Nonverbal Signals for Face-to-Face Communication between the Blind and the Sighted

Nonverbal communication plays an important role in social interactions. However, most nonverbal communication relies on visual signals such as eye contact, head nods, facial expressions and body gestures. Visual nonverbal signals are inaccessible for the blind and hardly accessible for low vision individuals. In this paper, we present a qualitative study on nonverbal signals for the blind in face-to-face communication and problems they met due to the lack of visual signals. We interviewed 20 blind and low vision participants and collected qualitative data for the further analysis. Our results show that auditory and tactile signals are two major nonverbal signals that blind participants sense in face-to-face communication. They seldom sense positive feelings from visual signals in a conversation and they tend to have an indirect and fuzzy understanding of eyes and eye gestures. Furthermore, we discuss how our findings can be relevant for design: the sighted conversation partner’s visual signals with positive meanings need to be detected to help the blind perceive the signal and feel more confident and engaged in face-to-face communication.