# Designing Pedagogically Effective Haptic Systems for Learning: A Review
## 3 Haptics Applications for Learning
### Visual Disability Instruction
The improvement of the participants' accuracy in locating haptic dots demonstrates the usability of the device, and the ability of the participants to develop effective screen exploration strategies indicted that the device is intuitive for users [40]. Navigating through unfamiliar spaces can be a difficult and daunting task for those who are visually impaired [46] To achieve orientation and mobility (O&M) visually impaired individuals rely entirely on tactile or auditory feedback from the environment. [PERSON] [46] describes the development of a haptic and audio augmented virtual environment videogame designed with the goal of teaching orientation and mobility skills to people who are visually impaired [46]. [PERSON] conducts studies investigating usability and impact on orientation and mobility skills in blind students. The video game was referred to as the \"Audio Haptic Maze (AHM)\" [46] The objective of AHM was to escape from a maze. In order to meet that objective, players of the game were required to locate jewelry boxes, which contained keys and treasures. These jewelry boxes were dispersed throughout the maze. The keys that were located within the jewelry boxes had geometric shapes on them that corresponded to a certain door. A participant's score was determined by how many treasures they discovered and how fast they finished the maze. AHM used a \"spatialized sound to represent the ambience of the corridors\" and sound cues to denote certain events, such as finding a key [46]. Haptic feedback was employed to denote change in textures, different shapes, and chosen direction of avatar movement. To test the usability of the device, an initial study was conducted on ten blind learners ages 9-15. The usability study results revealed two key points for design improvement: pure sounds and simple shapes. Designers initially created the AHM with metallic sounding audio feedback, which was found to confuse some users. Also, complex shapes were deemed harder to identify by users via touch. To evaluate the cognitive impact the AHM video game had on the blind users, an O&M skills checklist was employed. 7 blind learners between the ages of 10-15 were selected from the Santa Lucia School for the Blind. The metrics measured by the O&M checklist were: (1) Sensory perception (2) Tempo-spatial development (3) Orientation and mobility skills [46]. The O&M checklist served as a pretest. After the pretest was administered, the AHM videogame was completed by the participants. Upon conclusion of the AHM videogame, participants were asked to form a graphic representation of the virtual environment they had traversed during the game. This representation served as a measurement to determine the efficacy of the game in helping the user build a mental model of the virtual environment. Additionally, the orientation and mobility pre-test were re-administered to the participants as a post-test. Evaluation of the participants demonstrated an increase in pretest/posttest means in all dimensions and that training with the audio-haptic-maze simulator improved the development of orientation and mobility skills in visually impaired users [46]. The usability study found that choosing appropriate audio icons is crucial to user understanding and the transmission information; certain sound effects may be confusing for the participant. This study of the AHM determined that use of audio and haptic icons enable the learners to effectively navigate the virtual environment in a way that is translatable to real-world navigation [46]. Certec, the Division of Rehabilitation Engineering Research, Department of Design Sciences at Lund University, has been working on haptic interfaces since 1995 for visually impaired people. A paper authored by [PERSON] [47] presents a brief overview of tests that have been conducted on these haptic devices and games, as well as the detailing the resulting design implications for blind users.