Non-visual Zoom and Scrolling Operations in a Virtual Haptic Environment Charlotte Magnuson, Kirsten Rassmus-Gröhn Certec, Division of Rehabilitation Engineering Research, Department of Design Sciences, Lund Institute of Technology, Lund University, Sweden charlotte.magnusson@certec.lth.se Abstract. The present article reports results from tests performed to investigate different designs of a scrolling function used to make it possible for the user to navigate a virtual environment larger than the limited workspace of the haptic device. A preliminary zoom function was also included in the test environment. The results show the proposed zoom function to be intuitive, that different sizes are used for different purposes and that several scroll functions are found useful. The choice of scroll function is also seen to depend on the task. 1 Background and introduction In most haptic virtual environments for the blind, the working area of the haptic device (such as the PHANToM) has set a limit for the size and complexity of the virtual environment possible to be displayed. Realistic haptic environments often need to be quite large. To solve this problem, one could either use a haptic device with a large working area, or provide some way to scroll and/or zoom the virtual environment. One-point haptic non-visual scrolling and zooming has not been explored to any great extent. But within the ENORASI study described in [1] a simple scrolling function was tested by a subset of the test users, and zoom functions to gain access to greater detail in virtual haptic line graphs are suggested by e.g. Roberts et al [2]. In our project “Haptics and traffic – a pre-study”, we are investigating if and how virtual traffic environments can be made accessible for blind users with the help of haptics and sound. With a virtual traffic environment, a blind user could safely investigate different traffic environments and situations. In 1999 Van Scoy et al [3] suggested a similar project. Within our project different ways to move/scroll the haptic world, preliminary zooming, the design of sound feedback and environmental sounds are investigated in separate user tests. As a final test, a virtual model of a limited section of a real traffic environment will be built, and the way users interact with this environment will be tested.