Assistive Technology for the Blind Historical Background of

Assistive Technology for the Blind

Historical Background of Assistive Technologies for the Blind Introduction The rapid development of assistive technologies for the blind and visually impaired has evolved simultaneously with other technological innovations. Thanks to these advances, the facilitation of accessibility, safety and improved quality of life has made life easier for the visually impaired and blind (Bhowmick and Hazarika, 2017: 1).

The foundation phase (before 1900 s) The braille typewriter was invented in this period in 1820 s (Roth and Fee, 2011: 454). The establishment period (1900 -1970 s) The white cane was invented in 1921 (Pissalox and Velaquez, 2018: 363). The empowerment period (1973 – present) The first screen reading technology by IBM and the refreshable braille display in the 1980 s (Wendt, et al. , 2011: 10), and the modern technologies we have today (Wendt, et al. , 2011: 10)

Accessibility of Assistive Technologies for the Blind Currently, AT for the blind are bridging the disability gap through digital technologies. AT facilitates: • Interoperability between accessibility tools and other softwares. • The functioning of assistive technologies making it easier and convenient for the blind or visually impaired (Krueger and Stinemann, 2011). Or. CAM allows the blind to read texts from surfaces and relays the information to the user via a small earpiece.

Essential ATs Mobility Uses: to facilitate movement • Ultra canes AT for daily living Personal care • Tactile labelling systems • Health monitors Time keeping • Braille clocks Food preparation and consumption • Talking kitchen scales • Liquid level indicators (Hersh and Johnson, 2008: 615) Wearable Technologies Braille watch Wearable tactile AT for Navigation and Location Uses: Electronic travel aids, sensory substitute devices that are used to measure distance from nearby obstacles (Real and Araujo, 2019)

Games and Sports Use: recreation and leisure • Board games • Outdoor games for the blind (Hersh and Johnson, 2008: 670) Screen Readers and Magnifiers Uses: Computer accessibility tools that allow the blind access information from their computer or devices • Screen magnification sofwares • Screen reading softwares (Hersh and Johnson, 2008: 450) Speech to text and text to speech, braille conversion Uses: Converting information into speech or text Softwares like JAWS offer text to speech or speech to text solutions (Hersh and Johnson, 2008: 496)

Challenges Affordability: The affordability gap between custom technology and consumer technology continues to widen making it expensive to create new technologies, which translates to high cost products. (Hersh and Johnson, 2008: 578) Constant changes in tech: Constant mobile technology advances, advances in computer vision processing logarithms and new medical interventions create more challenges in the creation of successful assistive technologies. (Bhowmick and Hazarika, 2017: 19).

Areas of Growing Technology for the Blind • The areas that are evolving every single day include: sensory substitution devices that are used in the development of retinal prosthesis. Image description assistive technologies that give a mental imagery or use diagrams and pictorials to guide the blind, navigation and way finding technologies especially for indoors (Bhowmick and Hazarika, 2017). • Other growing technologies mentioned by (Marshall, 2015) include: self-driving cars for the blind and conversational user interfaces that allow the blind use or interact with other apps or computer programs with their voice.

Conclusion Assistive technologies and development of tools for education, personal care etc. in the everyday life of a visually impaired person plays an important role in making their lives easier and bearable. As the technology continues to advance more technological solutions will be invented.

References Bhowmick, A. and Hazarika, S. (2017). An Insight into Assistive Technology for the Visually Impaired and the Blind People: State of the art and Future Trends. Journal of Multi Modal User Interfaces, 11(2), pp. 1 -24 Hersh, M. A. and Johnson, M. A. (2008). Assistive Technology for Visually Impaired and Blind People. London. Springer Limited. ISO. (2011). ISO/IEC 13066 -1: 2011. [Online] ICS>35>35. Available at: iso. org/standard/53770. Accessed on Krueger, A. and Stineman, M. (2011). Assistive Technology Interoperability between Virtual and Real Worlds. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 4(3) Luxton, D. and Riek, L. (2019). Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Rehabilitation. American Psychological Association. Marshall, J. (2015). From White Canes to Indoor Nav: A Modern History of Assistive Technology for the Blind. [Online] Responsible Business. Available at: https: //responsiblebusiness. co/from-white-canes-to-indoor-nav-amodern-history-of-assistive-technology-for-the-blind-49 bd 1211 d 026. Accessed on 8/14/2020 Pissaloux, E. and Velaquesz, R. (2018). Mobility of Visually Impaired People: Fundamental and ICT Assistive Technologies. USA. Springer International Publishing. Real, S. and Araujo, A. (2019). Navigation Systems for the Blind and Visually Impaired: Past Work, Challenges, and Open Problems. Sensors, 19 (15) Roth, G. and Fee, E. (2011). The Invention of Braille. Am. J Public Health, 101(3), pp. 454 Wendt, O. , Quist, R. and Lloyd, L. (2011). Assistive Technology: Principles and Applications for Communication Disorders and Special Education. United Kingdom. Emerald Group Publishing Limited.