[nabs-l] Article: Audio-based virtual gaming aims to help theblind navigate, CNet News, April 1, 2013

[Brandon Keith Biggs]

Hello,
It is the special map the users build based on the small environment the 
game has. The monsters and jewels are not necessary, but help cement the 
directions in the player's mind.
I'm not sure why they are doing this now as I've been telling people that 
playing games has helped me considerably in developing my mapping skills and 
if I had a game for a place I wanted to travel, I would have considerably 
more knowledge of a place than I would if I heard directions from someone, 
saw a map or even walked it.
I'm excited they are heading toward this and hope the next generation of GPS 
technology will include interactive environment's.
Thanks,

Brandon Keith Biggs
-----Original Message----- 
From: Jedi Moerke
Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2013 4:51 AM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Article: Audio-based virtual gaming aims to help 
theblind navigate, CNet News, April 1, 2013

I have a strong suspicion that the videogame in another itself is not what 
necessarily responsible for increasing success of navigation. I think the 
video game activates some cognitive processes that traditional instruction 
does not. I suspect it's the same phenomenon that works instruction 
discovery. I don't know that for fact, but it's a gas. This message was 
typed in a hurry using Siri, so please forgive me in advance for grammatical 
errors.

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 1, 2013, at 11:21 PM, "Humberto Avila" 
<avila.bert.humberto2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Link:
> http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57577323-76/audio-based-virtual-gaming-aim
> s-to-help-the-blind-navigate/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
>
> Text: Audio-based virtual gaming aims to help the blind navigate
> Using only audio-based cues within the context of a video game metaphor,
> blind users in a study out of Harvard are able to explore a building's
> layout.
> Elizabeth Armstrong Moore
>
> Blind players were better able to navigate the building in real life than
> their counterparts who'd been introduced to it by walking through it.
> (Credit: Journal of Visualized Experiments)
> A video game that uses audio cues and computer-generated building layouts
> has proven to be better at improving a blind person's spatial awareness of
> that place than does actually walking them through it, according to new
> research out of Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear
> Infirmary.
> The findings could have implications for how visually impaired people --  
> and
> possibly those without impairments -- best learn to navigate unknown
> territory.
> "It is a tool to build a map of a place you have never been to before,"
> Lotfi Merabet, the neuroscientist whose team developed the software used 
> in
> the study (which appears in the Journal of Visualized Experiments), told
> Reuters. "The video game not only allows you to build a map in your mind, 
> it
> allows you to interact with it mentally in a way that you wouldn't be able
> to if you were taught explicitly by walking through it."
> Merabet sees the video game as an important step toward revolutionizing
> assisted tech for the visually impaired, of which there are some 285 
> million
> globally.
> His team tested the game on teens to 45-year-olds who were either
> congenitally blind or had lost their sight. Some participants played the
> game, using audio cues to find hidden jewels in a building that in real 
> life
> is a center for the blind in Newton, Mass. There was an added incentive:
> They had to remove those jewels from the building without being caught by,
> you guessed it, monsters lurking in dark corners. Other participants got 
> to
> actually walk the building itself to learn the lay of the land.
>
>
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