Smart Bin for Covid19

The purpose of this research was to develop a device that would facilitate visually impaired people in the use of lidded bins. And reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19 and other pathogens that may be contaminated with the trash area to all users Able to develop prototype devices to be used in practice and have the opportunity to extend it for practical use in the community area Or a point where there is a risk of the spread of garbage dumping information per day of that area for use in further data analysis. © 2023 IEEE.

The Accessibility of Data Visualizations on the Web for Screen Reader Users: Practices and Experiences During COVID-19

Data visualization has become an increasingly important means of effective data communication and has played a vital role in broadcasting the progression of COVID-19. Accessible data representations, however, have lagged behind, leaving areas of information out of reach for many blind and visually impaired (BVI) users. In this work, we sought to understand (1) the accessibility of current implementations of visualizations on the web;(2) BVI users' preferences and current experiences when accessing data-driven media;(3) how accessible data representations on the web address these users' access needs and help them navigate, interpret, and gain insights from the data;and (4) the practical challenges that limit BVI users' access and use of data representations. To answer these questions, we conducted a mixed-methods study consisting of an accessibility audit of 87 data visualizations on the web to identify accessibility issues, an online survey of 127 screen reader users to understand lived experiences and preferences, and a remote contextual inquiry with 12 of the survey respondents to observe how they navigate, interpret, and gain insights from accessible data representations. Our observations during this critical period of time provide an understanding of the widespread accessibility issues encountered across online data visualizations, the impact that data accessibility inequities have on the BVI community, the ways screen reader users sought access to data-driven information and made use of online visualizations to form insights, and the pressing need to make larger strides towards improving data literacy, building confidence, and enriching methods of access. Based on our findings, we provide recommendations for researchers and practitioners to broaden data accessibility on the web. © 2023 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.

Information Behaviour of Visually Impaired Users in the Era of COVID-19 Pandemic in Lagos State, Nigeria

There is a scarcity of research on the information behavior of visually impaired users during the COVID-19 epidemic, and people with visual impairment make up a significant portion of the population in Lagos State, Nigeria. Individuals living with one sort of visual impairment also needed knowledge to be productive and contribute positively to national development, which is why advocacy for equal access to information has been on the rise. This paper tends to document what information visually impaired persons sought after to cope with the current pandemic and life situation in general. Tips on how to address the information demands of the visually impaired efficiently using creative techniques and information technology are provided.

A fractured system: have existing problems in health and social care for visually impaired people been exacerbated by COVID-19?

Visually impaired people in the UK have been adversely impacted during the COVID-19 pandemic due to an inconsistent approach between agencies and a failure to effectively manage key data. In this paper, fractures in the system already evident, particularly around the transition between health and social care, and the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has further starkly highlighted them, are presented. Key recommendations are proposed to improve the system and prevent such failings being repeated.

Towards assisting visually impaired individuals: A review on current status and future prospects

Visually impaired people require support with regular tasks including navigating, detecting obstacles, and maintaining safety, especially in both indoor and outdoor environments. As a result of the advancement of assistive technology, their lives have become substantially more convenient. Here, cutting-edge assistive devices and technologies for the visually impaired are reviewed, along with a chronology of their evolution. These methodologies are classified according to their intended applications. The taxonomy is combined with a description of the tests and experiments that can be used to examine the characteristics and assessments of assistive technology. In addition, the algorithms used in assistive devices are examined. This paper looks at solar industry innovations and promotes using renewable energy sources to create assistive devices, as well as, addresses the sudden advent of COVID-19 and the shift in the development of assistive devices. This review can serve as a stepping stone for further research on the topic. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s)

Socio-Cultural Perspective for Online Learning during COVID-19: EFL Male and Female Visually Impaired Students' Lens

It has been relatively limited research regarding online learning using socio-cultural perspective within the under-represented EFL context. This study explores male and female visually impaired students' perspectives on adopting to online learning and challenges faced in online learning viewed from a socio-cultural perspective. Qualitative research of in-depth interviews and questionnaires were employed to draw three different visually impaired students ‘low vision categorized' from three private universities in Makassar, Indonesia. Thematic content analysis was used to analyze the interview data, while the Likert scale was used for the questionnaire. The result of the study showed that both male and female students can interact effectively with teachers, peers, and learning technologies. In terms of satisfaction, both male and female visually impaired students believe that their teacher's use of multiple digital platforms fits their specific needs. Despite the fact that the presentation of material is less structured and the primary obstacles encountered by visually impaired students are vision limitation, internet network connectivity and the allocation of more time for learning, online learning is perceived to be effective and provides students with a sense of comfort. The study examined in detail the perceptions of male and female visually impaired EFL students, future plans, and the likelihood of fostering socio-cultural perspective in the online learning environment. Since this study did not rely heavily on the digital platforms utilized during online learning, recommendations were given for future researches to investigate the sorts of technologies and their efficacy in adopting this socio-cultural perspective in various EFL settings. © 2022,Pegem Egitim ve Ogretim Dergisi. All Rights Reserved.

LEARNING LAB METHODOLOGY FOR EXPANSIVE LEARNING AND INCLUSIVE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN BRAZIL

The global policies of inclusive education often ignored local knowledge and cultural-historical ecologies. As a result, the top-down policies become either irrelevant or oppressive. This study presents a formative intervention study, Learning Lab, conducted in Brazil to design a new system at specialized school for blind and visually impaired students. Fourteen practitioners engaged in nine meetings with the final goal of producing a new system of inclusive education for students with multiple disabilities during the COVID-19 Pandemic. We will present the expansive learning actions, which educators took as a conduit for critical dialogue, collective agency and expansive learning for designing the future of their school. © ISLS.

CodeWalk: Facilitating Shared Awareness in Mixed-Ability Collaborative Software Development

COVID-19 accelerated the trend toward remote software development, increasing the need for tightly-coupled synchronous collaboration. Existing tools and practices impose high coordination overhead on blind or visually impaired (BVI) developers, impeding their abilities to collaborate effectively, compromising their agency, and limiting their contribution. To make remote collaboration more accessible, we created CodeWalk, a set of features added to Microsoft's Live Share VS Code extension, for synchronous code review and refactoring. We chose design criteria to ease the coordination burden felt by BVI developers by conveying sighted colleagues' navigation and edit actions via sound effects and speech. We evaluated our design in a within-subjects experiment with 10 BVI developers. Our results show that CodeWalk streamlines the dialogue required to refer to shared workspace locations, enabling participants to spend more time contributing to coding tasks. This design offers a path towards enabling BVI and sighted developers to collaborate on more equal terms. © 2022 ACM.

Seeing New Challenges: The Impact of COVID on a Diverse Sample of Adults with Vision Impairment in SE Michigan

Purpose : The disruption of COVID-19 has caused differential impacts on vulnerable populations. This study tested the hypothesis that persons with visual impairment in Ann Arbor and Detroit, MI faced increased difficulty in their daily lives since summer 2020 during the pandemic compared to normally sighted individuals. Methods : We administered the Coronavirus Disability Survey (COV-DIS) to assess general and psychological health, isolation, financial and transportation challenges, information access and instrumental activities of daily living. Our study population included 112 adults recruited from the University of Michigan (UM) Health System and 151 adults recruited from the Henry Ford Health System (HF) in Detroit, MI with moderate or worse visual impairment (<20/60 in better-seeing eye), and 160 age/sex-matched controls (C). The COV-DIS was administered via phone or email. The UM IRB approved this study and all participants provided informed consent. Results : There were no significant site differences in age or visual acuity of participants. Participants with visual impairment at Henry Ford (VIHF) lived in more disadvantaged neighborhoods (higher Area Deprivation Index) compared with UM participants with visual impairment (VIUM) (66 VIHF 52 VIUM;p<.01). All groups reported similar overall health prior to the pandemic. However, a greater proportion of VIHF participants reported somewhat or much worse health than pre-pandemic compared with VIUM or controls (C) (25% VIHF, 10% VIUM, 12% C;p=.003). Participants with visual impairment had more difficulty accessing medical care since the start of the pandemic (13% VI, 6% C;p=.049). One-quarter of participants reported difficulty obtaining trusted information during the pandemic;those with vision impairment were more likely to find the information hard to understand (10% VI, 3% C;p=.01). Conclusions : COVID-19 and associated mitigation measures had differential effects on populations with visual impairment. Participants with visual impairment in Detroit were more likely to report a negative impact on their health than participants from Ann Arbor, MI. Those with visual impairment in both locations faced greater challenges accessing medical care and trusted and understandable information related to the pandemic. This information may be helpful for shaping health policy to address the barriers faced by individuals with visual impairment.

YouTube Videos as Data: Seeing Daily Challenges for People with Visual Impairments during COVID-19

COVID-19 pandemic has spread globally and affected a large number of people. Previous studies collected online survey and interview data to raise awareness of requirements from people with visual impairments (PVI) under the COVID-19 pandemic, however, little has been observed in PVI's daily activities due to the suspension of face-to-face fieldwork. In this study, we utilized an innovative data source-YouTube videos to fill the vacancy of observation data in this specific topic. Compared to previous studies, we got more voices involved and gained a richer dataset by considering both videos from the visually impaired community where PVI are primary authors and news media videos where PVI are involved as active participants. Eventually, we collected 24 videos created by the visually impaired community and 27 videos from the news media community, where 57 PVI were depicted. This study uncovered the problems causing pandemic-related challenges and suggested the need for explicit guidelines that can make the prevention protocols accessible and inclusive for PVI, as this study indicates that accessibility can be easily missed under unforeseen situations like the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2022 ACM.

Unidirectional Tactile Paving: Circulation for the Visually Impaired.

The COVID-19 pandemic heightened inequalities of universal accessibility in the built environment. The visually impaired have been affected by the lack of mobility that resulted from social distancing and physical distancing. Numerous circulation networks, from small retail shops to large-scale public spaces, have been reorganized to limit the spread of COVID-19. By assigning an orientation to each lane, unidirectional circulation networks allow for physical distancing by limiting face-to-face interactions among most pedestrians. These unidirectional networks are communicated visually, by placing flat arrows on the floor, but not through the other senses and are thus inaccessible to the visually impaired. This demonstrates a lack of universally accessible design for unidirectional circulation. We propose two designs (asymmetrical blocks and cobblestone blocks) for a novel unidirectional tactile paving which allows the visually impaired to navigate through unidirectional circulation networks by feeling tiles with their feet and/or canes.

Implement of the Training System for White Cane Technique using Haptic Illusion

Visually impaired people widely use white canes to walk alone. To learn a proper operation of a white cane, training by orientation & mobility (O & M) specialists is required. However, due to the influence of recent pandemic with COVID-19 in addition to the shortage of O & M specialists, visually impaired cannot be enough trained by social distancing. Therefore, we propose a force feedback training system that visually impaired learn white cane technique using haptic illusion. Specifically, in the touch technique which is one of the basics of white cane technique, a system that tar-get swing of the white cane was presented by illusory pulling cues was developed. In this study, a basic concept of the system is discussed and a prototype system is implemented. © 2021, Japan Soc. of Med. Electronics and Biol. Engineering. All rights reserved.

An IoT Machine Learning-Based Mobile Sensors Unit for Visually Impaired People.

Visually impaired people face many challenges that limit their ability to perform daily tasks and interact with the surrounding world. Navigating around places is one of the biggest challenges that face visually impaired people, especially those with complete loss of vision. As the Internet of Things (IoT) concept starts to play a major role in smart cities applications, visually impaired people can be one of the benefitted clients. In this paper, we propose a smart IoT-based mobile sensors unit that can be attached to an off-the-shelf cane, hereafter a smart cane, to facilitate independent movement for visually impaired people. The proposed mobile sensors unit consists of a six-axis accelerometer/gyro, ultrasonic sensors, GPS sensor, cameras, a digital motion processor and a single credit-card-sized single-board microcomputer. The unit is used to collect information about the cane user and the surrounding obstacles while on the move. An embedded machine learning algorithm is developed and stored in the microcomputer memory to identify the detected obstacles and alarm the user about their nature. In addition, in case of emergencies such as a cane fall, the unit alerts the cane user and their guardian. Moreover, a mobile application is developed to be used by the guardian to track the cane user via Google Maps using a mobile handset to ensure safety. To validate the system, a prototype was developed and tested.

WHAT ARE YOU HUNGRY FOR? A VISUAL ACCESSIBILITY ANALYSIS OF THE MAIN FOOD DELIVERY APPS IN BRAZIL

The use of e-commerce, in particular of home delivery apps, has increased and has become more and more convenient for consumers, mainly facing the urgence to minimize physical contact due to the risk of covid-19 contagion. However, this convenience does not equally affect all segments of Brazilian consumers. Visually impaired people often cannot adequately access e-commerce and applications, because they are not accessible to this segment. With this context in mind, the present study aimed to analyze whether the main applications for ordering and delivering food in Brazil present some elements that provide accessibility for people with visual impairment. Through an analysis of the three main food delivery applications in Brazil in 2020, we tried to verify the presence of these elements that provide accessibility to the mentioned public, identifying the existence of texts that describe images, buttons and editable fields. The research showed that the applications analyzed present room for improvement, especially Rappi. The results showed that iFood and Uber Eats have a similar level of ease for access, but the main iFood problem was related to temporary messages. Problem that Uber Eats also had, but what is more repeated and made the access difficult tto this app was the non-labeling of some buttons.

Understanding Accessibility Issues in China's Contact Tracing Systems During the COVID-19 Pandemic for Visually Impaired People

To fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, China has deployed the Health Code Apps and the Trajectory Code Apps as the front-end of the national contact tracing system. To date, accessibility issues for visually impaired people using these apps have not been studied. In this paper we use a mixed-method approach, including qualitative and quantitative studies, to explore these accessibility issues. The qualitative study included interviews and observations with visually impaired users, while quantitative analysis was conducted through surveys. We found that the current contact tracing systems are inaccessible and that most visually impaired people can only use the app with other people's help. The findings serve as a reference point for the potential large-scale adoption of digital contact tracing systems. © 2022 Owner/Author.

Layered Audio Descriptions for Videos

The increasing availability of online video content, partially fueled by the Covid-19 pandemic and the growing presence of social media, adds to the importance of providing audio descriptions as a media alternative to video content for blind and visually impaired persons. To address concerns as to what can be sufficiently described, we developed a concept providing audio descriptions in three levels of detail. We included an additional feature for providing optional explanations to terms and abbreviations, helping users without specific knowledge or persons with neurodiversity in comprehending complex video content. We implemented these features in a prototype based on the open-source Able Player, using an XML-based data structure to store information for all layers of audio descriptions. A qualitative user test focused on the benefits of multi-layered audio descriptions and optional explanatory content. Findings suggest that the choice on several levels of detail is received positively by users. They also appreciated the concept of optional explanations and came up with further use cases for such a practice. Participants preferred a higher level of detail for a high-paced action video and a lower level for informative content. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

A Bilingual Audio Based Online Shopping Mobile Application for Visually Impaired and the Elderly People

Despite the widespread success of online shopping, it is not available to all consumer types. In this sense, visually impaired and elderly users, in particular, frequently face daunting barriers. Due to the inaccessibility and difficulty of current online shopping mobile applications, millions of visually impaired and elderly people are unable to benefit from the convenience provided by online shopping. Developing ideas that inspire people is really essential for visually impaired and elderly people to engage in social life. Generic product explanations, unhelpful images, and visually appealing user experiences are provided to average eyes in online shopping, and they are incompatible with visually impaired people, even with visually impaired assistive devices. Due to visual barriers and inaccessible user experiences, the visually impaired are struggling to do online shopping independently. During this COVID-19 pandemic situation, online shopping is one of the better ways to meet everyone's needs and wants. Ordinary individuals can meet their needs and desires, but the visually impaired and elderly people who live alone find it difficult to manage their daily life. Therefore, we have come up with a solution for this by having an online shopping mobile application. Our objective with this application is to assist visually impaired and elderly individuals in meeting their underlying needs and to help them in this pandemic situation. This paper presents an online shopping mobile application for visually impaired and elderly people that allows them to shop online in a variety of convenient ways.

Deploying an Instance Segmentation Algorithm to Implement Social Distancing for Prosthetic Vision

The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak is causing a dramatic worsening in the already complicated living conditions of blind and visually impaired individuals. Social distancing is the most effective strategy to limit virus spread, but is extremely difficult for blind people to actuate. Here we propose a deep-learning algorithm to recognize and locate in space people and other categories of objects from RGB-D images. The algorithm, based on Mask R-CNN, performs semantic segmentation on RGB images and uses depth maps to extract information about the relative distance of the instances. It was evaluated using Salient Person dataset and RGB-D Scenes Dataset v.2, and proved effective in segmenting and locating instances. This preliminary work could be a valuable starting point for developing a technology to assist the visually impaired in implementing social distancing. © 2022 IEEE.

Voice-based Online Examination System for Visually Impaired Students

Online methods such as e-learning, e-business, online shopping, online payment, and so on have gained in popularity around the world as a result of the COVID 19 pandemic. Education sectors use emergency tele-learning, online learning platforms to persist in this circumstance and exams are conducted as online exams. This research highly focused on visually impaired students who are unable to read the questions displayed on the computer screen in this online examination system. They missed their braille system which is more familiar to read and write more easily. This is high time to build a proper voice-based online examination system for visually impaired students. This system should read the question that is displayed on the screen and obtain the student's response via voice commands. It can only lead students through the online exam using voice, and students can only provide the system answers and navigation orders using voice. The proposed system major goals are to read questions to students, obtain answers from them and effectively navigate students through the system using voice instructions. It builds a comfortable environment for the visually impaired students to write the exam and it helps to improve their personality when they are facing the exam. © 2022 IEEE.