Space is an essential part of social communication. The distance individuals choose when communicating with each other conveys non-verbal information and social signals. In remote, audiovisual communication, though, spatial information is hardly considered in the technical set-ups, often arbitrary and unequally perceived by the participants. In this article, we describe an audiovisual communication system that takes distance into account. Based on a display equipped with depth sensors, we divide the space into different zones and use human position in the room to enable interaction between remote participants. This way, the physical availability of a communication partner is imitated and distance between individuals can be used naturally to convey non-verbal information in remote set-ups.

Navigating the environment can be challenging, especially when faced with vision or hearing limitations, such as darkness and visual impairments. To address this issue, we propose using electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) to convey spatial information and assist users in avoiding obstacles. We map direction to EMS channels and distance to current intensity, with force-feedback for closer proximity and tactile EMS feedback for greater proximity. An experimental study (n=12) was conducted to evaluate the concept and gain insights into the qualitative perception of EMS. Participants were able to accurately estimate encoded distance (85.7% accuracy) and direction (99.5% accuracy). Our findings demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of using tactile and force feedback EMS to convey spatial information comprehensibly.