NEV1 - Information support for vision disabled (blind) people
Overview
Background & policy context:
According to the data of World Health Organization, there are 45 million visually disabled in the world today and this amount could even double in the next 20 years. Other sources state that sightless people make up approximately 1-1.5% of the population. It is interesting that 9 out of 10 visually disabled worldwide live in developing countries and the experts estimate that 80% of the blindness can be healed or it could have been prevented. It is worth mentioning that the percentage of partially-sighted people in the population is continually growing.
Objectives:
The project's aim was to develop, examine and create conditions for putting into operation an integrated geographic, acoustic and orientation system, navigating people with impaired sight or sense of direction towards their destination within the city environment.
Methodology:
To obtain a comprehensive view on the whole range of discussed problems and to simplify the transfer of the project's results into real life, the experts from following institutions have been contacted: United organization of sightless and weak-sighted, Rehabilitation institute for visually impaired, Regional center of Union of sightless and weak-sighted, Tyflocenter, Dedina motoric rehabilitation and retraining center, LORM society for hearing and visually impaired, specialised educational center at Jaroslav Ježek's elementary school, people with impaired sense of direction and others.
There were elementary parameters for system design set on basis of the expert group members' responses. It focuses on using MDA mobile devices and Smart phones.
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