• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.768-775
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• 2005

For sign languages are main communication means among hearing-impaired people, there are communication difficulties between speaking-oriented people and sign-language-oriented people. Automated sign-language recognition may resolve these communication problems. In sign languages, finger spelling is used to spell names and words that are not listed in the dictionary. There have been research activities for gesture and posture recognition using glove-based devices. However, these devices are often expensive, cumbersome, and inadequate for recognizing elaborate finger spelling. Use of colored patches or gloves also cause uneasiness. In this paper, a vision-based finger spelling recognition system is introduced. In our method, captured hand region images were separated from the background using a skin detection algorithm assuming that there are no skin-colored objects in the background. Then, hand postures were recognized using a two-dimensional grid analysis method. Our recognition system is not sensitive to the size or the rotation of the input posture images. By optimizing the weights of the posture features using a genetic algorithm, our system achieved high accuracy that matches other systems using devices or colored gloves. We applied our posture recognition system for detecting Korean Sign Language, achieving better than $93\%$ accuracy.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.17 no.9
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• pp.2377-2398
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• 2023

In our daily lives, we engage in a variety of tasks that rely on our senses, such as seeing. Blindness is the absence of the sense of vision. According to the World Health Organization, 2.2 billion people worldwide suffer from various forms of vision impairment. Unfortunately, blind people face a variety of indoor and outdoor challenges on a daily basis, limiting their mobility and preventing them from engaging in other activities. Blind people are very vulnerable to a variety of hazards, including falls. Various barriers, such as stairs, can cause a fall. The Internet of Things (IoT) is used to track falls and send a warning message to the blind caretakers. One of the gaps in the previous works is that they were unable to differentiate between falls true and false. Treating false falls as true falls results in many false alarms being sent to the blind caretakers and thus, they may reject the IoT system. As a means of bridging this chasm, this paper proposes an intelligent shoe that is able to precisely distinguish between false and true falls based on three sensors, namely, the load scale sensor, the light sensor, and the Flex sensor. The proposed IoT system is tested in an indoor environment for various scenarios of falls using four models of machine learning. The results from our system showed an accuracy of 0.96%. Compared to the state-of-the-art, our system is simpler and more accurate since it avoids sending false alarms to the blind caretakers.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2017.10a
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• pp.391-394
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• 2017

Persons with low vision impairment refers to visual and visual impairments that can not be remedied by medical or optical methods due to inherited or acquired eye disease. People with low vision impairments account for more than 240 million people in the world and have only a few remaining eyesight. We will discuss the improvement of information accessibility of low visually impaired people and future research methods through research on Web UI/UX in mobile web environment for low visibility handicapped in the environment where information can be accessed through existing screen reader (TTS) and screen enlargement function.

• Molecular & Cellular Toxicology
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.262-265
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• 2006

We report a case of phenytoin toxicity due to impaired drug metabolism in a patient homozygous for $CYP2C9^{\ast}3$. A 46-year-old woman was taking phenytoin to prevent postoperative seizures. She attained high serum phenytoin levels at the standard doses (300 mg/day) and developed symptoms of phenytoin toxicity including blurred vision, nausea and headache. The patient was treated with reduced doses of phenytoin and then phenytoin therapy was finally discontinued. Genotyping for CYP2C9 revealed that this patient had a homozygous genotype, $CYP2C9^{\ast}3/^{\ast}3$. This is the first Korean case of phenytoin toxicity with homozygous $CYP2C9^{\ast}3$. This case suggests the clinical usefulness of pharmacogenetic testing for individualized dosage adjustments of phenytoin.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.599-613
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• 2022

Non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy is a representative complication of diabetic patients and is known to be a major cause of impaired vision and blindness. There has been ongoing research on automatic detection of diabetic retinopathy, however, there is also a growing need for research on an automatic severity classification system. This study proposes an automatic detection system for pathological symptoms of diabetic retinopathy such as microaneurysms, retinal hemorrhage, and hard exudate by applying the Faster R-CNN technique. An automatic severity classification system was devised by training and testing a Random Forest classifier based on the data obtained through preprocessing of detected features. An experiment of classifying 228 test fundus images with the proposed classification system showed 97.8% accuracy.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.57 no.4
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• pp.507-514
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• 2013

In this study, the characteristics of visually impaired elementary students' conceptions on dissolution were investigated. The semi-structured interviews about phenomenon of dissolution, uniformity of solution, conservation of mass on dissolving and volume change during dissolving were conducted with 4 fifth-grade elementary students with visual impairments (three were blind, and one had low-vision). Interviews were recorded and the data were analyzed after transcription. As a result, students with visual impairments knew well about the phenomenon of dissolution, uniformity of solution, and conservation of mass on dissolving, while they couldn't explain volume change during dissolving. Although students with visual impairments were found to have similar level of understanding with students without visual impairments, they had sounder understanding about uniformity of solution. However, students with visual impairments had superficial understanding based on phenomenal experiences. Some of students with visual impairments tried to give micro-level explanation. Based on these results, educational implications were discussed.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.78-86
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• 2017

The Internet of Things can offer disabled people the assistance and support, which is essential to achieve a good quality of life. The visually impaired people need assistance in finding locations, detecting obstacles on the way, and getting directions while moving around to reach their destination. Based on this persistent need, this paper proposes a navigation system for blind people using Internet of Things. The technologies used in our proposed system are: a smart cane containing an RFID reader and an ultrasonic sensor, a smart phone and Internet. The sensed data from the ultrasonic sensor for detecting obstacle is converted to International Standard format from ISO/IEC 23005-5 (MPEG-V Part 5). The system detects the blind person's location using the RFID tags implemented on the way. The system uses voice message in the smart phone to communicate with the blind person to lead him to his destination. The proposed system has been tested to navigate successfully in the campus.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.63-70
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• 2010

Research and development of Assistive Technology (AT) for blind people is primarily focused on assisting mobility and improving access to information. Some particularly useful devices for aiding access to information and communication are DAISY players used with talking books, screen readers for reading screens, video magnifiers to aid low vision, Braille displays, and Braille PDAs. These essential devices have been successfully commercialized and have assisted many visually impaired people. Assistive technology devices for visually impaired people are called sensory substitution devices, because these devices substitute tactile or auditory functions for visual functions. The tactile interfaces of sensory substitution devices such as Braille displays and Braille PDAs have a bimorph type of piezoelectric actuator that forms a Braille (pin) of the Braille cells by moving up and down. KGS Corporation of Japan has more than 80% share of the worldwide market for these Braille cell actuators. Commercializing it for the first time in the world. This paper reviews the various endeavors in Japan in the research and development of tactile displays, such as Braille displays and Braille PDAs. Furthermore, it discusses sensory substitution devices that use tactile displays, focusing especially on the rotating Braille display we have developed.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.17-21
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• 2015

There have been sustained developments of advanced technologies using traffic safety facilities recently and techniques for identifying failure modes and devices which could result in fatal outcomes. The purpose of this research is aimed at improving the driving conditions in advance through analyzing the IT convergence, driving education, researches for vehicles, field of construction and robotics. The researchers evaluate on usability tests of the driving with 26 candidates through focusing on safety, convenience, efficiency, effectiveness. Using specialized LED panel to enhance driving performances of disabled people are for cautious road conditions like foggy weather or heavy rain. As a result, there were improvements in the driving conditions, and candidates reported this system was helpful. It allows them for maintaining proper driving all times and was especially informative for people with low vision or visually impaired. This system plays a pivotal role as a prevention mechanism not only for regular drivers but also for further delict of traffic violations or accident offenders who already have former record on tort.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.29-40
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• 2020

Visually impaired people use tactile maps to get spatial information about their surrounding environment, find their way, and improve their independent mobility. However, classical tactile maps that make use of braille to describe the location within the map have several limitations, such as the lack of information due to constraints on space and limited feedback possibilities. This study describes the development of a new multi-modal interactive tactile map interface that addresses the challenges of tactile maps to improve the usability and independence of visually impaired people when using tactile maps. This interface adds touch gesture recognition to the surface of tactile maps and enables the users to verbally interact with a voice agent to receive feedback and information about navigation routes and points of interest. A low-cost prototype was developed to conduct usability tests that evaluated the interface through a survey and interview given to blind participants after using the prototype. The test results show that this interactive tactile map prototype provides improved usability for people over traditional tactile maps that use braille only. Participants reported that it was easier to find the starting point and points of interest they wished to navigate to with the prototype. Also, it improved self-reported independence and confidence compared with traditional tactile maps. Future work includes further development of the mobility solution based on the feedback received and an extensive quantitative study.