Virtual environments for training visually impaired for a sensory substitution device

Virtual reality represents an emerging technology, which can be successfully used to develop training tools in many domains, such as military, space, education or healthcare. The current paper proposes a training strategy for a sensory substitution device in order to improve the ability of visually impaired people to be autonomous, thus to increase the quality of their lives. The core of the strategy is a highly interactive virtual training environment, composed of 3D scenes simulating both realistic and imaginary settings. The training is based on gamification principles, as the virtual environment is designed as a highly immersive serious game, with essential elements such as quests, rewards or increasing complexity of tasks which can maintain its users motivated and help them acquire useful day-to-day life skills. Also, a series of mini-games are available in the training environment, as repetitive actions can facilitate the improvement of specific skills. By using appropriate hardware equipment, the virtual training environment can be rendered to the visually impaired users through acoustic and haptic means. The paper presents our proposed training strategy based on virtual reality in the context of numerous challenges of offering efficient training experiences to users with special needs.