Hersh / Johnson Assistive Technology for Visually Impaired and Blind People

1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-1-84628-867-8
Verlag: Springer
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 725 Seiten, eBook

Equal accessibility to public places and services is now required by law in many countries. It is often the use of specialised technology which can provide the vision-impaired with a fuller enjoyment of all the facilities of society. In this volume the engineering and design principles and techniques used in assistive technology for blind and vision-impaired people are explained. Features: instruction in the physiology of the human visual system and methods of measuring visual ability; explanation of many devices designed for every-day living in terms of generic electrical engineering principles; sections of practical projects and investigations which will give the reader ideas for student work and for self teaching; contributions by authors of international repute from divers fields which co-operate under the banner of assistive technology, among them: artificial vision systems; psychology, haptics, electrical engineering, design and visual physiology.

Zielgruppe

Professional/practitioner

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hersh, Marion

Johnson, Michael A

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Disability and Assistive Technology Systems.- Perception, the Eye and Assistive Technology Issues.- Sight Measurement.- Haptics as a Substitute for Vision.- Mobility: An Overview.- Mobility AT: The Batcane (UltraCane).- Navigation AT: Context-aware Computing.- Accessible Global Positioning System (GPS) and Related Orientation Technologies.- Electronic Travel Aids: An Assessment.- Accessible Environments.- Accessible Bus System: A Bluetooth Application.- Accessible Information: An Overview.- Screen Readers and Screen Magnifiers.- Speech, Text and Braille Conversion Technology.- Accessing Books and Documents.- Designing Accessible Music Software for Print Impaired People.- Assistive Technology for Daily Living.- Assistive Technology for Education, Employment and Recreation.

Leseproben

"12 Accessible Information: An Overview (p. 385-386)

Learning Objectives

Increasingly complex media and technology are being used to transmit information. However, a degree of familiarity with new technological developments is required to make the best use of information media and technologies, so it is important that this area remains accessible to the visually impaired and blind community. It should be noted that there are currently many people who either do not have access tomodern communications and information technology or do not wish to use it. It is therefore important that information continues to be provided in other lower tech and more traditional ways.

This chapter openswith a review of the principles and technologies of lowvision aids that are used to access print. Sections on audio transcription and Braille as access routes to print information then follow. However, it is the recent developments in speech processing and speech synthesis technology that are the drivers of the wider use of audio as an information interface for visually impaired and blind people. Major sections of the chapter describe the accessible computer and the accessible Internet. Both are extremely important in the processing and provision of information and there are many interface options to make these systems accessible to visually impaired and blind people. Finally, since telecommunications is an important information channel and mobile telephony is increasingly obtaining computer and Internet capabilities, the chapter closes by reviewing accessible telecommunications technology.

The learning objectives for the chapter are:
• Understanding a taxonomy for low vision aids.
• Appreciating the assistive technologies that are used for the audio and tactile transcriptions of print materials.
• Understanding of the different input and output devices that can be used to make computer systems accessible.
• Understanding how the World Wide Web can be made accessible to visually impaired and blind people.
• Studying technologies for accessible telecommunications.

12.1 Introduction

Access to information is becoming increasingly important and the term Information Society is often used, with a particular stress on electronically transmitted information. Most of this information is obtained via the visual and auditory senses and therefore, unless it is available in alternative formats and/or appropriate technology is available to make it accessible, people with sensory impairments will be unable to access a large part of this information.

Electronic transmission by information and telecommunications technologies has become extremely important in the industrialised countries. The term digital divide has been used to describe the gap between those who do and do not have access to computer technology and the Internet in particular and it has been suggested that those on the wrong side of the digital divide will be the new havenots. Access to computer technology is generally through a graphical user interface and therefore not easily accessible to blind people.

Screen reader technology (see Section 12.6 and Chapter 13) is fairly well developed, but can only be used if documents are appropriately designed. The issues are particularly complex in the context of theWorldWideWeb with its multimedia, multimodal potential for the presentation of information using text, speech, animations, photographs, video, colour effects and sound effects.However, aswell as complicating accessibility, this multimedia potential also enables the Web to be made accessible. This requires attention to the accessibility of both web authoring tools and web content. As will be discussed in Section 12.7, guidelines for both areas have been drawn up by the WorldWideWeb Consortium (W3C)Web Accessibility Initiative."

Über Autor(innen)

Dr Hersh is currently a senior Lecturer in the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, University of Glasgow. She was previously a lecturer in this Department. She has also held posts as a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Universities of Sussex and Strathclyde. She has now been researching in the area of assistive technology for about 12 years. Her current research interests fall into four main areas: • Assistive technology, particularly for people with sensory impairments. • Ethics and Social Responsibility Issues in Science and Engineering. • Good design practice, including the principles of sustainable and universal design, end user involvement and human centred design approaches. • The research process. She is continuing to run the successful CVHI conference series ‘Conference and Workshop on Assistive Technologies for People with Vision and Hearing Impairments’, which she initiated with Prof Mike Johnson of the University of Strathclyde. Funding for the first three events was obtained from the EC High-Level Scientific Conferences Programme and the current funding for three further events, of which one has already taken place. Distinctive features of this conference series include the support given to young researchers and the conference ambience which encourages networking. Current research projects in the area of assistive technology include the development of a communication and interface device for deafblind people, distance learning for people with mobility impairments with colleagues from Germany, Hungary and Romania and travel support technology for blind people with colleagues from France. Having been a workaholic for most of her life, Dr Hersh has recently become aware of the importance of making leisure activities accessible. Research carried out for the book has confirmed the lack of technology to support the involvement of blind people in sport and other leisure activities. Research projects in this area include technological support for learning swimming and cycling in quiet areas for blind people. Dr Hersh recently published Mathematical Modelling for Sustainable Development with Springer Verlag (2006). It is organised into three parts, each of which considers the application of a particular type of mathematical or computing technique to problems in sustainable development. Particular features of the book include the large number of examples of the application of the techniques to problems in sustainable development, the detailed case studies, for instance of the application of systems theory to sustainable waste management and the introduction of fuzzy set techniques she developed. She has worked on applications of these techniques in collaboration with colleagues from Germany and Romania. Dr Hersh’s awareness of the importance of interdisciplinarity for successful research in assistive technology has led her to an examination of the research process and publications on interdisciplinary work and research cultures with colleagues from Wales. Dr Hersh is a Member of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (UK) and the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (USA). Professor Johnson’s academic career has concentrated on control engineering, theory and applications. He has significant industrial control applications and research experience. He is the author and co-author of books and technical papers on power generation, wastewater control, power transmission, and control benchmarking. He has had a number of student projects in the area of assistive technology and has successfully trained over 40 engineers to PhD level in last 20 years. He is joint Editor to Springer-Verlag-London monograph series Advances in Industrial Control and to the Springer-Verlag-London Advanced Textbooks in Control and Signal Processing series. He was an Associate Editor for Automatica in the years 1985-2002. His interest in Assistive Technology came through undergraduate teaching commitments which included student group study dissertations at 2nd Year level and assorted project supervision at Masters and undergraduate level. These were used to explore some EEE aspects of assistive devices for the hearing impaired. Subsequent collaboration with Dr. Hersh at the University of Glasgow led to a set of targeted activities in this area. These include a new course module, a new conference series and some research projects. Professor Johnson retired from academic life in 2002 and was made an Emeritus Professor of the University of Strathclyde in 2003. Emeritus Professor Johnson is a member of Deafblind, UK and the British Retinitis Pigmentosa Society.