What it is and Where I am Spatial Orientation and Navigation Strategies among Visually Impaired People in Pakistan

In this study, we explored spatial reference frames and navigation strategies among visually impaired people. The study focuses on the different kinds of reference frames that the verbalized responses of participants gave hints of. Through the methodological framework of Cognitive Discourse Analysis (Tenbrink,2015), we designed route description tasks and navigation guidance tasks to collect a large set of linguistic data from 20 participants (2 discourses each). Tenbrink and Kuhn’s (2011) framework of spatial reference frames is employed to find out the nature of reference frames employed by participants during navigation tasks and to identify navigation strategies of visually impaired people. The findings of the study will help us suggest better ways for the training of visually impaired people especially in the institutes of people with special needs.