Quality of Life and Visual impairment

According to the last “People with Disabilities Report” (cro. Izvješće o osobama s invaliditetom) in Republic of Croatia lives 529 103 persons with disability which is more than 10 % of total population. There is 18 317 persons with impaired vision (blind and visually impaired). Compared to previous years this number has increased by 2044 people. According to estimates 10%, with a tendency to increase, of blind people is using the Internet. Estimates are based on documents and reports that are currently derived from the project “Communication Rod to Independence” (cro. Komunikacijskom štapom do neovisnosti).
Using of Internet and new technologies geared towards enhancing the quality of life for visually impaired has led to the development of accessibility of everything that surrounds visually impaired person. Development of accessibility has been analyzed in terms of website development, i.e. development of e-Learning system for visually impaired according to existing standards and with newly developed standards.
When planning, designing and developing e-Learning system for visually impaired these criteria must be met:
- Planned according to existing standards, i.e. WCAG 2.0 and BS 8878:2010
- Usability criteria have to be met
- Universal design
- Support for assistive technologies (screen readers, specially designed keyboards, scanning applications and others)
Accessible and usable web is part of e-accessibility concept, one of key elements of e-inclusion. E-inclusion seeks to ensure inclusion of all people in the Information Society. In that context, e-accessibility defines removal of technical barriers and difficulties that visually impaired person could come across.
W3C standards define the provision of access and use of website content for visually impaired. Understanding of information, movement an interaction between website and user defines website usable for all users which are currently using the website. Accessible website strives to ensure all users, regardless of disability or experience, equal access to the information.
Usability criteria include basic requirements in the website design such as:
- Exact element positions on the website
- Simple design
- Ability to change font size
- Ability to change background color
- Accurate image description
- Appropriate language support
- Video recordings need to have voice and text
- Website frames need to have assigned names
- Forms have to be standard
- Text should not be in form of an image
- If visual verification is used (CAPTCHA) there should be audible verification available
Universal design term represent that a product or service must be accessible to all people regardless of whether they have some degree of disability. Principles of universal design is defined in seven points:
1. Impartial use
2. Usage flexibility
3. Simple and intuitive use
4. Perceptible information
5. Error tolerant
6. Low physical effort
7. Size and space for approach and use
System needs to have support for assistive technologies such as screen readers and specially designed keyboards and so on. Assistive technologies enable visually impaired person efficient usage of the system.
This paper will discuss described definitions and standards that will be implemented in learning management system (LMS) as a module for visually impaired. LMS developed at the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences has been in use since 2004. System is composed of five modules: Document Management System (DMS), The Authorization and Supervision System (cro. Sustav Autorizacije i Nadzora; SAN), students module e-Student, SMS module SMSCentar and mobile learning module FPZMobile.
This paper will define guidelines, according to WCAG 2.0 standards, for development of the LMS module for visually impaired. These guidelines will be recommended for their implementation of the Strategy for e-Learning at the University of Zagreb (cro. Strategija e-Učenja Sveučilišta u Zagrebu).

Aim: To evaluate the prevalence of traumatic dental injuries (TDIs) among children with visual impairment in residential schools of Bengaluru, Karnataka, and the dental perceptions of parents/caregivers on its management. Materials and methods: Two-hundred and twenty-one children with visual impairments within 8-14 years of age were randomly selected from three schools for the visually impaired in Bengaluru, Karnataka, and were examined clinically. Dental perspectives of the parents/care providers of these children with tooth fractures were conducted through a brief, unstructured, and an informal in-depth interview. Results: 36 among the 221 children had characteristic TDIs. Crowding, spacing, and diastema were observed in only 1 child (2.78%) and increased overjet was observed in 23 children (63.89%). 23 (63.89%) children had class I and 13 (36.11%) had class II malocclusions, respectively. The most affected teeth by dental trauma were the maxillary incisors. 13 (36.11%) children had class I fractured teeth, 16 (44.44%) had class II, 5 (13.9%) had class III, and only 2 (5.56%) had class 1V type of fractured teeth. Of the 36 children who had dental fractures, 29 (80.55%) had fractured their teeth due to fall, 2 (5.56%) due to collision, and 5 (13.89%) did not know the cause for their fractured teeth. The parents and caregivers could not give an adequate dental history for their child's traumatized teeth; wherever they could, the parents and caregivers were not willing to provide prompt dental treatments, stating the child's blindness as a reason for their avoidance of dental treatments. Conclusion: In the present study, none of the children received any form of treatment for their fractured teeth and malocclusion. The parents and caregivers of the children were of the popular opinion that the dental treatments were not a priority since the child is visually impaired. Clinical significance: Adequate oral care specifications and preventive procedures are of prime concern which should be instituted early on, with the dental health professionals providing coaching to the school employees and the parents/care providers to encourage quality oral hygiene and guide them in gaining admittance to adequate and timely dental aid.

Sensory impaired individuals are at a disadvantage in accessing and processing electronic information. The first author (i.e. Thomas Hahn) is legally blind due to Albinism. In this experience report we describe challenges faced by the visually impaired and explain how remote access programs in combination with voice communication programs can be used to—at least partially—compensate for those disadvantages because they don't transmit magnification. This property is especially important to effectively train visually impaired individuals on new applications and interfaces remotely because it allows them to view exactly the same information simultaneously with their sighted trainers. Since the technical prerequisites for this information exchange, skill transfer, and knowledge acquisition approach have already been freely available for at least 7 years, but are still not widely used, this approach needs to be impressively demonstrated at conferences like this one to increase the odds that its participants will share this approach with those who could potentially benefit from it. This approach could make computer labs with expensive software not only accessible to the disabled, but instead, to everyone around the clock while saving money, which is still being spent to pay lab supervisors to keep the labs open for a few hours without losing—but instead—gaining functionality. Offering virtual remote office hours would benefit disabled and non-handicapped students and faculty alike. Providing remote access to lectures can make them available to a wider audience and thus could decrease costs for tuition. Obvious benefits of this approach for the mobility impaired and soon to be expected benefits for the hearing impaired are mentioned. Allowing faculty to remotely participate in oral exams increases choices for possible specializations. Making information more accessible to the disabled has obvious synergistic benefits for non-handicapped people alike as reflected by the importance of the concept of workforce diversification for overcoming unexpected future challenges and potential stumbling blocks. This approach makes it possible to magnify lecture presentations directly onto the screen of visually impaired students and could improve real-time interactions in the classroom. Remote access for everyone could reduce the perception of disabilities. Handicapped people could be considered early adopters because they are more in need of improvements since the present circumstances and limitations are much less acceptable to them. This article concludes by describing current bottlenecks to accessibility and information transfer, and ends with an overall optimistic outlook to the future. Figure 1: On the right laptop screen, the normal view of the programming interface of R Studio (see https://www.r-project.org/) is shown. The left laptop screen shows the alterations that are necessary for me to access and process electronic information. The setting displayed here closely simulates situations when sighted people train me to learn new interfaces or to follow instructions on how to use them.