RFID Information Grid for Blind Navigation and Wayfinding
ISWC '05 Proceedings of the Ninth IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers
Mastering Regular Expressions
Universal real-time navigational assistance (URNA): an urban bluetooth beacon for the blind
Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGMOBILE international workshop on Systems and networking support for healthcare and assisted living environments
LaureaPOP indoor navigation service for the visually impaired in a WLAN environment
EHAC'07 Proceedings of the 6th WSEAS International Conference on Electronics, Hardware, Wireless and Optical Communications
LocalEyes: accessible GPS and points of interest
Proceedings of the 12th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility
Towards ubiquitous awareness tools for blind people
BCS-HCI '13 Proceedings of the 27th International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference
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For the majority of blind people, walking in unknown places is a very difficult, or even impossible, task to perform, when without help. The adoption of the white cane is the main aid to a blind user's mobility. However, the major difficulties arise in the orientation task. The lack of reference points and the inability to access visual cues are its main causes. We aim to overcome this issue allowing users to walk through unknown places, by receiving a familiar and easily understandable feedback. Our preliminary contributions are in understanding, through user studies, how blind users explore an unknown place, their difficulties, capabilities and needs. We also analyzed how these users create their own mental maps, verbalize a route and communicate with each other. Structuring and generalizing this information, we were able to create a prototype that generates familiar and adequate instructions, behaving like a blind companion, one with similar capabilities that understands his "friend" and speaks the same language. We evaluated the system with the target population, validating our approach and orientation guidelines, while gathering overall user satisfaction.