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Abstract\nIMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATIONPurpose: Visual impairment poses significant challenges in daily life, especially when navigating unfamiliar environments, resulting in inequalities and reduced quality of life. This study aimed to gain an in-depth understanding of the needs and perspectives of visually impaired people in sports-related contexts through surveys and focus groups, and to understand whether their needs are being met by current technological solutions.Materials and methods: To accomplish this, opinions gathered from focus groups and interviews were compared to the technological solutions found in the literature. Since many unmet needs were identified, participants from associations and organizations were asked to identify key characteristics for the development of a robot guide. The results underscored the paramount importance of an easy-to-use guide that offers accurate and personalized assistance. Participants expressed a strong desire for advanced features such as object recognition and navigation in complex environments, as well as adaptability to the user’s speed while providing the necessary safety features to ensure a high level of autonomy.Results: This research serves as a bridge between technological advances and the needs of the visually impaired, contributing to a more accessible and inclusive society. By addressing the unique challenges faced by the visually impaired individuals and tailoring technology to meet their needs, this study takes a significant step toward reducing disparities and improving the independence and quality of life for this community.Conclusions: As technology continues to advance, it has the potential to be a powerful tool in breaking down barriers and fostering a world where everyone, regardless of their visual ability, can navigate the world with confidence and ease.Inclusive design: Recognizing the importance of incorporating the unique requirements and perspectives of visually impaired individuals can guide the development of rehabilitation technology and services, ensuring they effectively support daily activities and active participation in sports and physical pursuits.Tailored-assistive technology: Understanding the specific needs of visually impaired individuals with regards to assistive technology, such as dependable robotic guides and essential features, can inform the design and customization of rehabilitation aids to enhance mobility and independence.Promising technologies: Exploring promising technologies like Aira, Be My Eyes, RoboCart, and Wayband can inspire the integration of these innovations into rehabilitation programs, facilitating better orientation, mobility, and accessibility for individuals with visual impairments.Continued research and development: Emphasizing the necessity for ongoing research and development efforts underscores the importance of advancing rehabilitation solutions that effectively address the distinct needs of visually impaired individuals, particularly in navigating unfamiliar environments.Inclusive design: Recognizing the importance of incorporating the unique requirements and perspectives of visually impaired individuals can guide the development of rehabilitation technology and services, ensuring they effectively support daily activities and active participation in sports and physical pursuits.Tailored-assistive technology: Understanding the specific needs of visually impaired individuals with regards to assistive technology, such as dependable robotic guides and essential features, can inform the design and customization of rehabilitation aids to enhance mobility and independence.Promising technologies: Exploring promising technologies like Aira, Be My Eyes, RoboCart, and Wayband can inspire the integration of these innovations into rehabilitation programs, facilitating better orientation, mobility, and accessibility for individuals with visual impairments.Continued research and development: Emphasizing the necessity for ongoing research and development efforts underscores the importance of advancing rehabilitation solutions that effectively address the distinct needs of visually impaired individuals, particularly in navigating unfamiliar environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blind people who are included in the category of people with disabilities experience impairments and obstacles to their sense of sight. To be able to do orientation and mobility, blind people need information about environmental concepts and self-concepts. This of course requires rehabilitative training. Sentra Wyata Guna Bandung is a building that functions as a rehabilitation and training centre for blind people so that they can play an active role in community life. But in reality, the design of Sentra Wyata Guna has problems in terms of comfort and safety for blind people to do activities in it. This can hinder the rehabilitation and training process in it. This research aims to understand the behavior and needs of blind people for orientation and mobility with the concept of behavioral architecture; and find how the physical environment can stimulate the non-visual senses of blind people. This concept will be divided into five architectural design criteria based on behavioural setting theory. The study started with a literature review on the needs of blind people and behavioural concepts specific to blind people. Field data analysis detected the problems and potential of the Sentra Wyata Guna building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growing demand for accessible tourism, there remains a lack of research on the travel perspectives and experiences of people with disabilities. Social media platforms, such as Reddit, provide unique opportunities to understand the perspectives and experiences of people with disabilities. This study aimed to investigate travel‐related perspectives and experiences of physical disability communities, including wheelchair, deaf, and blind communities, to provide implications for travel service providers and policymakers to improve the accessibility and inclusivity of travel services. Using structural topic modeling and network analysis, 12 prominent topics related to travel perspectives and experiences among physical disability communities were identified to map their relationships. Our study highlights the significance of understanding the unique perspectives, experiences, and needs of individuals with disabilities in the hospitality and tourism industry. It provides implications for improving the accessibility and inclusivity of travel services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine whether phonetic information functions and how phonetic information affects voice identity processing in blind people. Method: To address the first inquiry, 25 normal sighted participants and 30 blind participants discriminated voice identity, when listening forward speech and backward speech from their own native language and another unfamiliar language. To address the second inquiry, combining articulatory suppression paradigm, 26 normal sighted participants and 26 blind participants discriminated voice identity, when listening forward speech from their own native language and another unfamiliar language. Results: In Experiment 1, not only in the voice identity discrimination task with forward speech, but also in the discrimination task with backward speech, both the sighted and blind groups showed the superiority of the native language. This finding supports the view that backward speech still retains some phonetic information, and indicates that phonetic information can affect voice identity processing in sighted and blind people. In addition, only the superiority of the native language of sighted people was regulated by the speech manner, which is related to articulatory rehearsal. In Experiment 2, only the superiority of the native language of sighted people was regulated by articulatory suppression. This indicates that phonetic information may act in different ways on voice identity processing in sighted and blind people. Conclusion: The heightened dependence on voice source information in blind people appears not to undermine the function of phonetic information, but it appears to change the functional mechanism of phonetic information. These findings suggest that the present phonetic familiarity model needs to be improved with respect to the mechanism of phonetic information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modeling of blind people's behavior is an important topic in pedestrian evacuation dynamics. In order to study movement characteristics of blind people in evacuation process and the effect of indoor obstacles on the evacuation efficiency of blind people, an extended cellular automata model is proposed to simulate blind people evacuation by considering the influence of obstacles. The control variable method is adopted to study the effect of indoor obstacles on the blind evacuation efficiency rule. The numerical simulation is applied to analyze the evacuation process of blind people under different setting (e.g. the location, size and other factors) of obstacles and different evacuation scenarios. The shunt effect of obstacles is discussed and the layout strategy of obstacles is optimized. The results show that the longitudinal obstacles in front of the exit can effectively play the diversion role of obstacles when the obstacle is at a certain distance from the exit, which will improve the evacuation efficiency of the blind. Furthermore, a horizontal obstacle of appropriate length can constrain the trajectory of the blind people and improve the efficiency of evacuation, but when the horizontal obstacle is too long, it will induce extra jam on both sides of the obstacle and hinder the evacuation of the blind. The finding can provide the theoretical basis for the blind people's organization, management and the optimization of evacuation strategies during an emergency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IoT-enabled smart shoes for the blind is equipped with ultrasonic sensors paired with an Arduino UNO board. The Internet of Things (IoT) facilitates communication among physical objects and between objects and humans. This enabling technology is experiencing rapid development and growth in the market. In India, there are nearly 40 million blind individuals, including 1.6 million children. Blind people encounter significant challenges in traveling independently and rely on others for various aspects of daily life. A major difficulty arises when navigating roads, as their canes may not detect every obstacle. The smart shoe design offers a long-term solution, enabling blind individuals to travel independently on roads. This shoe incorporates IoT technology, embedding various sensors, a microcontroller, and buzzers. The shoe alerts the user with buzzer sounds upon detecting obstacles ahead. To enhance efficiency, smart glasses using IoT technology have been developed, equipped with sensors to detect objects over a wider area. The smart shoes and smart glasses communicate and coordinate to ensure the user avoids collisions with obstacles in their path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Middle Ages, confraternities of blind people began to emerge in many Italian cities. Later recognised by local authorities and the Roman Church, they ensured that blind people were aided in case of poverty, sickness or death, also providing formal permission to beg on the street and other designated places. These special privileges existed alongside indulgences granted to those (whether visually impaired or sighted) who attended religious functions celebrated by the blind on particular days. This article analyses how these blind individuals used a variety of printed material to promote such indulgences, as well as other activities of their confraternities within and outside their cities.

The development of computer technology and computer vision has had a significant positive impact on the daily lives of blind people, especially in efforts to improve their navigation abilities. This research has the main aim of introducing a superior object detection method, especially in supporting the sustainability and effectiveness of navigation for the blind. The main focus of the research is the use of YOLOv8, the latest version of YOLO, as an object detection method, and distance measurement technology from OpenCV. The main challenge to be addressed involves improving the accuracy and performance of object detection, which is an important key to ensuring safe and effective navigation for blind people. In this context, blind people often face obstacles in their mobility, especially when walking around environments that may be full of obstacles or obstacles. Therefore, better object detection methods become essential to ensure the identification of nearby objects, which may involve obstacles or potential threats, thereby preventing possible accidents or difficulties in daily commuting. Involving YOLOv8 as an object detection method provides the advantage of a high level of accuracy, although with a slight increase in detection duration and GPU power consumption compared to previous versions. The research results show that YOLOv8 provides a low error rate, with an average error percentage of 3.15%, indicating very optimal results. Using a combined performance evaluation approach of YOLOv8 and OpenCV distance measurement metrics, this research not only seeks to improve accuracy but also efficiency in detection time and power consumption. This research makes an important contribution in presenting technological solutions that can help improve mobility and safety for blind people, bringing a real positive impact in facilitating their daily lives.