7,344 research outputs found

    Image recognition-based architecture to enhance inclusive mobility of visually impaired people in smart and urban environments

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    The demographic growth that we have witnessed in recent years, which is expected to increase in the years to come, raises emerging challenges worldwide regarding urban mobility, both in transport and pedestrian movement. The sustainable development of cities is also intrinsically linked to urban planning and mobility strategies. The tasks of navigation and orientation in cities are something that we resort to today with great frequency, especially in unknown cities and places. Current navigation solutions refer to the precision aspect as a big challenge, especially between buildings in city centers. In this paper, we focus on the segment of visually impaired people and how they can obtain information about where they are when, for some reason, they have lost their orientation. Of course, the challenges are different and much more challenging in this situation and with this population segment. GPS, a technique widely used for navigation in outdoor environments, does not have the precision we need or the most beneficial type of content because the information that a visually impaired person needs when lost is not the name of the street or the coordinates but a reference point. Therefore, this paper includes the proposal of a conceptual architecture for outdoor positioning of visually impaired people using the Landmark Positioning approach.5311-8814-F0ED | Sara Maria da Cruz Maia de Oliveira PaivaN/

    Analysis on Using Synthesized Singing Techniques in Assistive Interfaces for Visually Impaired to Study Music

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    Tactile and auditory senses are the basic types of methods that visually impaired people sense the world. Their interaction with assistive technologies also focuses mainly on tactile and auditory interfaces. This research paper discuss about the validity of using most appropriate singing synthesizing techniques as a mediator in assistive technologies specifically built to address their music learning needs engaged with music scores and lyrics. Music scores with notations and lyrics are considered as the main mediators in musical communication channel which lies between a composer and a performer. Visually impaired music lovers have less opportunity to access this main mediator since most of them are in visual format. If we consider a music score, the vocal performer’s melody is married to all the pleasant sound producible in the form of singing. Singing best fits for a format in temporal domain compared to a tactile format in spatial domain. Therefore, conversion of existing visual format to a singing output will be the most appropriate nonlossy transition as proved by the initial research on adaptive music score trainer for visually impaired [1]. In order to extend the paths of this initial research, this study seek on existing singing synthesizing techniques and researches on auditory interfaces

    Towards a multidisciplinary user-centric design framework for context-aware applications

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    The primary aim of this article is to review and merge theories of context within linguistics, computer science, and psychology, to propose a multidisciplinary model of context that would facilitate application developers in developing richer descriptions or scenarios of how a context-aware device may be used in various dynamic mobile settings. More specifically, the aim is to:1. Investigate different viewpoints of context within linguistics, computer science, and psychology, to develop summary condensed models for each discipline. 2. Investigate the impact of contrasting viewpoints on the usability of context-aware applications. 3. Investigate the extent to which single-discipline models can be merged and the benefits and insightfulness of a merged model for designing mobile computers. 4. Investigate the extent to which a proposed multidisciplinary modelcan be applied to specific applications of context-aware computing

    Toward a multidisciplinary model of context to support context-aware computing

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    Capturing, defining, and modeling the essence of context are challenging, compelling, and prominent issues for interdisciplinary research and discussion. The roots of its emergence lie in the inconsistencies and ambivalent definitions across and within different research specializations (e.g., philosophy, psychology, pragmatics, linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence). Within the area of computer science, the advent of mobile context-aware computing has stimulated broad and contrasting interpretations due to the shift from traditional static desktop computing to heterogeneous mobile environments. This transition poses many challenging, complex, and largely unanswered research issues relating to contextual interactions and usability. To address those issues, many researchers strongly encourage a multidisciplinary approach. The primary aim of this article is to review and unify theories of context within linguistics, computer science, and psychology. Summary models within each discipline are used to propose an outline and detailed multidisciplinary model of context involving (a) the differentiation of focal and contextual aspects of the user and application's world, (b) the separation of meaningful and incidental dimensions, and (c) important user and application processes. The models provide an important foundation in which complex mobile scenarios can be conceptualized and key human and social issues can be identified. The models were then applied to different applications of context-aware computing involving user communities and mobile tourist guides. The authors' future work involves developing a user-centered multidisciplinary design framework (based on their proposed models). This will be used to design a large-scale user study investigating the usability issues of a context-aware mobile computing navigation aid for visually impaired people

    Re-Presenting Text in a Website for Visually Impaired Users using Braille Line

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    As new web technologies emerging and being adopted in the design of a website, web accessibility has become a major issue especially for people with disabilities .Limitation of assistive technology to render webpage has also been contributing factor for poor web accessibility by the visually impaired users. This issue has caused visually impaired users loss semantic information of webpage besides creating frustration situation of web browsing. In this paper, factors that cause web browsing frustration to the visually impaired users and types of tactile effects that can be implemented in the Braille Line device to render the semantic information of webpage are explored. The main objectives of this project is to build a website reader and program a Braille Line 20 cell device for web browsing focusing on presenting non visual text elements such as font attributes and text hierarchy that can be critical to meaning of the text. Tactile technology have been chosen to be adopted in the Braille Line as the touch is the most active sense of visually-impaired people to acquire knowledge .From the prototype to be build, a sample group of visually impaired users will be taken to test and evaluate the website and the device in terms of technology as well as its effectiveness. The results and recommendations were shared by the end of the project as a key milestone for future renditions of the project

    Automatic Profile Generation for Visual-Impaired Users

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    Currently, there are a growing number of tools that allow web developers to evaluate the accessibility of their web pages and sites. Many tools also prompt the developer to make specific repairs; and some tools automatically follow links to evaluate multiple pages within a site or within an entire domain. Although tools such as these can be very useful to identify accessibility problems, many accessibility issues are subjective and cannot be assessed without manual inspection. We believe that accessibility assessment and repair should be addressed as related activities intelligently supported. To do so, a main aspect to be considered is the automatic identification of user disabilities. In this paper we introduce an agent-based solution to tackle this problem. The agent is conceived to provide knowledge for the creation and classification of visually-impaired users profiles in terms of stereotypes. We apply and test the performance of our agent by profiling surveyed users. Our solution will be part of a multi-agent system to drive intelligently the accessibility conformance process.Sociedad Argentina de InformĂĄtica e InvestigaciĂłn Operativa (SADIO

    Automatic Profile Generation for Visual-Impaired Users

    Get PDF
    Currently, there are a growing number of tools that allow web developers to evaluate the accessibility of their web pages and sites. Many tools also prompt the developer to make specific repairs; and some tools automatically follow links to evaluate multiple pages within a site or within an entire domain. Although tools such as these can be very useful to identify accessibility problems, many accessibility issues are subjective and cannot be assessed without manual inspection. We believe that accessibility assessment and repair should be addressed as related activities intelligently supported. To do so, a main aspect to be considered is the automatic identification of user disabilities. In this paper we introduce an agent-based solution to tackle this problem. The agent is conceived to provide knowledge for the creation and classification of visually-impaired users profiles in terms of stereotypes. We apply and test the performance of our agent by profiling surveyed users. Our solution will be part of a multi-agent system to drive intelligently the accessibility conformance process.Sociedad Argentina de InformĂĄtica e InvestigaciĂłn Operativa (SADIO
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