Start and end date: 01/12/2023 to 30/11/2025
Funding Frame: Cooperation partnerships in vocational education and training (KA220-VET)
Project Coordinator: Istituto Regionale Rittmeyer per i Ciechi
Project aim
The main aim of this project is to provide basic mobility training for visually impaired people by using Virtual Reality technology. This solution would improve the situation concerning individual mobility for this target group even in countries, where no such training is available or regulated. In the long term, this objective facilitates the enforcement of Article 20 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
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Background
Individual and independent mobility is the basic prerequisite for social and professional participation, especially for people with visual impairments. Unfortunately, qualified mobility training for people with visual impairments is not equally available in all European countries.
Although the EU ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2010 and thus also Article 20 in December 2010, implementation is very inconsistent across Europe.
Qualified mobility training is very time-consuming and labour-intensive. For safety reasons, the training takes place in a 1:1 teacher/student situation. This also includes practising routes to public transport hubs (e.g. railway stations) in order to get to and from the workplace. This involves time-consuming journeys to the training location in order to practise travelling to these locations.
A virtual reality project for mobility training for visually impaired people is necessary for several reasons:
- Virtual reality provides an accessible and immersive environment for visually impaired people to practice their mobility skills in a safe and controlled environment. No disruptions from heavy traffic and crowds of people interfere with the participant’s attention. Physical hazards are eliminated by a virtual environment
- The realistic simulation of various mobility scenarios makes participants safer.
Project activities
To achieve the project aim, four steps are planned as part of the project:
- training of specialised teachers and mobility trainers for visually impaired people in the appropriate use of VR technology for people with disabilities.
- training of specialised teachers and mobility trainers for visually impaired people in the creation of 360° videos and their use in VR headsets for preparatory mobility training.
- training specialised teachers and mobility trainers for visually impaired people in the creation of virtual 3D environments as “digital twin” using the Unity 3D Designer platform
- implementation of VR technology in the partner organisations
Example of a virtual environment (“Virtual Twin”), representing a real scenery
