Humans typically utilize vision in a dominant role for navigation. However, what happens when vision becomes actively unreliable? Will it impair user performance, be suppressed, or be used advantageously? While such scenarios are rare in the real world, this question has important implications for multisensory integration in extended reality applications - e.g. virtual walls that a user sees but can walk through. We created virtual mazes which could be solved via audio or visual cues. We then manipulated the reliability of these sensory channels by including invisible walls which are not perceived but still blocked passage, and ghost walls which could be perceived but did not block participants. Participants navigated the exact same layouts under all conditions, and could solve these levels by ignoring the unreliable sensory modality and using only the other. Participants easily completed these mazes using vision-only, and with some difficulty via audition-only. Partially unreliable vision degraded performance, though still above audio-only demonstrating utilization of the unreliable visual cues. Mazes whose entire visual input was false degraded performance to the level of audio only, though participants subjectively reported it as easier then audio-only and did not close their eyes indicating that they still relied on vision. Testing a control in which visual information was both false and constantly moved, preventing its use as landmarks or optic flow, indeed caused participants to close their eyes, disregarding the false vision, but was accompanied by confounding nausea. In parallel, auditory incongruencies were easily suppressed across all unreliable auditory conditions. This demonstrates human attachment to visual information, even when mostly or completely false, and the ability to glean practical advantages from it unless it is completely stripped from usability. More broadly it lays a foundation for testing multisensory integration of sustained false sensory channels, and has implications for mixed reality design.

Sensory Substitution Devices (SSDs) offer people who are blind access to visual information via other senses. One of the main bottlenecks to widespread adoption of sensory substitution is the difficulty of learning to use these devices -- both mastering the device and learning to properly interpret visual information. We have recently upgraded the training offered in our lab to congenitally blind EyeMusic users from a static training paradigm to an interactive dynamic one in an attempt to address both challenges mentioned above. This offered us a unique opportunity to explore the effect of this change on both the users and on their sighted personal instructors. We explored users' ability to play simple interactive games and learn visual principles, and explored the feelings and opinions of both the users and instructors during the shift. We found that all users were able to successfully complete these tasks utilizing visual principles such as depth-size, reported a high level of enjoyment and satisfaction for them, viewed these sessions as more effective and highlighted their feelings of a higher sense of independence and control. The instructors were enthusiastic as well, mirrored the users' answers and especially highlighted the flexibility advantage.

One of the main challenges facing the practical utilization of new assistive technology for the blind is the process of training. This is true both for mastering the device and even more importantly for learning to use it in specific environments. Such training usually requires external help which is not always available, can be costly, and attempts to navigate without such preparation can be dangerous. Here we will demonstrate several games which were developed in our lab as part of the training programs for the EyeCane, which augments the traditional White-Cane with additional distance and angles. These games avoid the above-mentioned problems of availability, cost and safety and additionally utilize gamification techniques to boost the training process. Visitors to the demonstration will use these devices to perform simple in-game virtual tasks such as finding the exit from a room or avoiding obstacles while wearing blindfolds.

Graphical virtual environments are currently far from accessible to the blind as most of their content is visual. While several previous environment-specific tools have indeed increased accessibility to specific environments they do not offer a generic solution. This is especially unfortunate as such environments hold great potential for the blind, e.g., for safe orientation and learning. Visual-to-audio Sensory Substitution Devices (SSDs) can potentially increase their accessibility in such a generic fashion by sonifying the on-screen content regardless of the specific environment. Using SSDs also taps into the skills gained from using these same SSDs for completely different tasks, including in the real world. However, whether congenitally blind users will be able to use this information to perceive and interact successfully virtually is currently unclear. We tested this using the EyeMusic SSD, which conveys shape and color information, to perform virtual tasks otherwise not possible without vision. We show that these tasks can be accomplished by the congenitally blind.