In this paper we report some of the results from a study of how people with severe visual
impairments learn a complex route through an urban environment. Ten totally blind, ten partially
sighted and ten sighted people learned a route 1600 meters long through a suburb of Belfast over
four trials. On the first trial respondents were guided around the route. On the second, third and
fourth trials respondents led the way around the route, pointing to the start, end, and three
locations enroute from these locations. On completion of each trial respondents built a model of
the route using magnetic pieces. Analyses of these tasks found no significance differences in
pointing or model building between groups. Visually impaired and blind people did however
make more errors when retracing the route although by the fourth trial the majority could retrace
without error. The results, in combination, reveal that people with severe visual impairments can
learn complex routes through a geographic environment both quickly and efficiently. The
combined use of laboratory and naturalistic tasks indicated that levels of spatial knowledge do not
necessarily predict the ability to use those knowledges effectively in everyday spatial behaviour.
As such, the navigation problems facing visually impaired and blind people lie in learning new
environments independently and in articulating their knowledges in wayfinding practice. These
results led to the adoption of the difference theory of spatial cognition. This suggests that the
cognitive map knowledge of adventitiously blind individuals are different from the sighted rather
than underdeveloped or used inefficiently
