VIDBE-Q Volume 68 Issue 2
48
While Celine is a fictional character, this vignette encapsulates some of the
combined experiences of participants in the PSU and APH wayfinding study,
which included 28 participants, both youth and adults, on an urban college campus.
This study was a part of a multi-year investigation about the use of wayfinding
apps by travelers who are blind, DeafBlind, or have low vision in urban
environments that was funded by the National Institute for Transportation and
Communities (NITC). All aspects of the investigation focused on the real-world
wayfinding experiences of participants, using focus groups, systematic literature
reviews that included in-situ evaluation of apps, and mixed-method approaches to
observe and analyze wayfinding behavior (Parker et al., 2021; Swobodzinski et al.,
2021). While the focus of this report is on the youth participants in the study,
adults from ages 19-70 were also included in the wayfinding tasks (Swobodzinski
et al., 2022).
Transition from high school to college environments is fraught with
challenges for students with disabilities. There are specific challenges for youth
with visual impairments, because college campuses are notoriously complex to
navigate. For this mixed methods study, we gathered insights from 15 diverse
youth with visual impairments on what wayfinding tools supported their
successful navigation on the urban college campus of Portland State University.
Naturalistic inquiry, observation using audio and video recording, and data sheets
