The design and development of tele-assistance services have taken a great consideration in the domain of healthcare lately. With the growing proportion of dependent people (ageing, disabled users) in the society, teleassistance and tele-monitoring platforms will play a significant role to provide an efficient and economical remote care. It will allow aged or disabled persons to maintain their independence and lessen the burden and cost of care by caregivers. The concept of proposed tele-guidance system is based on the idea that a blind pedestrian can be assisted by spoken instructions from a remote caregiver who receives a live video stream from a camera carried by the visually impaired persons (VIP). The ICT based assistive tools have acceptance issues by visually impaired persons. It is important while designing navigation tools for the VIP to keep in view the factors that restrain them from the adoption of assistive technology. This paper presents a tele-guidance based navigation assistance system for the VIP and blind persons and reports a qualitative study about attitude of VIP towards technological navigation assistance.

This paper reports the development of a specialized teleguidance-based navigation assistance system for the blind and the visually impaired. We present findings from a usability and user experience study conducted with 11 blind and visually impaired participants and a sighted caretaker. Participants sent live video feed of their field of view to the remote caretaker’s terminal from a smartphone camera attached to their chest. The caretaker used this video feed to guide them through indoor and outdoor navigation scenarios using a combination of haptic and voice-based communication. Haptic feedback was provided through vibrating actuators installed in the grip of a Smart Cane. Two haptic methods for directional guidance were tested: (1) two vibrating actuators to guide left and right movement and (2) a single vibrating actuator with differentiating vibration patterns for the same purpose. Users feedback was collected using a meCUE 2.0 standardized questionnaire, interviews, and group discussions. Participants’ perceptions toward the proposed navigation assistance system were positive. Blind participants preferred vibrational guidance with two actuators, while partially blind participants preferred the single actuator method. Familiarity with cane use and age were important factors in the choice of haptic methods by both blind and partially blind users. It was found that smartphone camera provided sufficient field of view for remote assistance; position and angle are nonetheless important considerations. Ultimately, more research is needed to confirm our preliminary findings. We also present an expanded evaluation model developed to carry out further research on assistive systems.

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