Table 4.8 showed a summary of the first four open-ended questions. Subjects were quite verbose regarding how RIAS would positively affect their ability to travel and participate in activities. All these comments were categorized into three major groups: the ability to gain specific information about locations and tasks, positive changes in affective states, and the ability to generally make trips more frequently and efficiently. These comments can be interpreted to reveal the negative impact on mobility, accessibility, and overall quality of life issues caused by loss of vision. Each of these 651 positive comments about RIAS and its affect on increasing travel options is also a negative statement about the current, limited state of blind navigation. The impact of all these difficulties surely has a high negative effect on the quality of life for many people with vision loss.
It appears that every question asked in this experiment revealed strong limitations on the freedom to fully participate in life activities faced by those with vision loss, especially in a new environment. The reported desire to travel to many more activities and to participate in new activities, shown in the section on travel behavior (see Section 4.3.4 , Summary of Current Activity Participation, Unmet and Hidden Demand ), confirms the inability of some blind people to fully embrace an active lifestyle. This chapter examines the impact of vision loss and travel restrictions and the mitigating effect of increased environmental spatial cues in greater detail.
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