In 1989 Bates introduced berrypicking as a powerful metaphor highlighting that searching is not a linear process but is more accurately described as an activity that is distributed in time and space. From an information seeking perspective there are interesting similarities between berrypicking and real world wayfinding. Wayfinding is also distributed in time and space but its success involves ...

Spatial orientation has been studied as one dimension of the abilities that humans use in the wayfinding processes (Golledge and Stimson 1997; Allen 1999). Rieser (1999) defines spatial orientation as “knowing where one is relative to objects in the surrounding environment.” However, human wayfinding abilities are seriously degraded in people experiencing dementia. Efforts to model the underlyi...

Most auditory assistive devices for the Blind employ synthetic speech. These include talking computer interfaces, reading machines, talking signs, and a plethora of talking appliances and gadgets. Some devices use warning tones to signal events or localize objects. Sonification in assistive devices is limited to wayfinding systems that encode range into frequency. There are now some prototype s...