Design of an Automated Book Reader as an Assistive Technology for Blind Persons

This dissertation introduces a novel automated book reader as an assistive technology tool for persons with blindness. The literature shows extensive work in the area of optical character recognition, but the current methodologies available for the automated reading of books or bound volumes remain inadequate and are severely constrained during document scanning or image acquisition processes. The goal of the book reader design is to automate and simplify the task of reading a book while providing a user-friendly environment with a realistic but affordable system design. This design responds to the main concerns of (a) providing a method of image acquisition that maintains the integrity of the source (b) overcoming optical character recognition errors created by inherent imaging issues such as curvature effects and barrel distortion, and (c) determining a suitable method for accurate recognition of characters that yields an interface with the ability to read from any open book with a high reading accuracy nearing 98%. This research endeavor focuses in its initial aim on the development of an assistive technology tool to help persons with blindness in the reading of books and other bound volumes. But its secondary and broader aim is to also find in this design the perfect platform for the digitization process of bound documentation in line with the mission of the Open Content Alliance (OCA), a nonprofit Alliance at making reading materials available in digital form. The theoretical perspective of this research relates to the mathematical developments that are made in order to resolve both the inherent distortions due to the properties of the camera lens and the anticipated distortions of the changing page curvature as one leafs through the book. This is evidenced by the significant increase of the recognition rate of characters and a high accuracy read-out through text to speech processing. This reasonably priced interface with its high performance results and its compatibility to any computer or laptop through universal serial bus connectors extends greatly the prospects for universal accessibility to documentation

A Book Reader Design for Persons with Visual Impairment and Blindness

The objective of this dissertation is to provide a new design approach to a fully automated book reader for individuals with visual impairment and blindness that is portable and cost effective. This approach relies on the geometry of the design setup and provides the mathematical foundation for integrating, in a unique way, a 3-D space surface map from a low-resolution time of flight (ToF) device with a high-resolution image as means to enhance the reading accuracy of warped images due to the page curvature of bound books and other magazines. The merits of this low cost, but effective automated book reader design include: (1) a seamless registration process of the two imaging modalities so that the low resolution (160 x 120 pixels) height map, acquired by an Argos3D-P100 camera, accurately covers the entire book spread as captured by the high resolution image (3072 x 2304 pixels) of a Canon G6 Camera; (2) a mathematical framework for overcoming the difficulties associated with the curvature of open bound books, a process referred to as the dewarping of the book spread images, and (3) image correction performance comparison between uniform and full height map to determine which map provides the highest Optical Character Recognition (OCR) reading accuracy possible. The design concept could also be applied to address the challenging process of book digitization. This method is dependent on the geometry of the book reader setup for acquiring a 3-D map that yields high reading accuracy once appropriately fused with the high-resolution image. The experiments were performed on a dataset consisting of 200 pages with their corresponding computed and co-registered height maps, which are made available to the research community (cate-book3dmaps.fiu.edu). Improvements to the characters reading accuracy, due to the correction steps, were quantified and measured by introducing the corrected images to an OCR engine and tabulating the number of miss-recognized characters. Furthermore, the resilience of the book reader was tested by introducing a rotational misalignment to the book spreads and comparing the OCR accuracy to those obtained with the standard alignment. The standard alignment yielded an average reading accuracy of 95.55% with the uniform height map (i.e., the height values of the central row of the 3-D map are replicated to approximate all other rows), and 96.11% with the full height maps (i.e., each row has its own height values as obtained from the 3D camera). When the rotational misalignments were taken into account, the results obtained produced average accuracies of 90.63% and 94.75% for the same respective height maps, proving added resilience of the full height map method to potential misalignments

Analyzing the efficacy of accessibility features in user-generated content platforms for visually impaired persons

Traditionally, the internet has been viewed as a societal equalizer. With the advent of online businesses and technologies that have advanced education, commerce, entertainment, and most things in between, the impact of the internet as we know it has empowered users across the world to achieve beyond measure using the power of the world wide web. Yet, for visually impaired users, the ever-widening scope of content within information channels leaves key information inaccessible, excluding these users from important conversations and interactions online. This study sought to address accessibility for the visually impaired through the lens of user-generated content: a largely overlooked sphere of online content regarding accessibility. It examined four major user-generated content platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok — explaining their strengths and weaknesses in providing accessible user experiences for the visually impaired. This study framed the issue of web accessibility in user-generated content platforms through research of online accessibility standards and best practices and explained how interviews with visually impaired users informed a cohesive accessibility analysis and recommendation guide for the four chosen user-generated content platforms.Thesis (B.?)Honors Colleg

The Application of Geographic Information Systems to Support Wayfinding for People with Visual Impairments or Blindness

People with visual impairments or legal blindness are relying on differing, comprehensive information utilized for their individual mobility. Increasing the personal mobility of people with disabilities and thereby achieving a self-determined life are major steps toward a more inclusive society. Research and applications on mobility issues of people with visual impairments or blindness mainly focus on technical applications or assistive orientation and navigation devices, and less work is covering the individual needs, e.g., regarding the information required for wayfinding. Moreover, active participation of people with disabilities in research and development is still limited. ways2see offers a new online application to support individual mobility in context of pre-trip planning for people with visual impairments or blindness based on a Geographic Information System (GIS). Obstacles, barriers, landmarks, orientation hints, and directions for wayfinding are generated by user profiles. The underlying network for GIS analysis is designed as pedestrian network. This individually coded network approach integrates sidewalks and different types of crossings and implements various orientation and navigation attributes. ways2see integrates three research realms: firstly, implementing a participative and transdisciplinary research design; secondly, integrating personalized information aligned with the individual user needs; and thirdly, presenting result of GIS analysis through an accessible designed user interface

Effective Computer Access with Plan-Based Intelligent Screen Reader

The intelligent screen reader system observes a user¡¯s keystrokes when he or she is performing tasks, and infers an underlying plan structure. The system then generates an optimized script that allows the user to perform the same task more efficiently in the future. The intelligent screen reader system is particularly beneficial for visually impaired computer users.The JAWS for Windows screen reader was chosen for this prototype, since the JAWS scripting language provides flexibility to users for customizing their tasks within a specific application. The JAWS macro recorder, developed by Freedom Scientific Inc., records all the user¡¯s actions. Automated Synthesis of Plan Recognition Networks (ASPRN), developed by Intelligent Reasoning Systems Inc., takes a plan or a script representation as input and outputs a specially-constructed belief network that supports plan recognition. The Script Generation Interface, developed by the University of Pittsburgh, allows users to modify the actions recorded by the JAWS macro recorder and generate an optimized script. Development of the SGI involved integrating the SGI with the JAWS macro recorder, integrating the SGI with ASPRN, and implementing the SGI user interface.Preliminary usability testing involving the intelligent screen reader system was conducted with visually impaired users. Within limited actions and tasks, the results are satisfactory. Users felt the SGI was easy to learn and operate, and that it was efficient to create useful scripts with the intelligent screen reader system. Future work includes adding more plans to the plan library and creating a tutorial system

Evaluating web accessibility and usability for totally blind users at Thailand Cyber University

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston UniversityResearch suggests that web-based education increases opportunities for underserved populations to be integrated into educational activities (Schmetzke, 2001; Burgstahler, 2002; Opitz, Savenye, & Rowland, 2003). This may be true for students with disabilities because they have more flexibility to participate in formal education. However, Moisey (2004) found that people with disabilities had lower rates of enrollment and educational achievement than people without disabilities. These findings raise the question of whether or not web-based = education helps increase students with disabilities' access to learning opportunities and improve their learning outcome. This study investigated the degree of difficulty blind persons had in accessing and using web-based educational resources provided by Thailand Cyber University (TCU). Based on a mixed methods design, the data were collected in two phases. Quantitative data were collected first, in order to identify accessibility problems and conformance levels reported by automated web accessibility evaluation tools. Qualitative data was collected from interviews with blind participants in the second phase to expand the understanding of the accessibility problems and usability issues that were not discovered in the quantitative phase by the automated web accessibility evaluation tools. The findings indicate that all of the 13 selected web pages failed to meet a minimum requirement of WCAG 2.0. This means those selected web pages would be inaccessible for the blind. However, the findings indicate blind participants rated only one of the 13 pages as inaccessible. Moreover, their ratings of difficulty on "usability" were higher than their ratings of difficulty on "accessibility" on the same web page. On six out of 22 tasks, blind and sighted user groups agreed on the ratings. Nevertheless, the time that it took to complete each task varied greatly between the two user groups.2031-01-0

The Prevailing Obstacles in Web Accessibility on Three Well-Known Websites for Older People with sight difficulties

Prior research has argued that there is no one best approach to evaluating web accessibility and proposes the adoption of multiple approaches. Following these proposals this research used three different approaches for evaluating accessibility on websites for accessibility to older persons with sight difficulties as there are advantages and disadvantages to each approach. Approached used included: (1) Using automated tools to determine accessibility, which looks at the code of websites to get a general overview of accessibility issues. (2) Manually looking at the design, code and also how it might impact the user. This involved a manual assessment of each of the websites and comparison to the WCAG 2.0 guidelines (3) the third aspect of Web 4 accessibility is looking at the visual, thinking skills or cognition required by the user to access the website. The user testing evaluation method involved participants completing tasks on each of the three websites while participants were being videoed, and asked them to speak aloud at the same time to reflect on accessibility issues. The participants were then asked to complete an exit-interview based on the Principles of Universal Design. The three approaches provided a complete holistic approach to accessing Web accessibility on the three key websites

Developing Public Library Services for the Virtually Impaired in Delta State: Adaptive Technology to the Rescue

The paper examined the need to develop public libraries services for virtually impaired persons in Delta state. The relevance of adaptive technology in public libraries for these categories of persons cannot be underestimated.  Library and information services available to the visually impaired people through adaptive technology were discussed. Adaptive technology as a tool for enhancing public library services and the rationale for its use were also discussed. The researchers also highlighted the constraints facing public libraries in the use of these technologies in Delta state and Nigeria in general. Recognizing the potentials of adaptive technology, the paper concluded by pointing to the fact that what is needed is to ensure an all inclusive services to all irrespective of visibility. ICT and its related technologies in public library services should be embraced in all the branches of public libraries in Delta state. Library policy statement should be translated to reality, hence the library board should be well funded and given power to monitor the development of branch libraries. Key words: Developing, Public Library, Library Services, Virtually Impaired, Adaptive Technology and Rescu

When the Disability Is Not the Problem - Experiencing the Barriers to Web Accessibility: The Experiences of Computer Users with Visual Disabilities Using the Internet

The purpose of this study is to describe the experiences and perceptions of three computer users with visual disabilities as they accessed and reviewed Web pages on the Internet. Attention is focused on the use of the Internet by individuals with visual disabilities: blindness, low vision, and deaf/blindness. Data were gathered through interviews and observation, during eight sessions with each participant. Data were qualitatively analyzed using an inductive process (Hatch, 2002). Data analysis revealed six categories of meaning: interactions with computer; personal characteristics, strategies to find solutions to barriers encountered; personal feeling and opinions; design features, and communication. Sites viewed included commercial, educational, non-profit, and governmental sites. Interviews consisted of structured and unstructured questions. The knowledge gained in this study will add to the literature of Web Accessibility and will contribute to raising awareness of the barriers that computer users with visual disabilities encounter when using the Internet