• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
• /
• v.26 no.1
• /
• pp.24-32
• /
• 2016

Objective: The visually impaired have limited access to health care services and related information, and thus, they can have serious hurdles against properly taking medications. Despite that it is important to improve self-care ability of the visually impaired for correct medication use, there have been few studies investigating their needs for health care services in Korea, particularly focusing on proper medication usage. This study is to explore safety-related issues regarding mediation usage among the visually impaired based on in-depth interview. We particularly focus on any obstacles for safe use of medicines including experience on medication-related adverse effects in order to provide preliminary evidence for policy measures to improve proper medication use among the visually impaired. Methods: Study sample was visually impaired individuals who resided in Seoul area and were registered in the National Association of Visually Impaired. The association helped the process of recruiting the study participants. In-depth interview for each study participants was conducted. Each interview was recorded and later converted into a written script to extract core contents for the analysis. Results: The study participants comprised of three women (42.9%) and four men (57.1%). One was in his 20's, and there were four participants in 30's and two in 40's. Fully impaired participants were majority (5 out of 7). Limitation to physical access to health care providers and health information were the key factors to hamper safe medication utilization among the study participants. Difficulty reading medication information and may take the wrong medication or incorrect doses of medication, resulting in serious consequences, including overdose or inadequate treatment of health problems. Visually impaired patients report increased anxiety related to medication management and must rely on others to obtain necessary drug information. Pharmacists have a unique opportunity to pursue accurate medication adherence in this special population. This article reviews literature illustrating how severe medication mismanagement can occur in the visually impaired elderly and presents resources and solutions for pharmacists to take a larger role in adherence management in this population. Conclusion: The visually impaired had difficulties reading medication information and identifying medicines, and took incorrect doses of medications. Public support for safe medication use and medication management among the visually impaired is necessary.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
• /
• autumn
• /
• pp.337-340
• /
• 1999

The most salient and discussed features of speech production in agrammatic aphasia are the omission and substitution of grammatical morphemes. Cross-linguistic studies have shown that the pattern of omission/substitution is not random but occurs in a systematic and highly constrained way. Although these descriptions are important, they do not explain why all grammatical morphemes are not equally impaired. Friedmann and Grodzinsky (1997) proposed the Tree-Pruning Hypothesis (TPH) to account for these patterns of sparing and loss. The TPH claims that in an agrammatic representation, an impaired functional node is underspecified, thus allowing inappropriate affixation to occur. Additionally, whenever a node is impaired, all nodes above it will also be impaired. Using four types of narratives collected from two Korean agrammatic patients, We test the claim that the impairment in agrammatism is based on such hierarchical representation. It was found that these patients consistently produced appropriate grammatical morphemes that are higher in a syntactic tree than the impaired morphemes. The finding that an intact node exists higher than an impaired node refutes the TPH.

• Journal of Multimedia Information System
• /
• v.9 no.3
• /
• pp.227-232
• /
• 2022

Disasters are now becoming commonplace and especially the vulnerable group such as the disabled, the elderly, children and foreigners are in a state of overlapping disasters. In this situation, ATSC 3.0-based UHDTV disaster information service for the visually and hearing impaired has been developing. This study focuses on the demand data collected through in-depth interview with the impaired. The demand analysis data is very important to development process of technology. The results of the interview show that it is essential to link the UHDTV disaster signals with home-network, IoT, wearable devices, and various assistive devices for the impaired (hearing aid, smart light bulbs, warning light, etc.). In outdoor space, UHDTV disaster information must be connected to public display media, digital signage, kiosk, screens in bus or taxi. If communication aids for the visually and hearing impaired are equipped with a function that can transmit and receive disaster information, it will help to minimize disaster damage.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
• /
• v.8 no.4
• /
• pp.214-220
• /
• 2019

Hearing impaired people are apt to be in danger because they can't detect danger with sound. Hearing impaired people have less risk-detection ability than non-disabled people because of lack of hearing. There are many devices to help the hearing impaired, such as hearing aids. A hearing aids can be helpful, but it may not be available depending on the degree or type of hearing loss for example, to the hearing-impaired people with little remaining hearing of high frequencies, ordinary hearing aids are not very useful for understanding the high frequency consonants and it requires a high cost, from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. Also, it is difficult for the underprivileged, such as the low-income bracket and the elderly, to use them because they are difficult to manage. Therefore, this paper describes the development of low-cost wearable device to assistant a hearing-impaired people using Arduino. Also, it accepts values from switches or sensors and can control external electronic devices such as LEDs and motors to create objects that can interact with the environment. In this is paper, through sound sensors, the ambient sound was taken as an analogue value and transmitted to the aduino board, and the vibration motor was operated when the noise was generated, so that the user could be aware of the occurrence of danger.

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
• /
• v.11 no.2
• /
• pp.29-36
• /
• 1999

This study was carried out to compare the rotation between vestibular function and balance skills in normal and hearing-impaired children. The subjects were 20 normal children (8-10 years) and 20 bearing-impaired children (8-10 years). The SCPNT was used to assess vestibular function, then, one leg stance test was used to compare static balance skill of normal and hearing-impaired children according to existence of visual input and sex. The results were as follows: 1. In SCPNT, normal md hearing-impaired children showed statistical significance in all left-sided and right-sided rotations(p<.01), and the vestibular function responses of hearing-impaired children wore normal $20\%$, abnormal $45\%$, absent $35\%$. 2. To compare balance skills between normal and hearing-impaired according to eye open and eye close, one-leg stance Oat showed statistical significance in eye open(p<.05), but did not show statistical significance in eye close(p>.05). 3. SCPNT, ene-leg stance test did not show statistical significance according to sex(p>.05).

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
• /
• v.12 no.1
• /
• pp.33-40
• /
• 2000

This study was carried out to compare the relation between vestibular function and balance skills in normal with heating-impaired children. The subjects were 20 normal children (8-10 years) and 20 hearing-impaired children (8-10 years). The SCPNT was used to assess vestibular function, then, functional reach test and backward walking test were usee to compare dynamic balance skills of normal and hearing-impaired children according to existence of visual input. The results were as follows : 1. In SCPNT, normal and hearing-impaired children showed statistical significance in all left-sided and right-sided rotations(p<.01), and the vestibular function responses of healing-impaired children were normal $20\%$, abnormal $45\%$, absent $35\%$. 2, To compare dynamic balance skills between normal and healing-impaired according to eye open and eye close, functional reach test did not show statistical significance in eye open situation(p>.05), but showed statistical significance in eye close situation(p<.05). 3. Backward walking test showed statistical significance in eye open and eye close situation(p<.01).

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.2 no.4
• /
• pp.229-238
• /
• 2010

This study investigates the differences in acoustic parameters in vowel space across hearing loss, gender and vowels. The parameters include F1, F2, Euclidean Distance between vowels, and vowel triangular area comprised of /i/, /a/ and /u/. For this study, 20 hearing-impaired and normal hearing adults as a control group were asked to read 7 Korean vowels (/a, $\wedge$, o, u, w, i, $\varepsilon$/). Subjects' readings were recorded by NasalView and analyzed by Praat. Results showed that F1 were significantly higher in the hearing impaired group than in the normal hearing group, higher in the female group than in male group, and higher in low vowels than in high vowels. And the means of F2 was significantly higher in the hearing impaired group than in normal hearing group, higher in high vowels than in low vowels, and there was no difference between male and female group. Secondly, Euclidean distance between vowels was significantly shorter in the hearing-impaired group than in the normal group. Finally, acoustic vowel space area was significantly smaller in the hearing-impaired group than in the normal hearing group. The hearing-impaired group showed that front vowels tended to be backed and back vowels to be fronted.

• International Journal of Knowledge Content Development & Technology
• /
• v.13 no.1
• /
• pp.43-58
• /
• 2023

This article is a spinoff of a doctoral study that was completed at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) in 2018 on provision of information services to persons with visual and physical impairments in public university libraries in Kenya. The article examined how ICTs such as internet, e-resources and e-databases, word processing, websites and more were being used in public university libraries to provide access to information by visually and physically impaired persons. Data were collected from the visually and physically impaired students, University Librarians, Systems librarians, staff from disability departments and library staff who provided services to visually and physically impaired persons. The findings revealed that the visually and physically impaired persons in most of the libraries could not access information owing to lack of the necessary assistive and adaptive technologies and weak institutional support and framework. The study recommend that the libraries improve assistive technology infrastructure, embrace new assistive technologies such as telepresence robots, virtual realities and more, and put in place enabling policies and capacity building programmes for library staff to enable them to provide services to persons with impairments.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.24-29
• /
• 2023

In this paper, we propose a real-time bus arrival notification system using deep learning to guarantee movement rights for the visually impaired. In modern society, by using location information of public transportation, users can quickly obtain information about public transportation and use public transportation easily. However, since the existing public transportation information system is a visual system, the visually impaired cannot use it. In Korea, various laws have been amended since the 'Act on the Promotion of Transportation for the Vulnerable' was enacted in June 2012 as the Act on the Movement Rights of the Blind, but the visually impaired are experiencing inconvenience in using public transportation. In particular, from the standpoint of the visually impaired, it is impossible to determine whether the bus is coming soon, is coming now, or has already arrived with the current system. In this paper, we use deep learning technology to learn bus numbers and identify upcoming bus numbers. Finally, we propose a method to notify the visually impaired by voice that the bus is coming by using TTS technology.

• International Journal of Knowledge Content Development & Technology
• /
• v.13 no.4
• /
• pp.39-49
• /
• 2023

This research investigates the availability of information resources for visually impaired students in University libraries in Nigeria; a tool for inclusive University education. A Descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study and a total number of 20 University libraries took parts in the study. A self-constructed online questionnaire was designed and distributed to collect the data from respondents (librarians) using a simple random sampling technique. A total of 45 respondents filled out the online questionnaire, but 40 were valid and useful for analysis. The use of frequency count and percentages method of data analysis was adopted for this research work. The study reveals that most of the University libraries lacked information resources for visually impaired students, it was found that the inclusion of information resources for visually impaired persons will promote inclusive education and librarians' skills. The challenges hindering the availability of information resources to the visually impaired students are insufficient funds for maintenance, erratic power supply and inadequate skills by users, among others. Recommendations were made for the campaign for inclusive education and the provision of information resources for visually impaired students.