IEEE VR 2025 Blind VR: Comparing Vibrotactile and Skin-Stretch Haptic Feedback for Conveying Spatial Information to Blind VR Users

How can blind users navigate and understand virtual environments? This paper compares two haptic approaches for conveying where virtual objects are located: vibrotactile feedback (buzzing sensations) versus skin-stretch feedback (gentle pulling on the skin). The researchers tested both methods with blind participants to see which better communicated the position and movement of objects in VR space. The results show that skin-stretch feedback significantly outperformed vibration for spatial accuracy—blind users could more precisely understand where objects were and how they moved when feeling directional skin stretch rather than vibration patterns. This finding has important implications for making VR accessible, suggesting that skin-stretch devices may be more effective than the vibration motors common in today's controllers for helping blind users build mental maps of virtual spaces.

Jiasheng Li, Zining Zhang, Zeyu Yan, Yuhang Zhao, and Huaishu Peng. 2025. Comparing Vibrotactile and Skin-Stretch Haptic Feedback for Conveying Spatial Information of Virtual Objects to Blind VR Users. In 2025 IEEE Conference Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR), Saint Malo, France. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR59515.2025.00091