Touching Space: Accessible Map Exploration Through Conversational Audio-Haptic Interaction

TL;DR

Touching Space is an assistive system that enables Blind and Low-Vision users to explore and understand spatial environments through a conversational audio-haptic interface for pre-travel planning.

Contribution

It introduces a novel system combining haptic and audio feedback with conversational AI to support cognitive map building on accessible hardware.

Findings

Supports pre-travel spatial understanding for BLV users

Integrates conversational interaction with tactile exploration

Operates on commodity hardware for accessibility

Abstract

Most existing assistive navigation tools focus on providing real-time guidance for Blind and Low-Vision (BLV) people, but few support building a holistic spatial understanding of unfamiliar environments before travel. Such cognitive map construction (e.g., knowing that a fountain is south of a tower and west of a hotel) is important for pre-travel planning, yet remains underexplored in prior work. To address this gap, we present Touching Space, an end-to-end system that retrieves map data for a target place and loads it into a frontend interface for exploration. The system combines haptic and audio feedback: users explore spatial layouts through touch and ask spoken questions to a conversational agent during exploration. Touching Space contributes a conversational interface that supports BLV users in building cognitive maps on commodity hardware.