VisionWay Accessibility

NCT07713979 | Recruiting

• 1 other identifier: STUDY20251838
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 100
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 2

Brief Summary

The challenge of outdoor wayfinding, critical for People with Visual Impairments (PVI), consists in helping users safely walk to a pre-determined nearby destination. The main focus of existing solutions from research and industry is to leverage the user's smartphone to receive safe moving directions either from a remote operator or smart app. However, multiple paths may exist to connect users with their destination, each one with unique characteristics in terms of accessibility and safety. Unfortunately, little to no attention has been paid in helping PVI decide, before even starting to walk, which path to take based on their accessibility. Thus, a barrier identified is that the followed path may not be accessible because sidewalk features such as potholes, uncontrolled crossing, interrupted sidewalks, and objects are not known in advance. The investigators' goal is to develop a mobile live, local, outside map framework called VisionWay, customized for PVI-user as a wayfinding tool to analyze, before starting to walk, the accessibility of candidate paths and choose one to the destination.

Conditions

Persons With Visual Disabilities

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• PVI accessibility on sidewalks

  Primary objectives are to collect prospective data in PVI groups to define which sidewalk features affect accessibility and how to design an accessibility model able to estimate accessibility. Twenty sidewalk (path) features were scored on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = not important, 5 = very important), and participants indicated the number of additional minutes they would be willing to walk to access a route containing each feature (5-point scale. 1 = up to one minute, to 5 = five or more minutes). A combined score for each feature was determined by summing the two values (for each feature) to generate an overall priority ranking. Higher scores indicate a greater perceived importance.

  For a period over 2 hours

Study Arms (1)

Recorded walks

EXPERIMENTAL

The study team will record videos of a subset of users walking on selected paths on campus. Participants may be presented with the maps ahead of the walk. Such videos may include video recordings from the perspective of the study team monitoring the participant. Additionally, personal recording devices such as GoPro/action cameras, or recording eyeglasses may be provided to the participant to record walks from their perspective. From the preselected paths, the set and order will be randomized between participants. The study team will prompt participants after each path to identify and describe path features that affect accessibility, as well as to provide a perceived accessibility score (on a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 is highly accessible). The video recording may include audio description of these relevant sidewalk features and the score. The research team member will record their observations of the walking paths as well.

Behavioral: walking path

Interventions

walking path BEHAVIORAL

Participants will be asked to walk a defined pathway through campus. From the preselected paths, the set and order will be randomized between participants.

Recorded walks

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 18 Years+
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: No
• Age Groups: Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

• At least 18 years old
• Able to provide informed consent
• Vision worse than 20/200, encompassing PVI with severe and profound impairment as well as total blindness.

You may not qualify if:

• Conditions that prevent safe ambulation that include, but are not limited to, neuromuscular disorder, post-operative state (such as orthopedic surgeries or cardiac surgeries), balance issues, history of falls in the last 6 months, or at the discretion of the investigator.
• Use of walker or wheelchair

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Ohio State University: lead
• University of Maine: collaborator

Study Sites (2)

University of Maine

Orono, Maine, 04469, United States

RECRUITING

Ohio State University

Columbus, Ohio, 43212, United States

RECRUITING

Study Officials

• Marco Brocanelli, PhD

  Ohio State University

  STUDY DIRECTOR

• Sayoko Moroi, MD, PhD

  Ohio State University

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Central Study Contacts

Abigail Larsen, MPH

CONTACT

614-293-5287; abigail.larsen@osumc.edu

Matt Patton

CONTACT

614-293-5287; matthew.patton@osumc.edu

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: NA
• Masking: NONE
• Purpose: OTHER
• Intervention Model: SINGLE GROUP
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: SPONSOR

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: July 9, 2026
• First Posted: July 20, 2026
• Study Start: February 26, 2026
• Primary Completion (Estimated): September 1, 2027
• Study Completion (Estimated): September 1, 2027
• Last Updated: July 20, 2026

Record last verified: 2026-07

Locations

US (2)