Assistive Mobile Application for Visually Impaired People

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization estimation, globally the number of people with some visual impairment is estimated to be 285 million, of whom 39 million are blind. The inability to use features such as sending and reading of email, schedule management, pathfinding or outdoor navigation, and reading SMS is a disadvantage for blind people in many professional and educational situations. Speech or text analysis can help improve support for visually-impaired people. Users can speak a command to perform a task. The spoken command will be interpreted by the Speech Recognition Engine (SRE) and can be converted into text or perform suitable actions. In this paper, an application that allows schedule management, emailing, and SMS reading completely based on voice command is proposed, implemented, and validated. The System hopes to provide blind people to simply speak the desired functionality and be guided thereby the system’s audio instructions. The proposed and designed app is implemented to support three languages which are English, Hindi, and Kannada.

A Smartphone-Based Mobility Assistant Using Depth Imaging for Visually Impaired and Blind

“…Existing assistive mobile applications for the VIB include a study by Nayak et al. that provides a solution for difficulty in appointing schedules, writing emails, and SMS reading on a smartphone completely based on voice commands [25]. However, the usability of the application is limited with it being only a full voice command-based navigation, creating a possibility for complications with pronunciation and audibility of the said commands.…”

“…An inclusive user interface can be constructed through designing a unified interface that accommodates the VIB person's special needs, requiring extensive research, especially on the design of the user experience, to provide the best user experience and usability. Existing assistive mobile applications for the VIB include a study by Nayak et al that provides a solution for difficulty in appointing schedules, writing emails, and SMS reading on a smartphone completely based on voice commands [25]. However, the usability of the application is limited with it being only a full voice command-based navigation, creating a possibility for complications with pronunciation and audibility of the said commands.…”

Face detection and global positioning system on a walking aid for blind people

“…Not only to detect faces, but this method is also quite good at recognizing objects such as security equipment in the work environment [18], detecting cow's milk on farms [19], and detecting vehicles in parking lots. Research by Hakim [20] there are also those who use deep learning to detect images [21], although it is widely used but it has not been used as walking aids for the blind and also the use of voice commands, the voice command feature is also widely used by researchers to help the visually impaired such as changing voice into text [22], voice becomes emoji [23], activates some apps in android [24], [25], or to open email [26], and send messages [27] there are some that specially made for Indians who do not speak foreign languages by using a desktop application called bangla [28], but there is none that is used to help blind people enter the desired location destination. It is also equipped with a panic button that can be pressed when blind people have problems that can provide coordinates so that the foundation officers can immediately go to where their members are experiencing problems.…”

Prototype of Mobile Application Oriented to the Educational Help for Blind People in Peru

“…In Table 7, details the characteristics and functionalities of Sprint 3, detailing the action of the user's questions and answers towards the application. By having an application for blind people in the country [22], it supports in a formidable way, because these people can get ahead even with difficulties they have, on the other hand, can appreciate that it was a help, to be able to reach each use of virtual platform sample, with audios and different modes of selection of the sessions to perform [23]. The result obtained by the authors [21] is that it allowed the satisfaction of people with said visual disability since with the help of instructions they could be guided to carry out different activities such as searching for routes among others.…”