Fencing for the blind and visually impaired is an emerging sub-discipline of fencing that creates unusual conditions for meaning-making through interaction between embodied endowments and worldly ...affordances. With the rules of fencing slightly adjusted to the needs of the blindfolded participants – regardless of their sightedness – the discipline requires the fencers to engage in a duel by relying on other than visual cues. This article explores what an autoethnographic account of experiences of participation in fencing for the blind and visually impaired brings to debates on the embodied, and specifically sensory difference. The discussion of these experiences intersects with debates on affect, affordance, and habit, with all three having important roles in related semiotic processes. Presented vignettes draw upon the author’s lived experiences of participation in fencing for the blind and visually impaired and are analyzed as part of a mixed-method autoethnographic study, accompanied by sensory methodologies, with a focus on an inquiry beyond the visual. The vignettes elucidate how we make sense of our surroundings through a complex engagement with the ecology of sensory and affective processes. In addition to exploring the role of affective and pre-conceptual aspects of our experiences, the article seeks to understand how semiosis occurs through both exposure to as well as the active pursuit of specific environmental signs available to us. The article also derives from biosemiotics to examine the complex relationship between meaning-making processes and habits. Finally, the autoethnographic account provides an insight into how we habituate the world and our embodied differences and thus enable meaning-making processes.
Previous research has highlighted that blind and visually impaired people find various factors inhibit their abilities to make journeys. This paper proposes that the lack of appropriate and timely ...navigation information is one of the factors for this issue. The objective of this study is to examine the effects of completeness of information and broadcasting timing on blind people performance in using navigation system procedures. Sixteen subjects participated in this experiment and each subject performed an actual Way-finding test to get back and forth between Xi-mending and TDTB (Taiwan Digital Talking Books association) locations. Results demonstrated that the broadcasting timing significantly influenced the walking time, missed routes, and workload. Results suggested that the performance with broadcasting timing in 5m of navigation system was better than that of broadcasting timing in 7m. It highlighted that a new broadcasting pattern of voice information by providing navigation information about their surroundings in a relevant, efficient and usable way may facilitate more accessible travel for blind and partially sighted people.
