclusion criteria and without mobility aids

Group 2 Inclusion:

- PVI meeting general inclusion criteria and who use a cane as a mobility aid

Group 3 Inclusion:

- PVI meeting general inclusion criteria and who use guide dogs.

Exclusion Criteria:

Conditions that prevent safe ambulation that include, but are not limited to, neuromuscular disorder, post-operative state (such as orthopedic surgeries or cardiac surgeries), balance issues, history of falls in the last 6 months, or at the discretion of the investigator.

Use of walker or wheelchair

Study Plan

Study Type: Interventional
Phase: Not Applicable
Enrollment: 100Estimated
Primary Purpose: Other
Allocation: N/A
Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)

Contacts and Locations

Central Contacts: Abigail Larsen, MPHContact
abigail.larsen@osumc.edu614-293-5287

Similar Studies

Participant Group/Arms

Recorded walksExperimental

The study team will record videos of a subset of users walking on selected paths on campus. Participants may be presented with the maps ahead of the walk. Such videos may include video recordings from the perspective of the study team monitoring the participant. Additionally, personal recording devices such as GoPro/action cameras, or recording eyeglasses may be provided to the participant to record walks from their perspective. From the preselected paths, the set and order will be randomized between participants. The study team will prompt participants after each path to identify and describe path features that affect accessibility, as well as to provide a perceived accessibility score (on a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 is highly accessible). The video recording may include audio description of these relevant sidewalk features and the score. The research team member will record their observations of the walking paths as well.

Behavioral: walking path