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The most obvious thing about blind persons is that they feel it all with their hands; something flat means nothing to them. After a questionnaire sheet that 70 blind girls replied about difficulties faced them when matching the color of their clothes. The answer was for the first time 100% of them need help particularly in color matching, and 90% of them are care about good appearance and color matching. They may get some help to find out what this color is, but they need to learn about the color wheel and color scheme details to mix and match the colors of their clothes without help. Five different 3D color wheels were designed for this purpose using cardboard and glossy paper. All data were written in Braille on self-adhesive transparent paper. The effectiveness of these 3D color wheels has been confirmed by providing blind girls with different colored clothing pieces and they were able to put together matching outfits based on their new knowledge about colors. The Objectives of this study has been; to study how blind persons choose their clothes (as design and colors). And what is their knowledge about colors through a questionnaire sheet, answered by number of blind girls. Also it was intended to provide a design of five different 3D color wheels. All data on those 3D color wheels were written in Braille. Then those 3D color wheels to be used to describe the colors and their tints, value (tones) and shades for the blind students and how to construct color scheme in harmony. The study has resulted in the raising the blind girl’s self-confidence because they would be able to mix and match their clothes colors by themselves.

There are approximately 290 million blind people worldwide. Among them, approximately 40 million people are severely blind. Although systems and policies have been improved to enhance the convenience of the visually impaired, the standards related to evacuation safety in the case of fire have not been sufficiently improved. Therefore, in this study, to ensure the safe evacuation of the visually impaired in case of fire, domestic fire safety standards were derived by analyzing the development status of a domestic barrier-free system and related manuals based on the characteristics of evacuation behaviors of the visually impaired, as well as by reviewing the cases in the United States and the United Kingdom. As a result, the following measures were derived: 1) improving the display method for landmark elements, 2) customized fire safety education and training for employees, and 3) a plan to develop a personal emergency evacuation planning manual in accordance with the characteristics of a building. It is expected that these objectives can be used to improve fire safety standards and manuals and to develop related technologies for the visually impaired.

The purpose of the article is to explore in what ways visual arts can be brought closer to blind persons in the postmodern society, in which sight is perceived to be the highest of the senses and in which most information is based on images. The basic methods of presenting a work of art involve the remaining senses, mostly those of hearing and of touch. It is of course not enough just to deliver a factual description of a painting or to transform it into tactile graphics – more complex techniques such as audio-description, method of associations, participating in role-playing, all with the aim of a holistic experience of the work of art, must be sought instead., Svrha članka je istražiti na koji se način vizualne umjetnosti mogu približiti slijepim osobama u postmodernom društvu, u kojem se vid smatra najvećim od osjetila i u kojem se većina informacija temelji na slikama. Osnovne metode predstavljanja umjetničkog djela uključuju preostala osjetila, uglavnom ona sluha i dodira. Nije naravno dostatno pružiti samo činjenični opis slike ili je transformirati u taktilnu grafiku – umjesto toga mora se tražiti složenije tehnike, kao što su audio-opis, metoda asocijacija, sudjelovanje u igranju uloga, a sve radi holističkog iskustva umjetničkog djela.

Title: Wayfinding Design Improvement for the Blind School in Surabaya and Development Opportunities for Other Public Buildings Yayasan Pendidikan Anak Buta (Blind Children Education Foundation or YPAB) Special Junior High School in Surabaya is a dedicated institution for teaching blind students. Unfortunately, the school is found less accessible for the blind because it was designed for the farming school with spread buildings’ footprints in the 1970s. A literature review and accessibility evaluation conclude that besides architecture improvement, a small architectural model is needed to teach the students to be able to conduct orientation and mobility. The model should be accessible to blind students, total blind and low vision, with various information such as voice, braille, contrasting colour, and tactile marking. This architecture model is designed in collaboration of YP AB teachers, Architecture Program Study, Electrical Program Study of Petra Christian University and Prototype Studio. The model is created with laser cutting and equipped with electronic circuits for the voice of wayfinding instructions for blind students. The model is found improving the blind students to practice orientation and mobility in the school. Further research pursues improving public building wayfinding for the blind persons as described in the State Library of Queensland (SLQ).

Tools for blind people with mobility activities in pedestrian pathways have been widely launched, approved and patented. However, there are still shortcomings that can be done only for pedestrian paths or nearby destinations. In this study, both a camera (detection of the pedestrian path) and LiDAR (detection of surrounding objects) sensors to help disability activities. The first stage of image data from the preparatory camera from RGB to XYZ, color filters, close morphology, resizing, learning and testing of neural networks. Bring up 3 voice attitudes information. Attitudes are perpendicular, left tilted, right tilted, or not reversed to the pedestrian yellow path. The second stage of the LiDAR distance points data is processed into 2D array geometry, learning, and testing of neural networks. Bring up the information 8 voice attitudes. Detection of the cycle and distance of objects right side, front, left, right-front, right-left, front-left, right-front-left, not captured. The test results approximately at lux

One of the challenges faced by blind persons to achieve optimal mobility is the detection and avoidance of obstacles located in their travel path. Besides the widely used white cane, alternative or complementary devices have been developed, such as electronic aids that provide feedback about the environment. However, the devices available have been unable to provide an optimal solution with widespread acceptance, motivating the present work. The eBAT (electronic Buzzer for Autonomous Travel) is designed to offer optimal protection and employs the user's own mobile phone for easier use and reduced manufacturing costs. For this work, a group of 25 blind individuals was used to validate the eBAT based on the single-subject with reversal method (ABA study). The results show a significant decrease in the number of involuntary contacts in an unknown travel path between the first phase of the study, which did not involve the eBAT, and the second, where it was used. When the device was again removed in the third phase, the number of contacts rose. We may therefore conclude that the eBAT fills an important gap in mobility aids for blind people, yielding a clear benefit by reducing the participants' feeling of insecurity.

Several audio games have been developed for visually impaired players to enjoy only by using audio information. However, sighted persons find it challenging to play these games because they mainly use visual information. To bridge the gap between them, developing games that appropriately present multisensory modalities: To devise an auditory and tactile presentation method that allows the sighted to manipulate and identify features, enabling them to play without visual information. Therefore, we develop an inclusive game that both sighted and visually impaired people can play. Here, we developed a real-time sensory substitution method using auditory and tactile senses, including a tactile game controller (TactCon). Then, we implemented the method in a 2D side-scrolling action game and evaluated the game by either sighted or visually impaired people at a two-month exhibition: not a controlled experiment. Results show that immediate auditory and tactile presentation can be important for visually impaired and sighted gamers to play action games requiring real-time response. Furthermore, we considered how the presentation of moving objects can be understood in an inclusive action game.

This article presents a teleassistant system for blind people used to navigate in urban space. The system uses a smartphone, Intel RealSense depth camera and a dedicated Red5 server. The data sent from the depth camera allows for accurate measurement of the distance between the blind person and the obstacles, which improves the reliability of their navigation. The transmission quality was ensured through the use of the 5G network, which was launched at the Lodz University of Technology. The article also presents short overview of new generation of the telecommunications network − 5G technology.

Human echolocation is a technique used by small group of people (normally blind persons) to observe their surrounding via emitting an active signal (usually tongue click) and analyse the return echo. This skill allows them to navigate safely by ‘seeing through sound’. Remarkable performances upon echolocating have attracted scholars’ attention from multidiscipline field including psychophysical and engineering. Study of waveform diversity has reported the signal is wideband, consisting of multiple frequency components with exponential decay factor that probably made up the entire unique signal. As such, wideband perspective is considered during ambiguity function analysis using wide-band ambiguity function method. The waveform analysis continues and reported optimum autocorrelation function is achieved by adopting a bio-inspired technique, which incorporated gammatone-filter processing. It will be interesting to synthesise the waveform using gammatone-filter approaches prior to relay it into ambiguity function process for analysis. Therefore, it is worth to explore its output results in this paper, which hold new findings that may help to understand how these humans achieve an optimum performance upon echolocating including ambiguity function characteristic. Thus, the new knowledge explored in this paper could be beneficial in emerging concept for new development in radar and sonar system application in near future.

U radu se izlažu neki od rezultata istraživanja zasnovanoga na intervjuima sa slijepim i slabovidnim osobama u Zagrebu. Rasprava pokazuje da je iskustvo slijepe osobe u javnim prostorima grada dio interakcije između njezina vlastita tijela, fizičkih obilježja urbanoga okoliša te dominirajućih društvenih diskursa o slijepima. U toj su interakciji društveno i tjelesno uzajamno povezani. U prvome dijelu rada razmatra se prostorno-vremenska dimenzija mobilnosti slijepih osoba u urbanom prostoru. Analiza je pokazala da gradska struktura, uređenje i infrastruktura, koji su oblikovani primarno za osobe bez tjelesnih oštećenja, utječu na prostorno-vremenske modele kretanja slijepih, što se iskazuje u svođenju kretanja na ograničen broj ruta i u vremenskim ritmovima koji su usklađeni s tijelom, s njegovim limitima i mogućnostima. U drugome se dijelu rad fokusira na stereotipe. Autorica dolazi do zaključka da se u uobičajenim stereo­tipima o slijepima: a) identitet slijepe osobe svodi na njezinu sljepoću, b) slijepima se pripisuju neke “neobične” karakteristike, c) podcjenjuje se sposobnost slijepih da samostalno obavljaju svakodnevne stvari, d) nesposobnost osobe da vidi generalizira se u pretpostavku njezine opće nesposobnosti. Pritom se stereotipi, koji tjelesno obilježje prerađuju u društveni imaginarij, materijaliziraju u obliku društvenih prepreka s kojima se suočavaju slijepi. Rezultati rada argumenti su za model invaliditeta koji bi prepoznavao realnost tijela s fizičkim oštećenjem, a pritom bi osiguravao pravedan i nediskriminatoran društveni okvir u kojem bi se sposobnosti osoba s invaliditetom mogle slobodno realizirati., This article presents selected results of an interview study conducted with blind and visually impaired persons in Zagreb. It demonstrates that the experience of a blind person in the public spaces of a city is part of the interaction between the person’s own body, the physical characteristics of the urban environment and the dominating social discourses about blind persons. In this interaction, the social and the bodily are interconnected. The first part of the paper discusses the spatiotemporal dimension of mobility of blind persons in an urban space. The analysis shows that the city structure, its design, infrastructure, which have primarily been designed for people without physical disabilities, influence the spatiotemporal models of the movement of blind persons, which is reflected in the fact that their movement is restricted to a limited number of routes and time rhythms which are in consonance with the body and its limitations and possibilities. In the second part, the article focuses on stereotypes. The following characteristics of widespread stereotypes about blind persons emerge: a) the stereotype that identity of a blind person is limited to his/her blindness; b) the stereotypical attribution of certain “unusual” characteristics to blind persons; c) the stereotypical underestimation of the ability of blind persons to complete everyday tasks; d) and a stereotypical generalization of the blind person’s inability to see into the assumption about his/her general inability. These stereotypes which transform a bodily characteristic into social imagery materialize as social obstacles which blind persons face. These conclusions are arguments in favor of a model of disability that would recognize the reality of a body with physical disabilities, at the same time ensuring a just and nondiscriminatory social frame in which the abilities of persons with disabilities could be freely realized.

The current study objective is exploring the relationship between perceiving the physical environment and both psychological adjustment and psychological hardness in a sample of both sexes of blind adolescents. The study sample consists of (170) blind persons, divided into (42) of birth-blindness males and (44) infected blind males. The female sample consists of (41) female items of birth-blindness and (43) infected blind females. The research hypotheses indicate a significant statistical correlation exists between psychological adjustment level and psychological hardness level in a sample of male birth and non-birth blind persons. There is also a significant statistical correlation exists between psychological adjustment level and psychological hardness level in a sample of birth and non-birth blind females. The researchers use the descriptive-correlative-comparative method; using in addition scale of perceiving the physical environment - scale of psychological adjustment and scale of psychological hardness to check validity of the research hypotheses. The study results indicate a significant correlation exists at (0.05) level between perceiving the physical environment and both psychological adjustment and psychological hardness in birth and non-birth blind adolescents. Results also indicate that there is correlation between psychological adjustment level and psychological hardness level in a sample of birth and non-birth blind adolescent females at (0.05) significance level. The researchers recommend the necessity for preparing therapy programs for improving psychological adjustment and psychological hardness in those with visual impairment using the assisting co-technology designed for those lost their sight at late age stage; working as well on establishing centers for equal education opportunities along the line of Ain Shams University Electronic Vision Center.

Telecare solutions have been seen as a potential means of addressing the future care needs of ageing societies. With the growing proportion of dependent people (ageing, disabled users), tele-assistance and tele-monitoring platforms will play a significant role to provide an efficient and less-costly remote care and support. It will allow aged and disabled persons to maintain their independence and lessen the burden and cost of caregiving. In the case of visually impaired (VIP) and blind persons, guide dog and white cane provide them a fair degree of independence. However, those are very limited in guiding the user towards a specific desired location, especially in an unknown environment. The assistance of other people presents a feasible solution, though it does not improve the idea of autonomous guidance and privacy. This paper presents a tele-guidance based navigation assistance system that is based on the idea that a blind or VIP pedestrian can be assisted by haptics based cues and spoken instructions from a remote caretaker who receives a live video stream from a camera carried by the blind or VIP. Also, we present results of the study conducted in Pakistan with 14 blind and VIP participants for testing haptics user interface concept of proposed teleguidance system. In this study also two caretakers are interviewed. In addition, we present results of the attitude towards assistive technology study conducted with 19 blind and VIP in Finland. Moreover, we introduce the environmental model to aid development of assistive tools for blind and VIP.

Why are many churches in Africa inaccessible to persons with disability? This question has informed missiological qualitative research on the accessibility for persons with disability in churches in Ghana. Swinton (2002:29) coins the phrase the “‘forgotten dimension’ of spirituality”, which depicts the way persons with disability have been neglected in the ministry of many churches. Research in Ghana has proven that accessibility for persons with disability in churches is an afterthought reflecting exclusion from youth ministry as well. This article proposes to address the issue of inclusion/exclusion from a missio Dei perspective, challenging youth ministries to take deliberate steps to include persons with disability in their praxis.

Mobile text entry for sighted and blind persons has received much research attention. However, much less is known about meeting the text entry needs of persons with low vision, whose ability to use the visual channel alongside audio, speech and haptic modalities, may open unexplored opportunities for efficient and privacy-preserving mobile text entry. We present findings from a qualitative study with 9 low vision users, revealing current text entry challenges for this user group, and providing future directions for text entry research.

Independence is the fundamental requirement to achieve dreams, goals, and objectives in life. Despite the fast-paced progress in the world, it is challenging for the visually impaired to carry out their routines independently. Thus, they are always in need of help. For decades, the white cane has become the aid for a blind person’s navigation. Continuous efforts have been made to improve the efficacy of the cane. Despite their sharp haptic sensitivity, the blind persons find it difficult to move around alone. The proposed electronic walking stick interfaced with different sensors to detect obstacles in the path helps the blind person by providing more convenient means of life.

In this modern era of technology, almost all the real life challenges are solved by using the innovative technological solutions. We know there are many blind people, who still remain outside from the touch of modern and digitized technologies. Blind people cannot get proper direction for their destination path and it is still hard to find out what object that he/she will interact with. The proposed model will not only help in their easy movement but also give them a virtual vision. In this implementation we will use NodeMCU and mobile camera which will be guided by OpenCv library that uses Python to detect an object. It will also analyze and report the object type to the user, which will create a virtual vision to the user. On the other hand, there will be some sonar sensors which will include vibration motor to help the blind persons to sense that there is an obstacle ahead in that direction. The future work of this project will provide the blind person a proper direction to his/her way using Google maps.

Blind individuals' wayfinding performance in complex urban environments is a complex phenomenon. This study investigates the wayfinding strategies of congenitally blind individuals in an urban context. The aim of the study was to assess the extent to which the environmental auditory cues are of primary importance for their wayfinding strategies. The study was conducted in Lisbon, Portugal. Results suggest that auditory information was the most used environmental cue and that a feeling of enclosure is the most important environmental feature during wayfinding. These results corroborate previous findings suggesting that increased familiarity with the environment results in more efficient wayfinding strategies, and that lack of environmental auditory cues could be compensated by a robust cognitive map. The study highlights multidimensional sensory experiences of urban environments and nonvisual aspects of spatial perception.

Machine Learning has gained attention since the introduction of high computing machines and the availability of huge amount of data also known as big data. Today, machine learning is used in many types of industries from medical image processing to autonomous car. Detecting objects in images has also become one of the important research areas and now computers are able to not only detect objects but also able to draw bounding boxes on it. This is also known as computer vision. In this paper, we proposed the implementation of computer vision machine learning algorithms to detect object and use it to aid visually impaired and blind persons. This paper explain how convolution neural network are trained on ImageNet dataset that can detect objects and narrate detected objects information to the visually impairs person. This implementation can be used with any device using a camera that includes computers, tablets and mobile phones.

Social distance is operationalized as the willingness of respondents to accept or reject a particular social relationship with members of the target group. Comparison of available empirical findings on the social distance towards the blind at several points of time did not lead to unambiguous conclusions. Therefore, we fully repeated the research from 1983. The aim was to determine the changes in the order of questions in the scale and the differences in social distance toward the blind for the complete scale and each of the items in the studies conducted in 1983 and 2016. In both studies the same modified Bogardus scale was used in a quota sample of adults. The results show that the closest social relationships (marriage and intimate relationships) are still at the top of the scale. Several items in the scale have changed ranking significantly (superiors at work, sharing hotel rooms, killing blind-born children). Values of the Chi-square test showed that there are significant differences in the complete scale and in the following relations: sharing hotel rooms (significantly increased distance), child marriage, child education, help in the street, municipality councilor, superiors at work, living in special institutions (significant reduction in distance). Qualitative analysis showed that the motivational basis for accepting and rejecting relationships with blind persons is less irrational today than three decades ago. Although smaller social distance in the recent study can partly be attributed to a lower degree of aggressiveness of respondents compared to that from the previous study, the fact that the explanations of answers today are far more rational than three decades ago shows that positive changes have actually occurred. Socijalna distanca se operacionalizuje kao spremnost ispitanika da prihvati ili odbaci određene socijalne odnose s pripadnicima ciljne grupe. Poređenje raspoloživih empirijskih nalaza o socijalnoj distanci prema slepim osobama u nekoliko vremenskih trenutaka nije dovelo do jednoznačnih zaključaka. Stoga smo u potpunosti ponovili jedno istraživanje iz 1983. godine. Cilj istraživanja je utvrđivanje promena u stepenu spremnosti većinske populacije da prihvati neke socijalne relacije sa slepim osobama. Realizovan je na osnovu poređenja ranga/redosleda pitanja iz istraživanja sprovedenih 1983. i 2016. godine i razlika u socijalnoj distanci prema slepim osobama za skalu u celini i za svaki od ajtema u ova dva istraživanja. U oba istraživanja primenjena je ista modifikovana Bogardusova skala na kvotnom uzorku odraslih osoba. Rezultati pokazuju da su u vrhu skale i dalje najprisniji socijalni odnosi (brak i intimni odnosi). Nekoliko ajtema je bitno promenilo rang u skali (pretpostavljeni na poslu, deljenje hotelske sobe, ubijanje sleporođene dece). Vrednosti Hi-kvadrat testa podudaranja pokazuju da postoje značajne razlike za skalu u celini i relacije: deljenje hotelske sobe (značajno povećana distanca), brak deteta, obrazovanje i vaspitanje deteta, pomoć na ulici, odbornik u opštini, pretpostavljeni na poslu, život u specijalnim ustanovama (značajno smanjena distanca). Kvalitativna analiza je pokazala da je motivaciona osnova za prihvatanje i odbacivanje socijalnih odnosa sa slepim osobama danas manje iracionalna nego pre tri decenije. Iako se manja socijalna distanca u novijoj studiji delom može pripisati nižem stepenu agresivnosti ispitanika u poređenju sa onima iz prethodne studije, činjenica da su obrazloženja odgovora danas mnogo racionalnija nego pre tri decenije pokazuje da je zaista došlo do pozitivnih promena.

El objetivo de este trabajo es describir el proceso de entrenamiento y evaluación de la fiabilidad inter-observador de los codificadores participantes en un estudio sobre el análisis en fútbol a 5 para personas ciegas. Se trata de un estudio instrumental donde cinco observadores seleccionados codificaron las distintas acciones técnicas desarrolladas durante los lanzamientos a portería. Para ello se empleó un proceso de entrenamiento de codificadores con el fin de asegurar una adecuada fiabilidad de los datos, dividido en cuatro etapas: etapa preparatoria; etapa de selección de los codificadores; etapa de formación de los observadores; y etapa de confiabilidad. Durante la etapa formación de los codificadores, la fiabilidad se calculó a través de la prueba Multirather Kappa Free. Los resultados del proceso de entrenamiento muestran una mejora en cada variable y total de la concordancia entre los codificadores. Los datos obtenidos por los codificadores muestran niveles sustanciales de validez y fiabilidad, y por tanto pueden ser aplicados en la investigación sobre el análisis observacional del fútbol a 5 para personas ciegas. Abstract. The aim of this work is to describe the process of coders training and reliability evaluation in the analysis of football 5-a-side for blind persons. This research is instrumental, with five selected observers codifying different technical actions during shots on goal. A coders training process was developed in order to ensure the adequate reliability of data, and divided into four stages: preparatory stage; coders’ selection stage; coders’ formation stage; and reliability stage. During the training stage of the encoders, reliability was calculated through Multirather Kappa Free tests. The results of the training process show an improvement of the agreement between coders in each variable and overall. The data obtained by coders show substantial levels of validity and reliability, and therefore can be applied in research focusing on observational analysis of 5-a-side football for blind persons.