This paper presents a prototype [1] of a location-based and context aware system supporting blind and visually impaired people to improve their mobility skills and in particular enhancing traditional mobility training. The system supports annotating pre-defined routes with information provided in standard mobility training sessions for blind people. This allows later on to reuse the information provided in a person to person session and even to share this expertise with other people. People in need of knowing by heart a certain route can go back to the stored mobility training information to better remember and learn how to manage this route independently. The virtual mobility trainer allows making repeatedly, time independent and location-based use of information provided from a human instructor. This paper presents a first prototype which allows designing routes, accessible to blind and visually impaired people so that it can be used for mobility training. Furthermore, this tool allows performing advanced orientation tasks assisting blind people in an unknown environment. The Digital Graffiti framework [9] was used as underlying framework, which supports the needed annotation of maps with virtual landmarks.
Non-verbal communication is an important carrier of information. Even though the spoken word can be heard by blind and visually impaired persons, up to 60% of the overall information still remains inaccessibly to them due to its visual character [11]. However, there is a wide spectrum of non-verbal communication elements, and not all of them are of the same importance. In particular for group meetings, facial expressions and pointing gestures are relevant, which need to be captured, interpreted and output to the blind and visually impaired person.This session first gives a systematic approach to gather the accessibility requirements for blind and visually impaired persons, from which two typical requirements are selected and discussed in more detail. Here, solutions for capturing and interpreting are provided, and finally the session introduces a concept for accessible user interfaces.
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