Haptic Feedback to Assist Blind People in Indoor Environment Using Vibration Patterns

Feedback is one of the significant factors for the mental mapping of an environment. It is the communication of spatial information to blind people to perceive the surroundings. The assistive smartphone technologies deliver feedback for different activities using several feedback mediums, including voice, sonification and vibration. Researchers 0have proposed various solutions for conveying feedback messages to blind people using these mediums. Voice and sonification feedback are effective solutions to convey information. However, these solutions are not applicable in a noisy environment and may occupy the most important auditory sense. The privacy of a blind user can also be compromised with speech feedback. The vibration feedback could effectively be used as an alternative approach to these mediums. This paper proposes a real-time feedback system specifically designed for blind people to convey information to them based on vibration patterns. The proposed solution has been evaluated through an empirical study by collecting data from 24 blind people through a mixed-mode survey using a questionnaire. Results show the average recognition accuracy for 10 different vibration patterns are 90%, 82%, 75%, 87%, 65%, and 70%.

VirtualEye: Android Application for the Visually Impaired

In India, almost 18 million visually impaired people have difficulties in managing their day-to-day activities. Hence, there is a need to develop an application that can assist them every time and give vocal instructions in both English and Hindi. In this paper, we introduced a robust lightweight Android application that facilitates visually impaired individuals by providing a variety of essential features such as object and distance detection, Indian currency note detection, and optical character recognition that can enhance their quality of life. This application aims to have a user-friendly GUI well suited to the needs of the blind user and modules like Object Recognition with Image Captioning so that the visually challenged user can gain a better understanding of their surroundings.

Design thinking approach to simplify monetary transactions for the visually challenged

Design thinking, having applications in many fields, is emerging to be a pragmatic technique for facilitating Human Centred Design (HCD), a modern-day necessity, through a well-defined systematic process. This paper presents a case study detailing the application of design thinking principles to approach and develop solutions for the visually challenged to recognize the denomination of Indian currencies. Throughout the paper, specific implementations of design thinking principles have been detailed with emphasis on the key takeaways from the various stages. A comprehensive review of our approach compared to existing and unconventional applications has been provided to underline the importance of incorporating design thinking into emergent consumer-oriented solutions. A lot of research has been done in developing denomination classification models, however, there seems to be a lack of solutions designed through the perspective of a blind person who plays the critical factor in determining effectiveness once deployed. The design procedure helped us realize the importance of developing a simple user-friendly interface with a single input button and audio relays to guide the blind user during operation. Establishing a good platform for interaction and feedback was found to be critical in helping us modify and prioritize aspects such as achieving a low false-positive percentage and the addition of a high threshold Softmax function which made the solution design effective.

Gesture Controlled Tactile Augmented Reality Interface for the Visually Impaired

This paper proposes to create an augmented reality interface for the visually impaired, enabling a way of haptically interacting with the computer system by creating a virtual workstation, facilitating a natural and intuitive way to accomplish a multitude of computer-based tasks (such as emailing, word processing, storing and retrieving files from the computer, making a phone call, searching the web, etc.). The proposed system utilizes a combination of a haptic glove device, a gesture-based control system, and an augmented reality computer interface which creates an immersive interaction between the blind user and the computer. The gestures are recognized, and the user is provided with audio and vibratory haptic feedbacks. This user interface allows the user to actually “touch, feel, and physically interact” with digital controls and virtual real estate of a computer system. A test of applicability was conducted which showcased promising positive results.

Low Cost Electronic Brailler

The majority of blind or visually impaired students in the third world countries are still using the mechanical brailler for their education. With technology advancements and electronic communication, relying on paper-based brailler would not be efficient nor productive. The "LCE Brailler" is a low-cost electronic brailler whose main features are to vocalize, braille, save and convert Braille characters typed by a blind student to alphabetical ones, which are then displayed on a computer’s monitor. In order to promote an interactive educational experience among students, teachers and parents, the proposed brailler has an affordable low price with advanced capabilities. The device’s design is simplistic and its keyboard is familiar to the blind user. It is based on the raspberry pi technology. The LCE device was tested by visually impaired students and proved to provide accurate mechanical functionality, accuracy, braille-to-text and text-to-audio blind assistant with a userfriendly graphical user interface.

Assessing Metadata and Curation Quality

Since 2017, the publisher Springer Nature has provided an optional Research Data Support service to help researchers deposit and curate data that support their peer-reviewed publications. This service builds on a Research Data Helpdesk, which since 2016 has provided support to authors and editors who need advice on the options available for sharing their research data. In this paper, we describe a short project which aimed to facilitate an objective assessment of metadata quality, undertaken during the development of a third-party curation service for researchers (Research Data Support). We provide details on the single-blind user-testing that was undertaken, and the results gathered during this experiment. We also briefly describe the curation services which have been developed and introduced following an initial period of testing and piloting.

Effective Shopping Method for Visually Impaired People using Optical Character Recognition

Visual impairment persons are not able to do all works as normal persons especially during purchasing products in supermarket. To help the blind peoples recognise the objects a text reading method is proposed along with the help of camera. A motion detection method is used to detect the presence of the object. The audio instructions about all the objects and their location in supermarket are notified to the blind user that helps them to move freely inside the supermarket. The proposed system aims to make more convenient for the blind persons to purchase in a sophisticated environment. This system also provides easy shopping, consumers time is saved, etc. The implementation of proposed system is done using artificial intelligence and OCR technology. General Terms Visually impaired people, smart shopping, OCR.

Blind User Experiences of US Academic Libraries can be Improved by More Proactive Reference Service Delivery

A Review of: Mulliken, A. (2017). There is nothing inherently mysterious about assistive technology: A qualitative study about blind user experiences in US academic libraries. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 57(2), 115-126. https://doi.org/10.5860/rusq.57.2.6528 Abstract Objective – To explore blind users’ experiences with academic libraries. Design – Qualitative questionnaire. Setting – Academic libraries within the United States of America. Subjects – 18 individuals who are legally blind, have experience relying on a screen reader to access the internet, and have used an academic library either online or in person within the previous two years. Methods – An open-ended questionnaire was administered via telephone interview. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed using an inductive approach to identify themes using Hill et al.’s (2005) approach. Main Results – The author found seven themes in the interview data: experiences working with reference librarians in person, difficulty with library websites, screen reader use during reference transactions, preferences for independence, using chat, interactions with disability officers, and challenges of working with citation styles. Conclusion – The study concluded that academic libraries and librarians should be more proactive when approaching reference services for blind users. The author offered suggestions for practice about how to improve blind user experiences of academic libraries.