Crafting Blindness: Its Organizational Construction in a First Grade School

This article is based on a case study conducted in an Italian primary school where the interactions between a sightless girl (named Jasmine, aged 8) and her classmates were extensively observed. The initial aim was to understand and describe the problems encountered by the sightless pupil, who acted in a social, organizational and physical environment which was not designed for handicapped people. However, other theoretical issues emerged during the research. The main finding was that sightlessness seems socially and organizationally constructed before it becomes a biological/physical handicap. The organizational processes through which the blindness is slowly and routinely constructed were extensively described.

Smart Wheelchair with Voice Control for Physically Challenged People

A wheel chair is a mechanically operated device that allows the user to move about independently. This minimizes the user's personal effort and force required to move the wheelchair wheels. Furthermore, it allows visually or physically handicapped people to go from one location to another. Voice commands and button controls can be used to operate wheelchairs. In recent years, there has been a lot of interest in smart wheelchairs. These gadgets are very handy while traveling from one location to another. The devices can also be utilized in nursing homes where the elderly have difficulties moving about. For individuals who have lost their mobility, the gadgets are a godsend. Different types of smart wheelchairs have been created in the past, but new generations of wheelchairs are being developed and utilized that incorporate the use of artificial intelligence and therefore leave the user with a little to tamper with. The project also intends to develop a comparable wheel chair that has some intelligence and so assists the user in his or her mobility.

Prediction & Anticipation Features based Intellectual Assistant in Location Based Services

Intellectual assistant in a location based service (LBS) is considered here as assistive technology in healthcare system for helping users with sensory, physical or intellectual diminished capabilities. The proposed system has the speculative computation module which helps in orientation for predicting the users’ error and alerting them for ensuring a true traveling direction well in advance for the handicapped people of mild to moderate condition of disability in earlier phases of cognitive disabilities. A person with cognitive impairments has the Trajectory (T) associated with them which is a sequenced set of past global positioning system (GPS) points. The implementation and evaluation of the trajectory data mining method have been done for the purpose of achieving the travel route to the user preferences. For the simulation of proposed system, a client server queuing model has been used. The results show the minimization of the overhead with better precision as compared to earlier existing path guiding systems.

Prediction and Anticipation Features-Based Intellectual Assistant in Location-Based Services

Intellectual assistant in a location based service (LBS) is considered here as assistive technology in healthcare system for helping users with sensory, physical or intellectual diminished capabilities. The proposed system has the speculative computation module which helps in orientation for predicting the users’ error and alerting them for ensuring a true traveling direction well in advance for the handicapped people of mild to moderate condition of disability in earlier phases of cognitive disabilities. A person with cognitive impairments has the Trajectory (T) associated with them which is a sequenced set of past global positioning system (GPS) points. The implementation and evaluation of the trajectory data mining method have been done for the purpose of achieving the travel route to the user preferences. For the simulation of proposed system, a client server queuing model has been used. The results show the minimization of the overhead with better precision as compared to earlier existing path guiding systems.

Prediction and Anticipation Features-Based Intellectual Assistant in Location-Based Services

Intellectual assistant in a location based service (LBS) is considered here as assistive technology in healthcare system for helping users with sensory, physical or intellectual diminished capabilities. The proposed system has the speculative computation module which helps in orientation for predicting the users’ error and alerting them for ensuring a true traveling direction well in advance for the handicapped people of mild to moderate condition of disability in earlier phases of cognitive disabilities. A person with cognitive impairments has the Trajectory (T) associated with them which is a sequenced set of past global positioning system (GPS) points. The implementation and evaluation of the trajectory data mining method have been done for the purpose of achieving the travel route to the user preferences. For the simulation of proposed system, a client server queuing model has been used. The results show the minimization of the overhead with better precision as compared to earlier existing path guiding systems.

Editorial

2018 saw the fiftieth anniversary of the spontaneous founding of an interfaith initiative involving Jews and Christians in the unlikely location of Germany. Anneliese Debray, who was the director of a Catholic women’s adult education centre in Bendorf, near Koblenz, had the imagination and courage to set about creating programmes for encounter and reconciliation in the post-war world. The centre, the Hedwig Dransfeld Haus, became a meeting place for French and German and Polish and German families; for physically and mentally handicapped people together with ‘normal’ people; for the challenging task of ecumenical encounters between Catholic and Protestant Christians; for dialogue between Christians and Muslims; and eventually between Israeli and German young people. In that latter context the editor of this journal found himself visiting the centre and then, with two fellow rabbinic students at Leo Baeck College, attending an annual Catholic Bible study conference that summer. Our presence, our willingness to be there, and the rarity of such an opportunity for the participants, led to the desire to repeat the experiment the following year. Through incremental changes, the International Jewish-Christian Bible Week became an annual reality. After the death of Anneliese Debray, who had struggled for years to keep the Haus financially afloat, it went into bankruptcy. Nevertheless, what had been built had enough recognition and influence that it led to an invitation from Dr Uta Zwingenberger, who was responsible for Bible education in the Diocese of Osnabrück, to re-establish the Week in a new home, another Catholic adult education centre, Haus Ohrbeck, in the area of Osnabrück. There it continues to grow and flourish, hosting up to 130 people each year. Part of the impact, which makes it different from other more formal interfaith encounters, is the participation of families, with special programmes for children, so that the entire atmosphere is one of a normal human community.

Cerebral Pulse Controlled Robotic Hand for Effective Paralytic Movements

There are roughly 21 million handicapped people in India, which is comparable to 2.2% of the complete populace. These people are affected by various neuromuscular problems. To empower them to articulate their thoughts, one can supply them with elective and augmentative correspondence. For this, a Brain-Computer Interface framework (BCI) has been assembled to manage this specific need. The basic assumption of the venture reports the plan, working just as a testing impersonation of a man's arm which is intended to be powerfully just as kinematically exact. The conveyed gadget attempts to take after the movement of the human hand by investigating the signs delivered by cerebrum waves. The cerebrum waves are really detected by sensors in the Neurosky headset and produce alpha, beta, and gamma signals. Then, at that point, this sign is examined by the microcontroller and is then acquired onto the engineered hand by means of servo engines. A patient that experiences an amputee underneath the elbow can acquire from this specific biomechanical arm. Keywords: Brainwaves, Brain Computer Interface, Arduino, EEG sensor, Neurosky Mindwave Headset, Robotic arm

Controlling an Anatomical Robot Hand Using the Brain-Computer Interface Based on Motor Imagery

More than one billion people face disabilities worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In Sri Lanka, there are thousands of people suffering from a variety of disabilities, especially hand disabilities, due to the civil war in the country. The Ministry of Health of Sri Lanka reports that by 2025, the number of people with disabilities in Sri Lanka will grow by 24.2%. In the field of robotics, new technologies for handicapped people are now being built to make their lives simple and effective. The aim of this research is to develop a 3-finger anatomical robot hand model for handicapped people and control (flexion and extension) the robot hand using motor imagery. Eight EEG electrodes were used to extract EEG signals from the primary motor cortex. Data collection and testing were performed for a period of 42 s timespan. According to the test results, eight EEG electrodes were sufficient to acquire the motor imagery for flexion and extension of finger movements. The overall accuracy of the experiments was found at 89.34% (mean = 22.32) at the 0.894 precision. We also observed that the proposed design provided promising results for the performance of the task (grab, hold, and release activities) of hand-disabled persons.