Using a Mobile Application to Help Visually Impaired Individuals Explore the Outdoors

2016-07-31
Long, Shelby K.
Karpinsky, Nicole D.
Döner, Hilal
Still, Jeremiah D.
Visually impaired individuals face a variety of challenges when navigating outdoors, including uneven terrain, unexpected obstacles, safety concerns, and reliance on others for information. The goal of this study was to understand further the navigational needs of visually impaired individuals and to develop a mid-fidelity prototype to address these needs. Through interviews with visually impaired users and accessibility professionals, researchers found that present technology leads to an incomplete understanding of the trail and harmful situations. Currently, there is no known technology available that integrates real-time updates with static trail information for individuals navigating outdoors. In response, a mobile prototype was proposed, integrating user-provided updates with static trail information in a format that caters to all users. Our usability testing showed visually impaired users made few errors using the prototype and were satisfied with their experience.

Suggestions

Designing and developing an accessible web-based assistive technology for students with visual impairment
KAMALI ARSLANTAŞ, TUĞBA; Yıldırım, İbrahim Soner; ALTUNAY, BANU (2022-04-01)
This article introduces the design principles of a web-based assistive technology (WAT) developed for students with visual impairment (VI). The pedagogical goal guiding the development process was the enhancement of vocabulary knowledge for students studying English as a foreign language (EFL) in terms of their spelling and semantics. The study attempted to overcome the problems of individuals with VI through provision of an accessible and suitable learning environment. A design-based research (DBR) framewo...
A Mobile-Cloud Collaborative Traffic Lights Detector for Blind Navigation
Angın, Pelin; HELAL, Sumi (2010-05-26)
Context-awareness is a critical aspect of safe navigation especially for the blind and visually impaired in unfamiliar environments. Existing mobile devices for context-aware navigation fall short in many cases due to their dependence on specific infrastructure requirements as well as having limited access to resources that could provide a wealth of contextual clues. In this paper, we propose a mobile-cloud collaborative approach for context-aware navigation by exploiting the computational power of resource...
Real-time Mobile-Cloud Computing for ontext-Aware Blind Navigation
Angın, Pelin (2011-07-01)
Context-awareness is a critical aspect of safe navigation, especially for the blind and visually impaired in unfamiliar environments. Existing mobile devices for context-aware navigation fall short in many cases due to their dependence on specific infrastructure requirements as well as having limited access to resources that could provide a wealth of contextual clues. In this paper, we propose a Mobile-Cloud Computing approach for context-aware navigation by exploiting the computational power of resources m...
Experimental and numerical investigation of comparability of whiplash sled test results
ÖZDEMİR, MUSTAFA; İDER, SITKI KEMAL; Gökler, Mustafa İlhan (2016-02-01)
Whiplash-associated neck injuries represent an important health and socioeconomic problem attracting more and more attention of the vehicle safety community. Sled tests are conducted for the dynamic whiplash assessment of seats. However, reproducibility of the initial backset distances and of the sled pulses in every test plays an important role on the comparability of these results. In this study, in order to investigate these aspects, three different driver seat types are considered with three identical a...
UTILIZING HYPERSPECTRAL REMOTE SENSING IMAGERY FOR AFFORESTATION PLANNING OF PARTIALLY COVERED AREAS
Omruuzun, Fatih; Baskurt, Didem Ozisik; Daglayan, Hazan; Çetin, Yasemin (2015-09-23)
In this study, a supportive method for afforestation planning process of partially forested areas using hyperspectral remote sensing imagery has been proposed. The algorithm has been tested on a scene covering METU campus area that is acquired by high resolution hyperspectral push-broom sensor operating in visible and NIR range of the electromagnetic spectrum. The main contribution of this study to the literature is segmentation of partially forested regions with a semi-supervised classification of specific...
Citation Formats
S. K. Long, N. D. Karpinsky, H. Döner, and J. D. Still, “Using a Mobile Application to Help Visually Impaired Individuals Explore the Outdoors,” 2016, vol. 500, p. 213, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/67669.