Teaching spatial thinking to visually impaired students using augmented reality: Introducing the VISTE project

People living with visual impairments face important challenges related to orientation and mobility which might even prevent them from travelling autonomously. Indeed, it is difficult to navigate in an unknown space in the absence of vision or to acquire knowledge about spaces before travelling. Historically, raised-line paper maps with braille text have been used to teach geography to visually impaired children, but these maps possess significant limitations. Accessible interactive maps have been designed with the aim to overcome these limitations. In the VISTE project, we aim at exploring an innovative augmented reality framework to design an accessible interactive map that will then be used in special education schools for teaching spatial thinking to visually impaired children. Mots-clés : Réalité augmentée, technologies éducatives, accessibilité, déficience visuelle, cartes interactives, géographie, cognition spatiale