From Tactile to NavTile: Opportunities and Challenges with Multi-Modal Feedback for Guiding Surfaces during Non-Visual Navigation

Tactile guiding surfaces in the built environment have held a contentious place in the process of navigation by people who are blind or visually impaired. Despite standards for tactile guiding surfaces, problems persist with inconsistent implementation, perception, and geographic orientation. We investigate the role of tactile cues in non-visual navigation and attitudes surrounding guiding surfaces through a survey of 67 people with vision impairments and ten interviews with navigation and public accessibility experts. Our participants revealed several opportunities to augment existing tactile surfaces while envisioning novel multimodal feedback solutions in immediately relevant contexts. We also propose an approach for designing and exploring low cost, multimodal tactile surfaces, which we call navtiles. Finally, we discuss practical aspects of implementation for new design alternatives such as standardization, installation, movability, discoverability, and a need for transparency. Collectively, these insights contribute to the production and implementation of novel multimodal navigation aids.