This paper introduces the design of a novel indoor and outdoor mobility assistance system for visually impaired people. This system is named the MAPS (Mobility Assistance Path Planning and orientation in Space), and it is based on the theoretical frameworks of mobility and spatial cognition. Its originality comes from the assistance of two main functions of navigation: locomotion and wayfinding. Locomotion involves the ability to avoid obstacles, while wayfinding involves the orientation in space and ad hoc path planning in an (unknown) environment. The MAPS architecture proposes a new low-cost system for indoor–outdoor cognitive mobility assistance, relying on two cooperating hardware feedbacks: the Force Feedback Tablet (F2T) and the TactiBelt. F2T is an electromechanical tablet using haptic effects that allow the exploration of images and maps. It is used to assist with maps’ learning, space awareness emergence, path planning, wayfinding and effective journey completion. It helps a VIP construct a mental map of their environment. TactiBelt is a vibrotactile belt providing active support for the path integration strategy while navigating; it assists the VIP localize the nearest obstacles in real-time and provides the ego-directions to reach the destination. Technology used for acquiring the information about the surrounding space is based on vision (cameras) and is defined with the localization on a map. The preliminary evaluations of the MAPS focused on the interaction with the environment and on feedback from the users (blindfolded participants) to confirm its effectiveness in a simulated environment (a labyrinth). Those lead-users easily interpreted the system’s provided data that they considered relevant for effective independent navigation.

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Currently, graphical data is becoming increasingly ubiquitous with new technologies. However, today's technologies are still of limited access to such representations (images, graphs, charts. . . ) for Visually Impaired People (VIP). The quantity and quality of presented information are key points of efficient accessibility. Therefore, this paper proposes the presentation of such information via a tactile gist (a tactile representation of essential data). New rules for 2D data representation (e.g. paintings, images, maps) are proposed via the tactile gist, which helps us, especially VIP, to understand them. These rules are deduced from experiments lead with VIP for tactile gist representations on two supports -thermoformed paper and dedicated original force-feedback based device named F2T (Fore Feedback Tablet). These rules take into account the human touch/haptic sense specificities and human cognitive capabilities. Such rules should be included in the design of any assistance to 2D data accessible by the VIP.