Mostly, people prefer airways, it being the easiest way to commute. However, navigating airports might be a challenging task for visually impaired individuals. To help mitigate this issue, a Carnegie Mellon University professor, who is visually impaired from the age of 14, has started a navigation app, which provides turn-by-turn audio instructions for users.
Source: CIOReview
Over 1,000,000 people within the world are either blind or live with moderate to severe visual impairments. Public health organizations have estimated that vision impairment are often preventable with better access to treatment. Within the procedure, technology is playing an important role in razing the barriers, and particularly AI (AI) is making real inroads into advancing the accessibility.
Following are some samples of how smart technology are often a game-changer, letting everyone to interact with the planet in novel ways.
The eye in AI
Microsoft’s Seeing AI is an application designed to assist people that are blind or with low vision. The tool augments the planet round the user with detailed auditory descriptions. Additionally, the app also can scan a barcode or read a handwritten note then tell the user what the merchandise is. When one points a camera at something, the app will illustrate what percentage people it can see and where they’re within the image–top left, center, and so on.
3-D Sound Maps
For a sighted person, walking alongside the road can mean taking altogether the encompassing details. Microsoft’s Soundscape replicates the behavior by creating a meticulous audio map that communicates what’s happening around a visually impaired person. The tool creates layers of details and context by drawing on location data, sound beacons, and synthesized 3-D stereo sound. The 3-D stereo puts together a frequently updating 3-D sound map of the neighboring world.
Knowledge at Fingertips
For physically impaired people, reading has taken a leap from the page to the screen with the updated version of Narrator, the screen-reader for Microsoft Windows. The tool’s features include digital Braille keyboards and displays.
AI for Accessibility
Microsoft launched a program AI to place Microsoft technology within the hands of start-ups, researchers, developers, and non-profits to drive innovation and strengthen human capacity for people with disabilities. Besides, the program is often watching new projects to support.
Use of NavCog Benefit the Visually Impaired at Airports
Mostly, people opt for airways, it being the best way to commute. However, navigating airports may be a difficult task for visually impaired individuals. To assist mitigate this issue, a Carnegie Mellon University professor, who is visually impaired from the age of 14, has began a navigation app, which offers turn-by-turn audio guidelines for users.
Collaborating with different researchers at the university, Professor Chieko Asakawa developed an app NavCog for Pittsburgh International Airport. NavCog works nearly like an indoor GPS and permits the customers to do in general everything, such as discovering a present keep or a café to wander round for some time. The app works with the assist of thousands of Bluetooth beacons that are set up in the airport and wirelessly communicates the users’ location. NavCog is publically on hand and free to download.
Other than offering audio guidelines like “walk 20 ft and flip left,” the app additionally informs the customers what shops they are passing, presenting a certain feel of the environment and buying options. It turns out that Pittsburgh is one of the solely airports to provide such apps worldwide. Louisville International in Kentucky had installed a comparable app in 2017, which used to be created by means of the American Printing House for the Blind.
The most sizeable setback of such apps is that it requires a smartphone in order to use them. The blind population consists of older people and has a excessive unemployment rate, which effects in many now not having smartphones, making these apps inaccessible.
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How can the use of NavCog Benefit the Visually Impaired at Airports?
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