A Study on Sonification Method of Simulator-Based Ski Training for People with Visual Impairment

Yusuke Miura, Masaki Kuribayashi, Erwin Wu, Hideki Koike, Shigeo Morishima

Abstract: People with visual impairment (PVI) are eager to push their limits in extreme sports such as alpine skiing. However, training skiing is very difficult as it always requires assistance from an experienced guide. This paper explores sonification-based methods that enable PVI to train skiing using a simulator, which will allow them to train without a guide. Two types of sonification feedback for PVI are proposed and studied in our experiment. The results suggest that users without any visual information can also pass through over 80% of the poles compared to with visual information on average.