Innovation is a challenge because it must meet the characteristics of an entire population. This includes visual impairment, which is the focus of this paper. Considering the interaction capabilities ...offered by mobile devices, especially smartphones, we asked ourselves this question: what kinds of interaction make it easier for visually impaired people to use mobile apps? To answer this question, we first researched into these persons' smartphone usage habits. Then we developed a prototype for an electronic calendar that provides interaction via voice commands, keyboard and touch. An electronic calendar is a very useful tool especially in business, since it can be used for managing people, resources and events, having a positive impact on productivity. This prototype was analyzed with potential users and we collected their initial impressions about the benefits of using various forms of interaction. The lessons learned with this work are presented and categorized using some of the best-known usability heuristics.
De caráter exploratório, o trabalho apresenta e discute sobre a resposta das crianças com deficiência visual sobre o livro infantil ilustrado, analisando como se estabelecem e dialogam as relações ...entre texto e imagem no suporte livro sob a perspectiva da não visualidade, principalmente, no que diz respeito à particularidade cognitiva e aos condicionantes específicos da deficiência visual. Justifica-se este estudo pela importância que o acesso a diferentes linguagens (imagem e texto), somadas à função literária da narrativa ficcional podem proporcionar ao leitor mirim, pois além do acesso à imagem e a seu potencial significativo ao leitor, há ainda a possibilidade de incluir a criança com deficiência visual no universo literário, em um campo cujo jogo intricado de linguagens fornece ao leitor uma multiplicidade de sentidos que podem levá-lo ao encontro de novos caminhos para se relacionar com o mundo. O método aqui empregado, entrevista-conversa (SARAMAGO, 2001), questiona crianças cegas e com baixa visão entre 10 e 14 anos do Instituto Londrinense de Instrução e Trabalho para Cegos de Londrina/PR sobre as relações entre a imagem e o texto durante a leitura de duas obras ilustradas adaptadas: Adélia Esquecida e Adélia Sonhadora, ambas selecionadas pela diversidade de recursos gráficos (texturas lisas, flocadas, granuladas, entre outras) utilizados na tradução das imagens para o relevo. Busca-se, sob dois aspectos, comparar equivalências e divergências proporcionadas pela leitura, primeiramente pelas narrativas que dependem de ilustrações para transmitir sua mensagem essencial e as que podem ser facilmente compreendidas apenas pelo texto, a fim de verificar se existe uma integração ou fragmentação de linguagens diante dessa integração imagemtexto no contexto da deficiência visual. Os resultados indicam que a experiência de leitura em cada livro é complexa e singular a cada virar de página. No entanto, as tipologias atuam como parâmetro eficaz para a compreensão das diversas relações entre imagem e texto observadas durante a entrevista e despertam para o vasto campo de possibilidades que há para ser explorado na literatura infantil adaptada. Conclui-se que a imagem tátil e o texto ainda não atingem o status de paridade nas obras adaptadas pesquisadas, sendo necessário ampliar o diálogo e o compartilhamento de informações entre os mediadores dos livros e o público com deficiência visual, de modo que, promova-se não apenas o aumento da qualidade e quantidade de produtos adaptados, como também, um maior exercício crítico para o leitor frente a narrativas interdependentes com imagem e texto.
With the TV signal digitization and the current market growth of connected TVs, the authors envision the appearance of accessibility barriers to visually impaired persons. The paper addresses the ...following hypothesis: (1) visually impaired users want to extend their TV usage to explore new TV features; (2) TV applications are in less conformance with accessibility guidelines compared to their Desktop versions. Additionally, the authors wanted to assess whether guideline conformance reflected real TV accessibility problems experienced by users. The methods used for this study included surveys aimed at characterizing the interest of the visually impaired population regarding the use of TV, and specifically of Web applications on TV, an automated accessibility evaluation to compare TV and Desktop versions of the same Web application, to understand their conformance with accessibility guidelines, and a user study where participants with visual impairments were asked to perform some tasks on both versions. From the survey, we confirmed that people with visual disabilities are interested in extra features on their TV. Results from the automated accessibility evaluation show that TV applications are in a significantly better level of conformance with accessibility guidelines. The user study has illustrated that users were unable to complete any task using the TV versions of the applications. The results from these studies demonstrated that the new features that come with connected TVs still have a long way to go in order to be accessible by all. Furthermore, they lead us to concur with other works that automated evaluations are not enough to assess the accessibility of a Web page.
This study was carried out with the aim of stating whether or not playing goalball is effective on the duration of aural reaction, the power of hand and grasping, flexibility and balance of the ...individuals those visually disabled in different degrees. For this purpose, in the province Van, 30 experimental subjects were included in the study, 15 subjects of the study were of an advancing group whose visual degrees were varied between B1 and B3 and other 15 subjects were of not doing sports . The average age of those subjects was 31.53 ± 9.19. The average age of those doing sport was 2, 93 ± ,88 years. The test of the right and left aural reaction of the subjects was defined with the device New Test 1000. Also, their grasping power was measured with Grip Strength Dynamometer. In addition, the test of flexibility of subjects was applied twice and the highest grade was recorded. In the hopping test, those completed the test were evaluated with (+), and those not completed the test were evaluated with (-). Then, the digital data was transferred to electronic environment. One way variance analysis Mann –Whitney (One Way) and T Tests were used for statistical analyses of the data. In conclusion, it was figured out that there isn't any significant difference on account of height, weight, flexibility and hopping test (p Ë‚ 0, 05). It was assigned that there is a difference (p Ë‚ 0, 01) between the groups in duration of right hand aural reaction and left hand grasping power; there are significant differences between the groups in age, duration of left hand reaction and right hand grasping power.
This book was first projected in 2004, when Author Hannah Fairbairn was teaching interpersonal skills at the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, Massachusetts. The experiences of her adult ...students--and her own experience of sight lost--convinced her that everyone losing vision needs access to good information about the process of adjustment to losing sight and practical ways to use assertive speech. When You Can't Believe Your Eyes is intended for anyone going through vision loss, their friends, and families. It will inform readers how to get expert professional help, face the trauma of loss, and navigate the world using speech more than sight. It is hoped that by reading and trying out the suggestions, the reader will recover full confidence, become a positive, assertive communicator, and lead a satisfying life. Because vision loss happens mostly in older years, the book is written with seniors particularly in mind. Professionals will also find it to be a useful resource for their patients.
Detection of ascending stairs using stereo vision Harms, Hannes; Rehder, Eike; Schwarze, Tobias ...
2015 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS),
09/2015
Conference Proceeding
Environment perception is an important task in computer vision for many applications in robotics. Especially for robots navigating through different levels of a building, stair detection constitutes ...an important perception task. In this paper, we propose a stair detection algorithm using range data. Firstly, we introduce a parameter, which describes local surface orientations w.r.t. a global reference. Secondly, a matched filter is used to detect relevant edges in the orientation data. Afterwards, line segments are determined using these edge data which are further used to estimate stairs. The proposed method is invariant against rotations of the sensor. We show that the system can handle typical outdoor stair types and outperforms the accuracy of state-of-the-art stair detection methods. Moreover, the method is used in real time to assist visually impaired people who wear the camera system on a helmet.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore design issues hampering the accessibility of digital libraries (DLs) for first-time blind users.
Design/methodology/approach
A combination of ...questionnaire, pre-interview, think-aloud and post-interview methods was used to collect data on non-visual interaction experiences with American Memory Digital Collection (AMDC) from 15 blind participants. Qualitative analysis via open coding revealed recurring themes on design problems and consequent difficulties for blind users in accessing DLs.
Findings
It was found that AMDC is not blind-friendly. Five categories of design problems were identified. Participants faced difficulty perceiving, operating and understanding content and controls needed for information retrieval.
Research limitations/implications
This paper does not offer a comprehensive set of design issues prevalent across DL design models, instead it focuses on design problems observed in a publicly available DL.
Practical implications
This paper raises awareness of design choices that can unintentionally bar blind information seekers from DL access, and further suggests solutions to reduce these design problems for blind users.
Originality/value
The paper’s originality is its identification of unique design problems that prevent blind users from effectively interacting with DLs.
This paper shows an experiment with tactile maps designed for visually impaired persons. Tests were carried out on a tactile map produced with 3D printing and including a new type of tactile symbols, ...volumetric symbols (3D). These symbols are localized faster than conventional flat relief symbols, with the same error rate, an improvement in the use of these tactile devices. Moreover, following tests, differences were found between types of participants with blind participants generally carrying out the proposed tasks better than the rest of users.
This paper proposes a system to assist the visually handicapped by extracting text characters on the surface of an object. The visually handicapped user cannot know exactly what the object is and ...cannot read the text written on the surface. The user touches a point on the surface with his or her index finger; the system extracts characters around the fingertip. To implement these functions, we propose fingertip detection and character extraction methodologies. For fingertip detection, the user wears a ring, in which three acrylic infrared-reflective beads are embedded, on the index finger. The system detects the beads and locates their positions from an infrared image, then, calculates the fingertip position based on bead arrangement. For character extraction, a region is generated according to the position of the fingertip. The characters are extracted from the region based on color histogram and shape. Then, the extracted characters are combined as text. Finally, the text is recognized by commercially available OCR software and is read aloud to the user by reading software. We have experimentally verified that these methodologies achieved character extraction accuracy of at least 70.0% expect the case of narrow character extraction. The experiments demonstrated the basic validity of our proposed method.
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