Notably valuable efforts have focused on helping people with special needs. In this work, we build upon the experience from the BlindHelper smartphone outdoor pedestrian navigation app and present Blind MuseumTourer, a system for indoor interactive autonomous navigation for blind and visually impaired persons and groups (e.g., pupils), which has primarily addressed blind or visually impaired (BVI) accessibility and self-guided tours in museums. A pilot prototype has been developed and is currently under evaluation at the Tactual Museum with the collaboration of the Lighthouse for the Blind of Greece. This paper describes the functionality of the application and evaluates candidate indoor location determination technologies, such as wireless local area network (WLAN) and surface-mounted assistive tactile route indications combined with Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacons and inertial dead-reckoning functionality, to come up with a reliable and highly accurate indoor positioning system adopting the latter solution. The developed concepts, including map matching, a key concept for indoor navigation, apply in a similar way to other indoor guidance use cases involving complex indoor places, such as in hospitals, shopping malls, airports, train stations, public and municipality buildings, office buildings, university buildings, hotel resorts, passenger ships, etc. The presented Android application is effectively a Blind IndoorGuide system for accurate and reliable blind indoor navigation.

Navigation assistive technologies have been designed to support the mobility of people who are blind and visually impaired during independent navigation by providing sensory augmentation, spatial information and general awareness of their environment. This paper focuses on the extended Usability and User Experience (UX) evaluation of BlindRouteVision, an outdoor navigation smartphone application that tries to efficiently solve problems related to the pedestrian navigation of visually impaired people without the aid of guides. The proposed system consists of an Android application that interacts with an external high-accuracy GPS sensor tracking pedestrian mobility in real-time, a second external device specifically designed to be mounted on traffic lights for identifying traffic light status and an ultrasonic sensor for detecting near-field obstacles along the route of the blind. Moreover, during outdoor navigation, it can optionally incorporate the use of Public Means of Transport, as well as provide multiple other uses such as dialing a call and notifying the current location in case of an emergency. We present findings from a Usability and UX standpoint of our proposed system conducted in the context of a pilot study, with 30 people having varying degrees of blindness. We also received feedback for improving both the available functionality of our application and the process by which the blind users learn the features of the application. The method of the study involved using standardized questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The evaluation took place after the participants were exposed to the system’s functionality via specialized user-centered training sessions organized around a training version of the application that involves route simulation. The results indicate an overall positive attitude from the users.

The significance of digital assistive technology in everyday life of people with disabilities has been continuously increasing during the last decade. An important example is that of the development of mobile apps which are suitably adapted for use by sensory-deprived people. We are involved in developing two such initiatives. The first offers interactive indoor navigation for blind and visually impaired persons, while the second offers deaf people a user-friendly environment for text depiction of the verbal speech, even when the articulation is defective, which is usually the case when the speaker is deaf. Despite the possible benefits of these apps, this does not necessarily signify automatic acceptance. This study aims to examine factors that may inhibit take up, in order to obviate these as much as possible. Factors contributing to the acceptance of technology may be complex, such as ‘perceived usefulness’, ‘self-efficacy’ and ‘social influence’. An exploratory study of this issue will accrue qualitative evidence from the potential users. The paper concludes by presenting recommendations for the development of a tentative modified Technology Acceptance Model that considers the special circumstances around technology use by disability cohorts, to be tested as the research continues. Keywords: Technology acceptance model, blind and visually impaired, deaf, mobile apps, qualitative analysis. Keywords: Technology Acceptance Model; blind and visually impaired; deaf; mobile apps; qualitative analysis

The development of mobile apps, which are either suitably adapted or especially designed for use by sensory-deprived people, have contributed significantly to the continuously increasing adoption of digital assistive technologies by people with disabilities. Throughout the design of two assistive navigation mobile apps for blind and visually impaired people (BVI), a set of everyday practices and psychological features of the BVIs with respect to the use of mobile technology was identified. Specifically, interviews with BVIs were held at the first stage of the design process. The analysis of the responses revealed that appropriate training of a BVI on how to use these apps plays significant role on the anticipated app adoption and use rate. This study presents the everyday practices and psychological features of the BVIs, as they were inferred from the analysis of the interviews. It is argued that these psychological features and practices must be considered in the development of training practices concerning the use of the proposed technology. Towards this direction, a framework for the adequate training of BVIs on the use of assistive mobile apps is presented. Consideration of this framework during the development of assistive mobile apps for BVIs could contribute towards higher adoption rates.

A reliable state-of-the-art obstacle detection algorithm is proposed for a mobile application that will analyze in real time the data received by an external sonar device and decide the need to audibly warn the blind person about near field obstacles. The proposed algorithm can equip an orientation and navigation device that allows the blind person to walk safely autonomously outdoors. The smartphone application and the microelectronic external device will serve as a wearable that will help the safe outdoor navigation and guidance of blind people. The external device will collect information using an ultrasonic sensor and a GPS module. Its main objective is to detect the existence of obstacles in the path of the user and to provide information, through oral instructions, about the distance at which it is located, its size and its potential motion and to advise how it could be avoided. Subsequently, the blind can feel more confident, detecting obstacles via hearing before sensing them with the walking cane, including hazardous obstacles that cannot be sensed at the ground level. Besides presenting the micro-servo-motor ultrasonic obstacle detection algorithm, the paper also presents the external microelectronic device integrating the sonar module, the impulse noise filtering implementation, the power budget of the sonar module and the system evaluation. The presented work is an integral part of a state-of-the-art outdoor blind navigation smartphone application implemented in the MANTO project.

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