visually impaired people
Recently Published Documents

This paper presents a compact and wearable frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar on a semi-flexible printed circuit board (PCB) for an anti-collision system. This can enable visually impaired people to perceive their environment better and more safely in their everyday lives. In the proposed design, a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna array with four receivers (RXs) and three transmitters (TXs) has been designed to achieve obstacle-detection ability in both horizontal and vertical planes through a specific geometrical configuration. Operating at 76–81 GHz, an aperture coupled wide-beam patch antenna with two parasitic patches is proposed for each channel of RXs and TXs. The fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm has been implemented in the radar chip AWR1843 for intermediate frequency (IF) signals to generate a range-Doppler map and search precise target angles in high sensitivity. The complete system, which includes both the MIMO antenna array and the radar chip circuit, is utilized on a six-layer semi-flexible PCB to ensure compactness and ease in wearability. Field testing of the complete system has been performed, and an obstacle-detection range of 7 m (for humans) and 19 m (for larger objects) has been obtained. A wide angular detection range of 64-degree broadside view (±32°) has also been achieved. A voice module has also been integrated to deliver the obstacle’s range and angle information to visually impaired persons.

This paper addresses the issue of the development of the English language reading skills and subskills using the Braille System as the fundamental tool for visually impaired people. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the use of the Braille System and the reading skill competence. This research was applied to 21 pupils with different blindness conditions and from 10 to 32 years old who belong to the Special Education School “Julius Dophner” in the city of Ambato, Ecuador. This preliminary study was carried out using a quasi-experimental design, where pre-tests and post-tests were applied during a three-week period. Pupils took active part in the reading of the different primers at the beginning and after the treatment process. A t-test was used to examine the hypothesis. The results revealed that the improvement in the English language reading for specific information subskill through the Braille system was meaningful. Additional testing should be done to validate the scores obtained by visually impaired students with the use of this tool. Pupils showed a positive and very enthusiastic attitude about the learning process of the English language through this tool with which they are familiar.

Visually impaired people have unique perceptions of and usage requirements for various urban spaces. Therefore, understanding these perceptions can help create reasonable layouts and construct urban infrastructure. This study recruited 26 visually impaired volunteers to evaluate 24 sound environments regarding clarity, comfort, safety, vitality, and depression. This data was collected in seven different types of urban spaces. An independent sample non-parametric test was used to determine the significance of the differences between environmental evaluation results for each evaluation dimension and to summarize the compositions of sound and space elements in the positive and negative influence spaces. The results suggested that visually impaired people (1) feel comfort, safety, and clarity in parks, residential communities, and shopping streets; (2) have negative perceptions of vegetable markets, bus stops, hospitals, and urban departments; (3) feel anxious when traffic sounds, horn sounds, manhole cover sounds, and construction sounds occur; and (4) prefer spaces away from traffic, with fewer and slower vehicles, with a suitable space scale, and moderate crowd density. These results provide a reference for the future design of activity venues (i.e., residential communities, vegetable markets, bus stops, parks, shopping streets, hospitals, and urban functional departments) and the planning of accessibility systems for visually impaired urban residents.

One of the major challenges for blind and visually impaired (BVI) people is traveling safely to cross intersections on foot. Many countries are now generating audible signals at crossings for visually impaired people to help with this problem. However, these accessible pedestrian signals can result in confusion for visually impaired people as they do not know which signal must be interpreted for traveling multiple crosses in complex road architecture. To solve this problem, we propose an assistive system called CAS (Crossing Assistance System) which extends the principle of the BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) signal for outdoor and indoor location tracking and overcomes the intrinsic limitation of outdoor noise to enable us to locate the user effectively. We installed the system on a real-world intersection and collected a set of data for demonstrating the feasibility of outdoor RSSI tracking in a series of two studies. In the first study, our goal was to show the feasibility of using outdoor RSSI on the localization of four zones. We used a k-nearest neighbors (kNN) method and showed it led to 99.8% accuracy. In the second study, we extended our work to a more complex setup with nine zones, evaluated both the kNN and an additional method, a Support Vector Machine (SVM) with various RSSI features for classification. We found that the SVM performed best using the RSSI average, standard deviation, median, interquartile range (IQR) of the RSSI over a 5 s window. The best method can localize people with 97.7% accuracy. We conclude this paper by discussing how our system can impact navigation for BVI users in outdoor and indoor setups and what are the implications of these findings on the design of both wearable and traffic assistive technology for blind pedestrian navigation.

The internet of things (IoT) is viewed as something that connects everyday objects like smart TV and smart phones. Automation is the future of human civilization. It's like operating various devices and machinery with minimum or no human intervention. In this chapter, home appliances and other electronic devices are proposed to be controlled over internet with the help of website or smartphone. Speech recognition technology has been implemented in this chapter which will help complete or partially visually impaired people or persons with physical disability. Smart CCTV concept has been developed in this chapter which will allow to operate the web camera whenever it detects motion and sleep at other times which will save energy as well as storage unlike current CCTV scenario. Also, smart CCTV captures images and video footage and provides the real-time status of the place via a registered email address, website, and mobile app. If you are outside, you can check the status of your home and be in line with it, and you will activate the home appliances from the web site and through speech.