Literature Review: Orientation and Mobility Assistive Technology for Students with Visual Impairment

The development of increasingly sophisticated technology is accompanied by the discovery of new assistive devices that should be accessible to all people, including the blind in order to maintain or improve functions so as to improve welfare. This study uses a literature review method with descriptive analysis by analyzing 20 articles. The purpose of this research is to examine more related to assistive technology for the blind in navigating indoors and outdoors including buildings and the accessibility of public services. The literature search was carried out through an electronic search for publications from ERIC, Researchgate, Spingerlink, Sage, Science Direct, Google Scholar and IEEE Xplore. The results of the study describe the use of various assistive technologies for the visually impaired related to navigation in spaces or buildings and even the wider environment as well as public services that are commonly accessed by the public. Furthermore, it is related to the existence of a brief description of the assistive technology developed and the benefits of the results of the development for users

A survey of assistive technologies and applications for blind users on mobile platforms: a review and foundation for research

This paper summarizes recent developments in audio and tactile feedback based assistive technologies targeting the blind community. Current technology allows applications to be efficiently distributed and run on mobile and handheld devices, even in cases where computational requirements are significant. As a result, electronic travel aids, navigational assistance modules, text-to-speech applications, as well as virtual audio displays which combine audio with haptic channels are becoming integrated into standard mobile devices. This trend, combined with the appearance of increasingly user- friendly interfaces and modes of interaction has opened a variety of new perspectives for the rehabilitation and training of users with visual impairments. The goal of this paper is to provide an overview of these developments based on recent advances in basic research and application development. Using this overview as a foundation, an agenda is outlined for future research in mobile interaction design with respect to users with special needs, as well as ultimately in relation to sensor-bridging applications in genera

Usability and user experience evaluation model for investigating coordinated assistive technologies with blind and visually impaired

Abstract. The objective of this thesis is to examine how should usability and user experience of a cooperative assistive technology for blind and visually impaired be evaluated in a field setting. The target system in this study was developed by a doctoral student, who was also responsible for conducting an experiment in Pakistan. It is important to evaluate assistive technology for visually impaired because of poor adoption rates, while the number of visually impaired people needing them is going to increase. The research includes literature review on development of assistive technologies, and existing usability and user experience methods. Theory is supported with qualitative and quantitative methods. Discussions with three experts in Finland were held and analysed. An experiment for eleven blind and visually impaired people was conducted in Pakistan. This included interviews, analysed observations, and a validation of a user experience questionnaire, meCUE 2.0. Discussions with the research team and consultations from usability and user experience experts were used to assess the results of the research and to develop an evaluation model suitable for the prototype system in specified setting. The first main finding of this thesis is the developed model called UUXCAT for VIP. It can be used to evaluate cooperative assistive technology in a field setting. Development of the model was an iterative process and is based on synthesis of existing methods and available research. The second main finding is the extended contexts questionnaire. New contexts add dimensions that were missing from other methods. These contexts are trust and confidence, social, physical, and culture, and are relevant to visually impaired and the cooperative aspect of the system. The study is limited by Covid-19 as the planned experiment in Finland was not carried out that could further validate the model

The Emerging Professional Practice of Remote Sighted Assistance for People with Visual Impairments

People with visual impairments (PVI) must interact with a world they cannot see. Remote sighted assistance (RSA) has emerged as a conversational assistive technology. We interviewed RSA assistants ( agents ) who provide assistance to PVI via a conversational prosthetic called Aira (https://aira.io/) to understand their professional practice. We identified four types of support provided: scene description, navigation, task performance, and social engagement. We discovered that RSA provides an opportunity for PVI to appropriate the system as a richer conversational/social support tool. We studied and identified patterns in how agents provide assistance and how they interact with PVI as well as the challenges and strategies associated with each context. We found that conversational interaction is highly context-dependent. We also discuss implications for design

Interface design for a remote guidance system for the blind: Using dual-screen displays

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The mobility for the visually impaired people is one of the main challenges that researchers are still facing around the world. Although some projects have been conducted to improve the mobility of visually impaired people, further research is still needed. One of these projects is Brunel Remote Guidance System (BRGS). BRGS is aimed to assist visually impaired users in avoiding obstacles and reaching their destinations safely by providing online instructions via a remote sighted guide. This study comes as continuation of the development process of BRGS; the main aim that has been achieved of this research is the optimisation of the interface design for the system guide terminal. This helps the sighted guide to assist the VIUs to avoid obstacles safely and comfortably in the micro-navigation, as well as to keep them on the right track to reach their destination in the macro-navigation. After using the content analysis, the performance factors and their assessments method were identified in each BRGS‘ element, which concluded that there is a lack of research on the guide terminal setup and the assessment method for the sighted guide performance. Furthermore, there are no model to assist the sighted guide performance and two-screen displays used in the literature review and similar projects. A model was designed as a platform to conduct the evaluation on sighted guide performance. Based on this model, the computer-based simulation was established and tested, which made the simulation is ready for next task; the evaluation of the sighted guide performance. The conducted study determined the effects of the two-screen displays on the recognition performance of the 80 participants in the guide terminal. The performance was measured with the context of four different resolution conditions. The study was based on a simulation technique, which is consisted of two key performance elements in order to examine the sighted guide performance; the macro-navigation element and the micro-navigation element. The results show that the two-screen displays have an effect on the performance of the sighted guide. The optimum setup for the two-screen displays for the guide terminal consisted of a big digital map screen display (4CIF [704p x 576p]) and a small video image screen display (CIF [352p x 288p]), which one of the four different resolutions. This interface design has been recommended as a final setup in the guide terminal

Iterative Design and Prototyping of Computer Vision Mediated Remote Sighted Assistance

Remote sighted assistance (RSA) is an emerging navigational aid for people with visual impairments (PVI). Using scenario-based design to illustrate our ideas, we developed a prototype showcasing potential applications for computer vision to support RSA interactions. We reviewed the prototype demonstrating real-world navigation scenarios with an RSA expert, and then iteratively refined the prototype based on feedback. We reviewed the refined prototype with 12 RSA professionals to evaluate the desirability and feasibility of the prototyped computer vision concepts. The RSA expert and professionals were engaged by, and reacted insightfully and constructively to the proposed design ideas. We discuss what we learned about key resources, goals, and challenges of the RSA prosthetic practice through our iterative prototype review, as well as implications for the design of RSA systems and the integration of computer vision technologies into RSA

Visual-Tactile Image Representation For The Visually Impaired Using Braille Device

Nowadays Internet usage is dramatically increasing all over the world and the information dissemination and acquisition is easier for sighted users. Unfortunately, visually impaired are still facing difficulties in interaction with websites. Particularly, screen reader is unable to facilitate disabled users to identify images such as basic geometric shapes. Inability to identify the shapes displayed on the screen creates restriction to interact and comprehend the content of websites for visually impaired. Thus, this project examines earlier researches and eases the web interaction of the blind people by identifying the shape of visual image converted into tactile representation using Braille device. For further investigation of the hypotheses, qualitative and quantitative method is used. The study findings are addressed to build a system that tackles the issue that screen reader is unable to address. System evaluation is executed upon producing the prototype of the system which comprises of user testing. The system is expected to improve understanding the content of webpage and enhance the interaction of visually impaired with web. Future recommendations and further findings will be discussed when system prototype milestone is fulfilled

Analysis of Navigation Assistants for Blind and Visually Impaired People: A Systematic Review

Over the last few decades, the development in the field of navigation and routing devices has become a hindering task for the researchers to develop smart and intelligent guiding mechanism at indoor and outdoor locations for blind and visually impaired people (BVIPs). The existing research need to be analysed from a historical perception including early research on the first electronic travel aids to the use of modern artificial vision models for the navigation of BVIPs. Diverse approaches such as: e-cane or guide dog, infrared-based cane, laser based walker and many others are proposed for the navigation of BVIPs. But most of these techniques have limitations such as: infrared and ultrasonic based assistance has short range capacities for object detection. While laser based assistance can harm other people if it directly hit them on their eyes or any other part of the body. These trade-offs are critical to bring this technology in practice.To systematically assess, analyze, and identify the primary studies in this specialized field and provide an overview of the trends and empirical evidence in the proposed field. This systematic research work is performed by defining a set of relevant keywords, formulating four research questions, defining selection criteria for the articles, and synthesizing the empirical evidence in this area. Our pool of studies include 191 most relevant articles to the proposed field reported between 2011 and 2020 (a portion of 2020 is included). This systematic mapping will help the researchers, engineers, and practitioners to make more authentic decisions for finding gaps in the available navigation assistants and suggest a new and enhanced smart assistant application accordingly to ensure safety and accurate guidance of the BVIPs. This research work have several implications in particular the impact of reducing fatalities and major injuries of BVIPs.Qatar University [IRCC-2020-009]

Eyes-Free Vision-Based Scanning of Aligned Barcodes and Information Extraction from Aligned Nutrition Tables

Visually impaired (VI) individuals struggle with grocery shopping and have to rely on either friends, family or grocery store associates for shopping. ShopMobile 2 is a proof-of-concept system that allows VI shoppers to shop independently in a grocery store using only their smartphone. Unlike other assistive shopping systems that use dedicated hardware, this system is a software only solution that relies on fast computer vision algorithms. It consists of three modules - an eyes free barcode scanner, an optical character recognition (OCR) module, and a tele-assistance module. The eyes-free barcode scanner allows VI shoppers to locate and retrieve products by scanning barcodes on shelves and on products. The OCR module allows shoppers to read nutrition facts on products and the tele-assistance module allows them to obtain help from sighted individuals at remote locations. This dissertation discusses, provides implementations of, and presents laboratory and real-world experiments related to all three modules