How a Diverse Research Ecosystem Has Generated New Rehabilitation Technologies: Review of NIDILRR’s Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers

Over 50 million United States citizens (1 in 6 people in the US) have a developmental, acquired, or degenerative disability. The average US citizen can expect to live 20% of his or her life with a disability. Rehabilitation technologies play a major role in improving the quality of life for people with a disability, yet widespread and highly challenging needs remain. Within the US, a major effort aimed at the creation and evaluation of rehabilitation technology has been the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers (RERCs) sponsored by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. As envisioned at their conception by a panel of the National Academy of Science in 1970, these centers were intended to take a “total approach to rehabilitation”, combining medicine, engineering, and related science, to improve the quality of life of individuals with a disability. Here, we review the scope, achievements, and ongoing projects of an unbiased sample of 19 currently active or recently terminated RERCs. Specifically, for each center, we briefly explain the needs it targets, summarize key historical advances, identify emerging innovations, and consider future directions. Our assessment from this review is that the RERC program indeed involves a multidisciplinary approach, with 36 professional fields involved, although 70% of research and development staff are in engineering fields, 23% in clinical fields, and only 7% in basic science fields; significantly, 11% of the professional staff have a disability related to their research. We observe that the RERC program has substantially diversified the scope of its work since the 1970’s, addressing more types of disabilities using more technologies, and, in particular, often now focusing on information technologies. RERC work also now often views users as integrated into an interdependent society through technologies that both people with and without disabilities co-use (such as the internet, wireless communication, and architecture). In addition, RERC research has evolved to view users as able at improving outcomes through learning, exercise, and plasticity (rather than being static), which can be optimally timed. We provide examples of rehabilitation technology innovation produced by the RERCs that illustrate this increasingly diversifying scope and evolving perspective. We conclude by discussing growth opportunities and possible future directions of the RERC program

Twenty years of value sensitive design: a review of methodological practices in VSD projects

This article reviews the academic literature (1996-2016) that emerged under value sensitive design (VSD). It investigates those VSD projects that employed the tripartite methodology, examining the use of VSD methodological elements, and illustrating common practices and identifying shortcomings. The article provides advice for VSD researchers on how to complete and enhance their methodological approach as the research community moves forward

Design of Blind Assistance System Using Refreshable Braille Display

In this paper, we demonstrate that Braille embosser is a type of device which is very useful for the initial stage Braille language learner. Here the input is provided with the help of serial port by mobile through Bluetooth module. This input is in the form of alphabetical form so the input is converted into Braille language which is displayed with the help of actuators. Blind assistance system also allows visually impaired people to do common tasks such as reading in Braille and reading documents. It is a portable device, they can carry wherever they want so that they could get information of place they are visiting with ease. As this device detect the obstacles and also determine at what distance obstacle is person can safely use this device for indoor purpose

Supporting People with Vision Impairments in Automated Vehicles: Challenge and Opportunities

Autonomous and automated vehicles (AVs) will provide many opportunities for mobility and independence for peoplewith vision impairments (PwVI). This project provides insights on the challenges and potential barriers to their adoptionof AVs. We examine adoption and use of ridesharing services. We study ridesharing as a proxy for AVs as they are asimilar means of single-rider transportation for PwVI through observations and interviews. We also investigateperceptions towards autonomous vehicles and prototypes to address perceived barriers to AV use through design focusgroups with blind and low vision people. From these studies, we provide recommendations to AV manufacturers andsuppliers for how to best design vehicles and interactive systems that people with vision impairments trust.United States Department of Transportationhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156054/3/Supporting People with Vision Impairments in Automated Vehicles - Challenges and Opportunities.pd

Improving Pathways to Transit for Persons with Disabilities

Persons with disabilities can achieve a greater degree of freedom when they have full access to a variety of transit modes, but this can only be achieved when the pathways to transit – the infrastructure and conditions in the built environment – allow full access to transit stops, stations, and vehicles. Since passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, many transit agencies and governmental jurisdictions have made significant progress in this area. Policy initiatives, incremental enhancements, modifications, and other measures undertaken by transit agencies and their partners have significantly improved access to transit for persons with disabilities, others who rely on public transportation, and individuals who chose to utilize these services. This research study explores, through case study work, efforts that have been effective in improving pathways to transit. Interviews and site visits were conducted with five transit agencies, along with their partners, that are actively engaged in improving pathways to connect transit consumers – particularly people with disabilities – with transit stations and stops. These agencies are: Broward County Transit (Broward County, FL), Memphis Area Transit Authority (Memphis, TN), NJ TRANSIT (Newark and New Brunswick, NJ), Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (Portland, OR), and Link Transit (Wenatchee, WA). Promising practices and/or lessons were identified through the case study analysis; these should be considered by any transit agency seeking to create improved access to its services for persons with disabilities

Quality of life for deafblind individuals: Comparing the effect of living with and without support service providers

In this paper, the quality of life for DeafBlind individuals who have Support Service Providers (SSP) available will be compared to DeafBlind individuals who do not. SSPs are trained individuals who assist the DeafBlind population with tasks such as a communication support, environmental information, and mobility support; in addition, they typically possess at least some fluency in American Sign Language. The availability of SSP services varies between DeafBlind individuals depending on a variety of factors. This study explores possible differences in quality of life reported by DeafBlind individuals who currently have SSP services available and those who do not. In consideration to the responses provided by the DeafBlind community, a new discussion emerges attempting to identify ways to achieve an accessible world for these community members. The 56 participants in this study are comprised of female and male individuals, 18 years or older, from a variety of ethnic and social groups across the United States who have a combination of hearing and visual loss. The methodology for this research is a quantitative survey. This study used KIDSCREEN Group’s (2004) pre-existing survey. The survey respondents are divided into two groups: those with SSPs and those without SSPs. Each group had 28 respondents who filled out a similar survey. The group that had the higher percentage of positive responses was identified as possessing a higher quality of life. It was concluded that DeafBlind individuals with SSPs consistently had higher positive responses than the other group, DeafBlind individuals without SSPs

Improving public transit accessibility for blind riders by crowdsourcing bus stop landmark locations with Google street view

Low-vision and blind bus riders often rely on known physical landmarks to help locate and verify bus stop locations (e.g., by searching for a shelter, bench, newspaper bin). However, there are currently few, if any, methods to determine this information a priori via computational tools or services. In this paper, we introduce and evaluate a new scalable method for collecting bus stop location and landmark descriptions by combining online crowdsourcing and Google Street View (GSV). We conduct and report on three studies in particular: (i) a formative interview study of 18 people with visual impairments to inform the design of our crowdsourcing tool; (ii) a comparative study examining differences between physical bus stop audit data and audits conducted virtually with GSV; and (iii) an online study of 153 crowd workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk to examine the feasibility of crowdsourcing bus stop audits using our custom tool with GSV. Our findings reemphasize the importance of landmarks in non-visual navigation, demonstrate that GSV is a viable bus stop audit dataset, and show that minimally trained crowd workers can find and identify bus stop landmarks with 82.5 % accuracy across 150 bus stop locations (87.3 % with simple quality control)