Lin Lin
In the digital media era, an increasing range of creative scenarios combine design with the senses. Visually impaired people have impaired visual field or low visual acuity, which results in low vision and affects their everyday lives. Through the interactive experience of mobilising the sense of hearing, visually impaired people can generate perceptual intentions and physical responses to objects or spaces, thereby obtaining relevant information.
This paper first analyses the behavioural characteristics of visually impaired people, including their psychological condition, individual adaptability, and mobility. Secondly, starting from the characteristics of sensory compensation, the paper explores the interaction design idea of auditory compensation and tactile compensation with the more sensitive tactile and auditory senses of the visually impaired people to alleviate the cognitive barriers and operational difficulties of the visually impaired people in their daily life, and to make them have a pleasurable psychological experience. After that, the article takes the theory of sensory compensation as a guide and discusses the characteristics, needs, and compensations of the visually impaired group, as well as relevant design cases, etc., to study and summarise the design principles, methods and strategies for the visually impaired group under sensory compensation, in order to provide references to the design practice of the people in the future.
As a scientific and practical design tool, sensory compensation can guide the future results of design practice serving visually impaired people, i.e., by improving the ability of visually impaired people to perceive information to have a pleasant interactive experience when using products or being in a specific space. Exploring the application of sensory compensation in design can effectively make up for the lack of visual information of the visually impaired group and realise the emotional care and respect for the disadvantaged group, which has far-reaching social value and significance.
KEYWORDS: sensory compensation, visually impaired people, auditory application design, behavioural characteristics, interaction design, design methods, inclusive design