Tactons: structured tactile messages for non-visual information display

Tactile displays are now becoming available in a form that can be easily used in a user interface. This paper describes a new form of tactile output. Tactons, or tactile icons, are structured, abstract messages that can be used to communicate messages non-visually. A range of different parameters can be used for Tacton construction including: frequency, amplitude and duration of a tactile pulse, plus other parameters such as rhythm and location. Tactons have the potential to improve interaction in a range of different areas, particularly where the visual display is overloaded, limited in size or not available, such as interfaces for blind people or in mobile and wearable devices. This paper describes Tactons, the parameters used to construct them and some possible ways to design them. Examples of where Tactons might prove useful in user interfaces are given

AmIE: An Ambient Intelligent Environment for Assisted Living

In the modern world of technology Internet-of-things (IoT) systems strives to provide an extensive interconnected and automated solutions for almost every life aspect. This paper proposes an IoT context-aware system to present an Ambient Intelligence (AmI) environment; such as an apartment, house, or a building; to assist blind, visually-impaired, and elderly people. The proposed system aims at providing an easy-to-utilize voice-controlled system to locate, navigate and assist users indoors. The main purpose of the system is to provide indoor positioning, assisted navigation, outside weather information, room temperature, people availability, phone calls and emergency evacuation when needed. The system enhances the user's awareness of the surrounding environment by feeding them with relevant information through a wearable device to assist them. In addition, the system is voice-controlled in both English and Arabic languages and the information are displayed as audio messages in both languages. The system design, implementation, and evaluation consider the constraints in common types of premises in Kuwait and in challenges, such as the training needed by the users. This paper presents cost-effective implementation options by the adoption of a Raspberry Pi microcomputer, Bluetooth Low Energy devices and an Android smart watch.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl

Investigating design issues of context-aware mobile guides for people with visual impairments

While mobile wayfinding systems for visually impaired people offer huge potential, most insufficiently address the differences between visual impairments and contextual environments, and offer very little context-awareness - usability issues of which are vital in supporting independent mobility. Participants experiencing a loss of central vision, loss of peripheral vision, and total vision loss made up three groups. Our multidisciplinary model of context was used to design a user study, which involved asking participants to walk to pre-determined outdoor and indoor landmarks. Significant differences were found between groups relating to information requirements, and the environmental cues encoded and used to orientate and navigate. The study also found differences between indoor and outdoor contexts. It was concluded that what is meaningful to one form of visual impairment is incidental to another. These issues need to be captured and accounted for if wayfinding systems are to be usable

FingerReader: A Wearable Device to Support Text Reading on the Go

Visually impaired people report numerous difficulties with accessing printed text using existing technology, including problems with alignment, focus, accuracy, mobility and efficiency. We present a finger worn device that assists the visually impaired with effectively and efficiently reading paper-printed text. We introduce a novel, local-sequential manner for scanning text which enables reading single lines, blocks of text or skimming the text for important sections while providing real-time auditory and tactile feedback. The design is motivated by preliminary studies with visually impaired people, and it is small-scale and mobile, which enables a more manageable operation with little setup

Application on character recognition system on road sign for visually impaired: case study approach and future

Many visually impaired people worldwide are unable to travel safely and autonomously because they are physically unable to perceive effective visual information during their daily lives. In this research, we study how to extract the character information of the road sign and transmit it to the visually impaired effectively, so they can understand easier. Experimental method is to apply the Maximally Stable External Region and Stroke Width Transform method in Phase I so that the visually impaired person can recognize the letters on the road signs. It is to convey text information to the disabled. The result of Phase I using samples of simple road signs was to extract the sign information after dividing the exact character area, but the accuracy was not good for the Hangul (Korean characters) information. The initial experimental results in the Phase II succeeded in transmitting the text information on Phase I to the visually impaired. In the future, it will be required to develop a wearable character recognition system that can be attached to the visually impaired. In order to perform this task, we need to develop and verify a miniaturized and wearable character recognition system. In this paper, we examined the method of recognizing road sign characters on the road and presented a possibility that may be applicable to our final development

Non-visual information display using tactons

This paper describes a novel form of display using tactile output. Tactons, or tactile icons, are structured tactile messages that can be used to communicate message to users non visually. A range of different parameters can be used to construct Tactons, e.g.: frequency, amplitude, waveform and duration of a tactile pulse, plus body location. Tactons have the potential to improve interaction in a range of different areas, particularly where the visual display is overloaded, limited in size or not available, such as interfaces for blind people or on mobile and wearable devices

Smart Glasses for the Visually Impaired People

Engineering solutions have involved in everyone’s life, most importantly are those aiming to help people with disabilities, however, the modern assistance devices with their current prices are not meeting the requirements of the market. This project is mainly focusing on people with visual impairments and more specifically their education life. It is presenting a concept of smart glasses to provide assistance in multiple tasks represented as modes to be chosen by the user. To prove the concept, this project implements only one mode which is reading using text detection techniques. Taking into consideration the cost, this project is using the single board computer raspberry pi 2 as the heart of the processing and the raspberry pi camera for image capturing and video recording. The video taken is processed using MATLAB, and the description of the live scenes for the text recognition mode or any other future implemented modes will be provided to the user in an audio format. Finally the results of this project show the design of the smart glasses prototype