1,721,026 research outputs found
Haptic Wearable System to Assist Visually-Impaired People in Obstacle Detection
Full text linkOne of the main difficulties encountered every day by visually-impaired people concerns moving and orienting themselves independently and safely in indoor and especially outdoor environments. Although several studies have been carried out to propose electronic aids to support orientation and mobility tasks, problems continue to exist. In this work, a wearable ultrasonic-based obstacle detector is proposed to give a further contribution to the field. The prototype is designed by paying particular attention to (1) the updating of the components and (2) the use by the blind users. It can be mounted on the user’s preferred model of eyeglasses and can be used with or without the traditional white cane
How Artificial Intelligence Is Impacting on the STEM Education of Students with Disabilities: A Five Years Review
Full text linkArtificial intelligence promises to revolutionize our life, bringing significant advances in any fields: health, education, work and leisure time. This paper analyzes the last 5-year literature concerning the use of AI for supporting people with disabilities in education. The aim is to investigate the current state of art of accessible applications in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) field and understand if contents and tools are accessible for all, regardless of personal need and abilities. Personalization and adaptation emerge as fundamental factors when designing for people with disabilities. Privacy and ethics aspects often neglected are very relevant. The analysis suggests that the STEM field still suffers from accessibility gaps, and current tools need to evolve and be increased to be exploited by different disabilities and ensure the same opportunities for every student, engaging, motivating, and empowering them.
A systematic review of chatbots in inclusive healthcare: insights from the last 5 years
Full text linkHealthcare is one of the most important sectors of our society, and during the COVID-19 pandemic a new challenge emerged—how to support people safely and effectively at home regarding their health-related problems. In this regard chatbots or conversational agents (CAs) play an increasingly important role, and are spreading rapidly. They can enhance not only user interaction by delivering quick feedback or responses, but also hospital management, thanks to several of their features. Considerable research is focused on making CAs more reliable, accurate, and robust. However, a critical aspect of chatbots is how to make them inclusive, in order to effectively support the interaction of users unfamiliar with technology, such as the elderly and people with disabilities. In this study, we investigate the current use of chatbots in healthcare, exploring their evolution over time and their inclusivity. The study was carried out on four digital libraries (ScienceDirect, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, and Google Scholar) on research articles published in the last 5 years, with a total of 21 articles describing chatbots implemented and actually used in the eHealth clinical area. The results showed a notable improvement in the use of chatbots in the last few years but also highlight some design issues, including poor attention to inclusion. Based on the findings, we recommend a different kind of approach for implementing chatbots with an inclusive accessibility-by-design approach
A Preliminary Evaluation of Generative AI Tools for Blind Users: Usability and Screen Reader Interaction
Full text linkThe increasing use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity and Gemini opens up new possible scenarios for supporting work and everyday activities. For people who are blind, the usability of such tools through screen readers is crucial to ensure their use of such AI-based technologies. In this study, we explore the accessibility and usability of the interfaces of four popular AI-based tools via screen readers through a combination of semi-automated evaluations and inspections conducted by both sighted and blind accessibility experts and screen readers with more than 20 years of experience. Navigation, labeling of control elements, feedback mechanisms, and prompt handling were considered in the study. The results point to usability difficulties in all tools, particularly in navigation structure, clarity of feedback and interactive elements. Although this work empirically explores the accessibility of AI-based tools it brings out the first critical issues that deserve further investigation. However, they are based on a small group of experts and thus should be considered preliminary and useful for future studies
Empowering Visual Navigation: A Deep-Learning Solution for Enhanced Accessibility and Safety Among the Visually Impaired
No full textndividuals with visual impairments face significant challenges navigating environments, especially with tasks such as object identification and traversing unfamiliar spaces. Often, their needs are inadequately addressed, leading to applications that do not meet their specific requirements. Traditional object detection models frequently lack this demographic's accuracy, speed, and efficiency. However, recent Internet of Things (IoT) advancements offer promising solutions, providing real-time guidance and alerts about potential hazards through IoT-enabled navigation apps and smart city infrastructure. This paper presents an extension of our MoSIoT framework, incorporating the YOLOv8 convolutional neural network for precise object detection and a specialized decision layer to improve environmental understanding. Additionally, advanced distance measurement techniques are incorporated to provide crucial information on object proximity. Our model demonstrates increased efficiency and adaptability across diverse environments using transfer learning and robust regularization techniques. Systematic evaluation indicates significant improvements in object detection accuracy, measured by mean Average Precision at 50% Intersection over Union (mAP50) from 0.44411 to 0.51809 and mAP50-95 from 0.24936 to 0.29586 for visually impaired individuals, ensuring reliable real-time feedback for safe navigation. These enhancements significantly improve the MoSIoT framework, thereby greatly enhancing accessibility, safety, independence, and mobility for users with visual impairments
Generative AI as a New Assistive Technology for Web Interaction
No full textFor users who are unfamiliar with technology or rely on assistive tools such as screen readers, interacting with a web page can be challenging. Ensuring a seamless experience requires a well-designed user interface (UI) that prioritizes accessibility and usability. However, achieving this target demands specialized expertise from developers and can involve significant effort. In this context, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) has become a valuable aid for improving access to information and facilitating interaction with web interfaces. To effectively enhance user interaction---such as accessing services or specific functionalities---AI-driven tools must first be capable of understanding the structure and content of a web page. This study investigates if GAIs can be exploited to assist the user when navigating through a website, describing the site contents, explaining the interface structure and interactive elements, and suggesting actions or procedures to follow to perform a certain task or accomplish a specific goal. This kind of assistive technology can benefit not only visually impaired people but also persons with cognitive impairment and, more generally, people that are not ``skilled'' with modern web applications, like seniors. Specifically, thirteen popular websites were analyzed by asking Copilot one hundred questions. Results suggest that GAIs have the potential to assist people in web tasks. However, limitations have still been detected, with 20{\%} of completely erroneous answers received from the navigation and interaction questions and 15{\%} for those related to structure, mainly detected in pages having scarce accessibility and sites having a complex HTML structure, respectively
Smart Cultural Site: An Interactive 3d Model Accessible to People with Visual Impairment
Full text linkIn our study, we proposed a prototype of "Piazza dei Miracoli" (Pisa, Italy) as an intelligent 3D interface system aimed at improving the accessibility and usability of cultural sites for all, including people with vision impairment. We combine tactile information with audio tracks in order to enable potential users to explore the artifact autonomously. Low-cost and partially open-source technologies are two important features leading our approach, creating a system easily replicable. First, we designed some 3D source-based models to be printed with an additive manufacturing technology. Next, the 3D prototype has been linked to a Raspberry for handling a set of detailed audio tracks to enrich the tactile exploration with an interactive audio guide. A preliminary evaluation was conducted to test the proposed system in order to better refine its design
Haptic models of arrays through 3D printing for computer science education
No full textComputer science is taught as a regular subject in the school systems of many countries. Most tools used to teach main topics of computer science curricula, such as data structures and algorithms, are visually oriented. Our work aims to assist visually impaired students to understand fundamental data structures and algorithms through 3D printed haptic models. We developed a simple but general method that can be used by the teacher to introduce data structures and algorithmic thinking to both visual impaired and sighted students in inclusive classes. We evaluated our models for teaching one-dimensional arrays to both visual impaired and sighted students
Design and Validation of the Readable Device: a single-cell Electromagnetic Refreshable Braille Display
Full text linkBlindness represents one of the major disabling societal causes, impacting the life of visually impaired people and their families. Regarding the access to written information, one of the main tools used by blind people is the traditional Braille code. This is the reason why in recent years, there has been a technological effort to develop refreshable Braille devices. These consist of multiple physical dots that dynamically change their configuration to reproduce different sequences of the letters in Braille code. Although promising, these approaches have many drawbacks, which are mainly related to costs, design complexity, portability, and power consumption. Of note, while many solutions have been proposed for multi-cell devices, the investigation of the potentialities of single-cell refreshable systems has received little attention so far. This investigation could offer effective and viable manners to overcome the aforementioned drawbacks, likely fostering widespread adoption of such assistive technologies with end-users. In this paper, we present the design and characterization of a new cost-effective single-cell Electromagnetic Refreshable Braille Display, the Readable system. We report on tests performed with blindfolded and blind expert Braille code readers. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of our device in correctly reproducing alphanumeric content, opening promising perspectives in every-day life applications
Le Mura per Tutti: una tecnologia di ausilio alla mobilità per persone ipo/non-vedenti
No full textSaranno presentati gli obiettivi e le finalità del progetto di ricerca cofinanziato dalle Fondazioni Banca del Monte di Lucca e Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca e che coinvolge la sezione di Lucca dell'Unione Italiana dei Ciechi e degli Ipovedenti, l'Opera delle Mura di Lucca, il Comune e la Provincia di Lucca.
Il progetto, in fase di conclusione, prevede l'installazione di un sistema dimostratore sulle Mura di Lucca per evidenziare fra l'altro anche come la non invasività della tecnologia impiegata ne permetta l'utilizzo in un contesto di particolare pregio storico-artistico. La tecnologia proposta si presta inoltre per applicazioni in ambito indoor quali fiere, mostre etc..
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