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© Novática Information Technologies for Visually Impaired People technologies to provide accessibility to such systems. Public transport. Public transport is one of the main barriers facing the disabled. It is therefore essential that all the players involved in this sector, whether public or private, identify and provide accessibility solutions wherever they are needed. In spite of the fact that the provision of greater accessibility does not strictly depend on technological research, the various technologies used in the field of assistive technology may be of great help in adapting public transport to the requirements of the blind and visually impaired and so give them a greater independence in terms of mobility. For this reason CIDAT works in collaboration with public transport companies, the Public Administration, and the ONCE Foundation, providing guidance and research in systems that improve accessibility to public transport. Audiovisual media. The widespread use of audiovisual systems such as DVD, and the high expectations aroused by digital television, make these fields highly interesting from an accessibility point of view, since the development of these media, which were designed under universal accessibility criteria, can open up a world of disabled-friendly information and services. For this reason, CIDAT collaborates with companies and the other areas of ONCE involved in the study of and research into systems which ensure optimal accessibility to these communication media (Digital TV). Manufacture, prototyping, and adaptation of specialized devices and equipment. In this field CIDAT is involved in processes of design, prototyping, production, and manufacture of canes, braille writing tools, the mechanical parts of various assistive aids, and special adaptations of other equipment. The centre also researches into the manufacture of new canes that substantially improve the quality of those in current use to meet the highest demands of our members, using state-of-the art materials to produce solid, stable, and durable canes. 7 Collaboration with Third Parties and Participation in Major Events Our centre regularly collaborates with and participates in any national and international events that may bring us into contact with new technologies or help disseminate our products and activities. With regard to international events, in addition to taking part in meetings with the manufacturers of specific solutions, we also participate in international assistive technology trade fairs such as CSUN (California State University at Northbridge) [11], SightCity (Germany) [12], etc. Here in Spain, as well as the various exhibitions we attend or organize to make our products known to users, we also collaborate with other enterprises in a wide variety of events of a less specific nature, such as SIMO [13] or the Semana de la Ciencia (Science Week ) [14]. We also regularly collaborate with companies or public or private organizations in presentations, discussion sessions, workshops, etc. We attend and often collaborate in the organization of events for two reasons. Firstly to keep up to date with the new products and solutions that are constantly being released and, secondly, to disseminate our activities and raise society’s awareness of the needs of the visually impaired and the solutions that they require when faced with the new technologies. References Translation by Steve Turpin [1] W3C, Web Accessibility Initiative . [2] World Health Organization. International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health: ICF, 2001. [3] Law 51/2003, of December 2, on equal opportunity, non-discrimination, and universal accessibility for people with disabilities. [4] Law 34/2002, of July 11, on information society services and electronic commerce. [5] European Commission. eEurope2002. . [6] European Commission. eEurope2005. . [7] ONCE (National Organization for the Blind). . [8] ONCE-CIDAT. . [9] ONCE-CIDAT. ONCE-CIDAT R&D action lines: partially published in the Plan Nacional de I+D+I 2004- 2007 (National RD&I Plan 2004-2007) as part of the National Programme for health and welfare technologies: national sub-programme of technologies to assist the disabled and the elderly. [10] GRAB Project. . [11] California State University. . [12] Sight City. . [13] SIMO. . [14] Semana de la Ciencia de Madrid (Madrid Science Week) . UPGRADE Vol. VIII, No. 2, April 2007 19
Information Technologies for Visually Impaired People An Overview of Handheld Computerized Technologies For People with Visual Disabilities Keywords: Handheld Computers, Information Access, Information Processing, Visual Disabilities. 1 Introduction People use mainly visual information for indoor/outdoor navigation, public transport information, textual or symbolic indications access (bus lines, posters, packaging). Performing those daily tasks is very difficult and sometimes impossible for people with visual disabilities. They must perceive and interpret information by other senses (hearing, smelling, touching) and/or asking sighted people to help them. This human assistance is often welcome but is not always possible in real time and does not correspond to the precise needs of sight-impaired people. Technical assistance has given partial autonomy to people with visual impairments in their daily life. Thus, urban devices installations (audio or haptic) and computer tools improvements (speech synthesis, Braille console), have brought some help to blind people. The boom of handheld devices such as PDA (Personal Digital Assistants), cellular phones, smart phones and IP cameras, has also opened the possibilities of many applications to help partially and totally non-sighted people at any time. This contribution aims to provide a state-of-the-art review of handheld computerized tools for helping people with visual impairments. This article concerns only non-invasive technological tools which enable the identification of real objects or give information about localisation or environment. Concerning navigation systems, two complementary approaches are considered [1]: Obstacle avoidance systems and ultrasonic obstacle avoiders have been developed to assist visually-impaired travellers through the immediate or local environment. Those systems have been widely described in literature [2] [3] [4] and will be not detailed in this article. Navigation through the distant environment concerns location by GPS, GIS, GSM, Bluetooth, WLAN, RFID technologies. Philippe Foucher Handheld computerized tools can be used to provide technical assistance to improve the autonomy of people with visual impairments. Many projects have brought solutions to the special needs of blind people everywhere. Those handheld tools use mainly non-specific devices such as PDAs and smartphones. Speech interfaces (synthesis or recognition) and/or haptic-enabled communication between user and device. Applications concern the daily life situations of blind people: mobility and written or symbolic information access. Concerning the mobility of blind people, many systems have been implemented: outdoor/indoor navigation (GPS/ GSM/WLAN/Bluetooth/RFID), travel assistance (planning, urban public transport access), video remote assistance, and adapted assistance. Written or symbolic information access is based in embedded OCR software, RFID tags identification, objects pattern recognition by using artificial vision. Author Philippe Foucher is a research engineer in the laboratory Technology, Handicap, Interfaces and Multimodalities (THIM) of the Paris 8 University (Saint-Denis, France). He received a PhD degree in image and signal processing from the University of Angers (France). His research interest concerns handheld computerized applications and artificial vision for people with visual disabilities, remote assistance systems for hearingimpaired people. He is the author of many publications in international journals and papers at conferences in the field of image processing applications using handheld devices. He has been actively involved in the PICRI (Partnerships Institution- Citizens for Research and Innovation) national project and Infomagic in 2006-2008. . After this introduction, this article is composed of four sections and a conclusion. Section 2 presents the problem of technical help for blind people. Section 3 presents the technical description of existing tools. Section 4 presents the applications which facilitate the mobility of visuallyimpaired people. Section 5 describes the research into visual information access (text, pictograms, environment). 2 Issue of Technical Assistance for Blind People The issue of technical help for blind people consists of two aspects: The computerized assistance tool must give supplementary information to blind people. These supplements must be accurate, reliable and widely available. It is thus a question of defining the types of assistance according to daily life situations: area accesses, position knowledge, navigation, information access, travel planning. Knowledge of the advantages and drawbacks of technological tools enables the development of aids adapted to each need. How shall the aids communicate with blind people? Blind people must have Input/Output (speech recognition/ 20 UPGRADE Vol. VIII, No. 2, April 2007 © Novática
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