Tufel Ali | 34 | BE – B

AI APP FOR VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE

Abstract:
In todays advanced hi-tech world, the need of independent living is recognized in case of visually
impaired people who are facing main problem of social restrictiveness. Due to lack of necessary
information in the surrounding environment visually impaired people face problems and are at
disadvantage since visual information is what they lack the most. With the help of the advanced
technology, the visually impaired can be supported. The idea is implemented through Android
mobile app that focuses on voice assistant, image recognition, currency recognition, e-book, chat
bot etc. The app is capable to assist using voice command to recognize objects in the surrounding,
do text analysis to recognize the text in the hard copy document. It may be the effective way blind
people will interact with other people and may help blind people independent life.

Visually impaired are the ones who are completely or partially blind. According to an estimate
made by the World Health Organization (WHO) 285 million of the population suffer from visual
impairment and 39 people were blind and approximately 3% of all the ages in a nation are visually
impaired.

The leading causes of blindness are cataract, trachoma, glaucoma and also deficiency like Vitamin
A, onchocerciasis, and leprosy. People who are visually impaired suffer a lot and face great
challenges in their day to day life for instance finding their way and directions and to places which
they do not visit often.

The severe consequences visual impairment presents on certain capabilities related to visual
function:
1. Day to day activities (requires average distance vision)
2. Communicating, reading, writing (requires a precise vision)
3. Estimating area and displacement (requires far vision)
4. Extended care of optical observation is needed for tracking activities.

Problem Description:

Blind people come across a number of challenges in everyday life from reading a book to walk on
the street. Many tools are available to meet the challenges faced by them, but they are not
sufficient. The most essentials thing a human can have is vision and it plays a very essential role
in the life of a person either a person can see or not. A visually challenged people need an assistant
to carry on work on daily basis. In this paper we have discussed the challenges faced by blind
people and tried to provide a satisfactory solution to them for working everyday life.
Goal:
To improve day to day life of visually impaired people

PEAS Description:
Performance measure: Comfort, Safety, Accurate information.
Environment: Roads, home, shops, markets, etc.
Actuators: Phone.
Sensors: Camera.

Problem formulation:

The technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning plays a vital role in the
development of the IT sector. We have made use of these technologies for the visually impaired
people so that they too can lead a normal and independent life like other people. The friendly chat
bot helps the visually challenged to recognize the objects and surroundings. Currency recognition
helps in easy payment. Text recognition helps in reading and analyzing text. The development of
the proposed system if is completed, it can serve the visually challenged people with a better
assistant.

The proposed system could be applied in multilingual application in the coming days so that a
person will be able to use their application in their own language without any trouble. In addition,
our proposed system can be deployed with the IoT.

In future the proposed system will be able interpret the textual description in a much better way.
The Image recognition can be enhanced with much more details about the image captured through
the camera. Enhancement to this system can be done by adding the features of currency
recognition. The existing methodology for image and currency recognition can be done with more
accuracy.

Ideation Methods:

Ideation is the creative process of generating new ideas. While there are many methods,
Graham and Bachmann delineate nine approaches. Some of these approaches are to solve specific
problems, such as a known accessibility issue. Others are intended to create entities or experiences
not yet known. There are two types of methods in this latter category that we would particularly
like to highlight as relevant here:

1) derivative ideas that involve changing an existing entity.

2) symbiotic ideas which come from combining multiple ideas into a singular entity.

These two approaches, particularly suited to engendering new ideas, have been embodied in a
range of different techniques.

Ideation cards offer a common technique used in designing interactive experiences with
technology. Such cards help participants reflect on specific aspects of a design or combine
unexpected ideas. Lebowski, for example, has shown how designers might create their own cards,
helping them mix people, place, and objects in serendipitous ways. There are a number of cards
sets available around specific topics, such as humanistic aspects of design or legal and ethical
aspects in technology design. Woolfell pro-vides an overview of existing tools. Another ideation
technique, and one that is more tactile, is Lego Serious Play (LSP). LSP is a facilitated workshop
in which participants respond to tasks by building symbolic and metaphorical models using LEGO
and produce accompanying narratives. There is an emphasis on concrete expression of experiences
and ideas that are otherwise abstract. The practical challenges of implementing this method have
been nicely documented for imagining health futures. This work describes how to build the
confidence of participants in the ideation process, gradually scaling up the exercises. It also talks
about the importance of mixing individual and group tasks to enable the sharing and building on
others’ ideas. While tac-tile, LSP relies heavily on sight to build and narrate the concept.

There are many other ideation activities and games that enable idea generation through
derivation, symbiosis, and spontaneity. Other methods that we have drawn upon include: show-
and-tell, object brainstorming, and critique. Show-and-tell is an activity in which everyone brings
an object and describes how it represents an activity, enabling any of the three idea generation
types. Similarly, object brainstorming utilizes objects chosen at random as a source for inspiration.
Critique of current systems is a mechanism to provide insights into design issues by populations
who do not currently use a technology, e.g. older people and banking. These methods provide the
starting points for creating tactile ideation methods.