# Indoor-Guided Navigation for People Who Are Blind: Crowdsourcing for Route Mapping and Assistance
## 2 Survey of BSVI Social Networking in the Context of Navigation Needs  
The presented literature review gives a better understanding of the object of research. However, it lacks practical R&D insights concerning the real-life needs of people who are BSVI for effective and innovative guided indoor navigational solutions. Thus, we had to look for first-hand experience-based and user-centric feedback from people who are BSVI. To define the social networking needs and expectations concerning indoor navigation help, we conducted a semi-structured survey of people who are BSVI (see Figure 1). A semi-structured survey was conducted as a part of a research project titled \"Complex research of augmented reality for the blind and weak-sighted people\" (project No. 01.2.2-LMT-K-718-01-0060) funded by European Regional Development. The goal of the semi-structured survey of BSVI persons was to find out user-defined ETA development niche and specification of tasks to be achieved. This survey aimed to identify BSVI people's requirements, problems, wishes, visions, and expectations for indoor and outdoor ETA technological solutions. The survey was anonymous. We surveyed regular people who are BSVI using the online LymeSurvey web service platform at this link: [[https://fts.vgtu.lt/survey/index.php/237934?lang=en](https://fts.vgtu.lt/survey/index.php/237934?lang=en)]([https://fts.vgtu.lt/survey/index.php/237934?lang=en](https://fts.vgtu.lt/survey/index.php/237934?lang=en)) (accessed on 23 October 2021), where our questionnaire was available on the web. We used a psychometric Likert-type scale commonly involved in research that employs questionnaires [23]. We used the same anonymous web survey platform and the same questionnaire supplemented with open-ended and priority questions for the BSVI experts' semi-structured survey. In the case of open-ended questions, we interviewed each expert. Interviews were audio-recorded for later analysis. In the survey questionnaire, we used 19 questions: (a) 8 demographic questions (age, living location, education, etc. ), (b) 11 sight-related questions (level of disability and behavioral patterns). Meanwhile, for the semi-structured interview, we used additional 20 questions: (a) 14 open-ended questions (needs, problems, expectations), (b) 6 priority questions (listing problems and needs in decreasing order of the personal preference). The whole questionnaire is available at this address. We obtained 87 responses from regular people and 46 from experts. After filtering out the wrong questionnaires, we obtained 78 responses from regular people and 25 from experts. The main reason for wrongly filled responses was experts' reluctance to fill up the longer questionnaire. In total, the responses of 78 people who are BSVI located in the EU were analyzed, of which 25 were identified as blind experts (10+ years of experience or active interest in using ETAs for the blind). In the survey, some questions (out of 42 questions in total) concerned ETA navigation functionalities, and others dealt with social networking approaches. As shown in Figure 1, our survey results of 78 people who are BSVI indicate that  
1. Over 50% of people who are BSVI do not use firsthand assistance from volunteers;
2. They prefer to navigate an unknown route using ETA (over 35%);
3. They are unsatisfied or highly unsatisfied with the existing technological tools for navigation indoors (over 40%);
4. They are less unsatisfied with the existing technological tools for navigation outdoors (around 30%). These results indicate that a considerable portion of people who are BSVI are quite autonomous, familiar with ETA, and are looking for better indoor ETA solutions. These user-centric findings shaped the next steps of our research. To pinpoint future ETA needs, we filtered out the answers of 25 BSVI ETA experts (see Figure 2). Their answers provided an even more unambiguous indication that people who are BSVI need autonomous indoor navigation with better ETA solutions.