HARNESSING THE WEB TECHNOLOGY TO ENRICH VISUALLY CHALLENGED USERS NAVIGATION

Hulya Francis, Madjid Merabti, A. Taleb Bendiab

2007

Abstract

Navigating urban streets without sight is fraught with difficulty and is often dangerous. Visually challenged people rely on ancillary equipment such as a white cane to probe the immediate area in front of them as well as developing other pre-existing personal physiological senses such as tactile, auditory, and olfactory senses, to train themselves to walk along pavements. Conventional navigation systems based on geo-maps alone are of little use to a visually challenged pedestrian. Hence, there is a need to develop a navigation client-server system capable of providing information appropriate for a visually challenged pedestrian to use to navigate urban pavements. This paper describes a navigation system that includes an enriched information model and a technology to deliver such information in an easy-to-use, accessible fashion. The paper introduces the technical challenge to the creation of a digital database for the navigation server that stores appropriate data. A prototyped digital navigation model of Hoylake Town Centre, UK has been used to test and validate the proposed model. This paper describes the role and function, and outlines the architecture for the Web-based mobile computing location-based services navigation support systems.

References

  1. Blenkhorn, P. and Evans, D.G., 1997. "A system for enabling blind people to identify landmarks: the sound buoy." IEEE Trans. on Rehab. Eng. 5, 3, 276-278.
  2. Brabyn, J., Crandall, W., and Gerry, W., 1993. "Talking signs: a remote signage solution for the blind, visually impaired and reading disabled." Proc. 15th Annual Int. Conf., IEEE Eng. in Medicine and Biology Society, 1309-1310.
  3. Francis, H., 1997 A Database Design for a GIS-based Relational Database for Tactile Mapping: Case Study Lancaster University Campus M.Sc. Dissertation, Department of Systems, School of Management, Lancaster University)
  4. Fritz, S., Michel, R., Raab, A., and Strothotte, T., 1995. "User interface design for a travel aid for blind people." Workshop on Non-Visual Graphical User Interfaces for Blind People, Software Ergonomie, Darmstadt.
  5. Gilden, D., 1997. "Moving from naive to knowledgeable on the road to technology transfer." Technology and Disability 7, 115-125.
  6. McInerney, R., D'Allura, T., and Benn, T., 1995. "An evaluation of talking signs: Lighthouse staff utilization." Arlene R. Gordon Research Institute, The Lighthouse Inc., New York.
  7. Scadden, L.A., 1997. Technology and people with visual impairments: a 1997 update. Technology and Disability 6, 137-145.
  8. Motluk A, Senses special: The art of seeing without sight, New Scientist issue 2484, 29 January 2005,
  9. Yoichi Takebayashi, Multimodal Anthropomorphic Interface, IJCAI-97 Workshop on Intelligent Multimodal Systems
  10. Zelek John S. September 2005, Pages 1108-1112 Vision 2005 - Proceedings of the International Congress held between 4 and 7 April 2005 in London, UK
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Francis H., Merabti M. and Taleb Bendiab A. (2007). HARNESSING THE WEB TECHNOLOGY TO ENRICH VISUALLY CHALLENGED USERS NAVIGATION . In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST, ISBN 978-972-8865-77-1, pages 189-196. DOI: 10.5220/0001272401890196


in Bibtex Style

@conference{webist07,
author={Hulya Francis and Madjid Merabti and A. Taleb Bendiab},
title={HARNESSING THE WEB TECHNOLOGY TO ENRICH VISUALLY CHALLENGED USERS NAVIGATION},
booktitle={Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST,},
year={2007},
pages={189-196},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0001272401890196},
isbn={978-972-8865-77-1},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST,
TI - HARNESSING THE WEB TECHNOLOGY TO ENRICH VISUALLY CHALLENGED USERS NAVIGATION
SN - 978-972-8865-77-1
AU - Francis H.
AU - Merabti M.
AU - Taleb Bendiab A.
PY - 2007
SP - 189
EP - 196
DO - 10.5220/0001272401890196