Sensory Substitution, Key to Inclusive Learning

Visually impaired students, in primary education, encounter unique challenges while learning creative skills, exploring artistic expression and developing problem-solving skills, because so much instructional content is delivered visually. Sensory substitution—an approach that replaces visual information with feedback from other intact senses like touch, sound, taste or smell—provides an opportunity to address those challenges. Through the use of sensory substitution, this thesis proposes concrete ways to capitalize on the enhanced abilities of visually impaired primary school students. The research outcome of this thesis is a system of templates that puts these enhanced abilities to work for visually impaired students, to support them while they learn creative skills and practice problem-solving in a classroom setting. Each template contains a lesson that can be learned by using the process of paper quilling. The templates work equally well for sighted and visually impaired students, since all will be able to understand the lesson by using the sense of touch, as they learn by making

Investigating context-aware clues to assist navigation for visually impaired people

It is estimated that 7.4 million people in Europe are visually impaired [1]. Limitations of traditional mobility aids (i.e. white canes and guide dogs) coupled with a proliferation of context-aware technologies (e.g. Electronic Travel Aids, Global Positioning Systems and Geographical Information Systems), have stimulated research and development into navigational systems for the visually impaired. However, current research appears very technology focused, which has led to an insufficient appreciation of Human Computer Interaction, in particular task/requirements analysis and notions of contextual interactions. The study reported here involved a smallscale investigation into how visually impaired people interact with their environmental context during micro-navigation (through immediate environment) and/or macro-navigation (through distant environment) on foot. The purpose was to demonstrate the heterogeneous nature of visually impaired people in interaction with their environmental context. Results from a previous study involving sighted participants were used for comparison. Results revealed that when describing a route, visually impaired people vary in their use of different types of navigation clues - both as a group, when compared with sighted participants, and as individuals. Usability implications and areas for further work are identified and discussed

User friendly system for the visually impaired in learning Al-Quran

This study presents a method to enable the visually impaired Muslim to learn and read the Al-Quran using Braille Display with software help. The system reads the database which contains all verses of Al-Quran and user will need to select the verse and ayah to read. Besides that, this system can be used in a class to teach visually impaired students to learn Al-Quran. Every word or character typed by the instructor in the main Braille Panel will be transmitted to the sub Braille Panel that is connected to the main Braille Panel. The selected verse of Al-Quran and ayah will also generate an index before being transmitted to the Braille Panel. The index will be transmitted to the Braille Display for people to touch and read the display. A user friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) will be used to fulfill the ergonomics for the visually impaired user's physical capabilities. Several approaches are used to design and implement the interface for the visually impaired like speech or sound output and Braille display. The Braille codes can be displayed using the Braille panel. The design interface and structure of the system for the visually impaired users in learning Al-Quran is presented

Towards a Multimodal Adaptive Lighting System for Visually Impaired Children

Visually impaired children often have difficulty with everyday activities like locating items, e.g. favourite toys, and moving safely around the home. It is important to assist them during activities like these because it can promote independence from adults and helps to develop skills. Our demonstration shows our work towards a multimodal sensing and output system that adapts the lighting conditions at home to help visually impaired children with such tasks

Methods and Techniques for the Access of Persons With Visual Impairments to Handbooks and Textbooks

The transformation of learning materials in an accessible format for blind students allows them to access texts and graphics. This access was not possible before considering the past technologies. The Daisy format represents an accessibility standard that permits the visually impaired person to listen an audio book as a person without disability. In this way, the visually impaired person can listen the audio book according to its content and/or pages. The usage of this format enables to develop new approaches in the process of teaching and learning, not only for visually impaired students but also for visually impaired teachers. The Daisy format proved to be efficient in the educational area also for children with learning difficulties. Studies concerned with efficiency of Daisy book.Daisy, visual impairment, access technologies, accessible audio books

Event Planner Sensitivity to the Needs of Individuals with Visual Disability at Meetings and Events

Special events, such as fairs, conventions, ballgames, and concerts are typically activities people attend to participate in the festivities and enjoy with friends and family members. For individuals with disabilities, however, these types of events can create more challenges than enjoyment. Despite a thorough review of the literature, no studies were found which evaluated the experiences of individuals who are blind and have visual impairments at events and meetings. The aim of this study was to determine the current level of accessibility at meetings perceived by consumers who are blind and visually impaired. Respondents to the survey indicated many obstacles to accessing meetings including: discrimination, a paucity of accessible features, and accessibility features that are not truly accessible for consumers who are blind and visually impaired. Recommendations are provided for increasing meeting and event accessibility for consumers who are blind and visually impaired

Web-based multimodal graphs for visually impaired people

This paper describes the development and evaluation of Web-based multimodal graphs designed for visually impaired and blind people. The information in the graphs is conveyed to visually impaired people through haptic and audio channels. The motivation of this work is to address problems faced by visually impaired people in accessing graphical information on the Internet, particularly the common types of graphs for data visualization. In our work, line graphs, bar charts and pie charts are accessible through a force feedback device, the Logitech WingMan Force Feedback Mouse. Pre-recorded sound files are used to represent graph contents to users. In order to test the usability of the developed Web graphs, an evaluation was conducted with bar charts as the experimental platform. The results showed that the participants could successfully use the haptic and audio features to extract information from the Web graphs

A brief guide to carrying out research about adult social care services for visually impaired people

Carrying out research about adult social care services for visually impaired people presents challenges that are not necessarily found in other fields. The purpose of this review is to draw attention to these challenges and to guide the researcher through them. It does so by drawing on the academic and grey literature. The review covers the ideological context of research in this field; definitions of visual impairment and their appropriate and inappropriate uses in research; misleading claims and reliable evidence about the size and characteristics of the visually impaired people and the reasons that these are important issues for research in the field. Challenges also cover the main topic areas of research and the methodological approaches, both quantitative and qualitative, that researchers have taken to deal with them. Issues common to both types of method cover sampling; the instruments used to collect data; the means of obtaining informed consent from visually impaired people, and organisations that can potentially assist researchers in this field

Wonders never cease

Describes an assistive technology project for visually impaired children in Malawi

Design guidelines for audio presentation of graphs and tables

Audio can be used to make visualisations accessible to blind and visually impaired people. The MultiVis Project has carried out research into suitable methods for presenting graphs and tables to blind people through the use of both speech and non-speech audio. This paper presents guidelines extracted from this research. These guidelines will enable designers to implement visualisation systems for blind and visually impaired users, and will provide a framework for researchers wishing to investigate the audio presentation of more complex visualisations