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

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Design Studies Conference
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• 2002.11b
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• pp.174-175
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• 2002

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• no.28
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• pp.100-108
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• 2001

The purpose of this study is to develop recommendation of sign system and color codes in making the public interior environment more accessible for the visually impaired persons. The appropriate guidelines in designing the sign system and the color codes in the public interior environment can increase the accessibility, the mobility and the safety for the visually impaired persons including the increasing elderly. By selecting the effective sign system much more desirable results can be brought: Improvement of accessibility, mobility, increase of safety, work efficiency and the psychological stability. Sign system and the color is more important for the weak-sighted people than the normal-sighted in way finding and the orientation strategies. 53 visually impaired persons participated for this study, the answers of the questionaires by the weak-sighted persons are focused on in this research. The data, the needs of users is analysed on the basis of users-oriented. The result of this study can be considered as a basic direction of sign system design and color codes in our codes in our public environment for all people especially visually impaired persons.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Design Studies Conference
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• 1998.10a
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• pp.76-77
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• 1998

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.48-58
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• 2014

Public libraries provide information to all persons and its users are the inhabitants of the community it serves. This may not be the reality in some cases as some category of persons may not be properly served by the public library. This study assesses the provision of information materials in alternative format, in terms of its availability, access and level of use by the visually impaired in public libraries in southwestern Nigeria. The study adopted survey research design. Four (4) public libraries in four states were purposively selected because they are the ones that provide alternative format for the use of a sizable number of the visually impaired. Complete enumeration was used to capture all the 166 registered users of the libraries through the use of observations checklist and interview schedule. Data from 69.2% of the 166 visually impaired persons that were interviewed, and the observations made were analyzed. The result reveals that alternative formats availability were inadequate and, e-resources were not available while access to formats and information desired by the users were limited. Braille is the most utilized format; audio materials and large prints were seldom used. The demand for alternative formats is high but it is not related to level of use of materials. Provision of information materials in alternative formats for the visually impaired in public libraries cannot support the needs of the visually impaired; it requires intervention from all stakeholders. The study recommends improved investment and funding for public libraries and services to persons with disabilities.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.1-7
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• 2008

This paper explains a new design and Implementation of an efficient portable braille point system for visually Impaired person, The information systems for the visually impaired persons require efficiently designed devices, tools and accessibility to use the devices, and education support. These three conditions are the basic requirements of designing systems for the visually impaired persons, The system proposed in this paper satisfies the above three conditions. The system converts data and web documents between the braille and Hangul using an algorithm stored in a PC, and transfers the converted data to portable devices. And the portable braille device presents the transferred data in an electromagnetic way.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.38-47
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• 2012

In order to extend the activity range of visually impaired persons, we design and implement a navigation system that supports road information services and points of interest. The proposed navigation system consists of route creation modules and storage modules for visually impaired persons. In particular, the main interface of the navigation system are implemented using TTS(Text-to-Speech) program for sound and braille module that outputs braille with sense of touch. We also use google map APIs that can provide latest map information for the navigation system.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.462-470
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• 2009

We propose a wearable system to help the visually impaired persons for walking safely to destination. If a user selects a destination, the system guides the user to destination with position data from GPS receiver and shortest path algorithm. At the same time, after acquiring complex spatial structures in front of the user with ultrasonic sensors, we categorize them into several predefined patterns, and determine an avoidance direction by estimating the patterns. As a result, visually impaired persons can arrive at destination safely and correctly without others help.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.452-458
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• 2013

In this paper, we propose the method for automatically transfers images into tactile maps information based on cognition characteristics of visually impaired persons to more easily provide various image information for visually impaired persons. The proposed method automatically classify color images into row complexity and high complexity based on intensity information and transfer images into tactile map information using each different transformation process. Experimental evaluation, We performed with visually impaired five persons experiments for evaluating the recognition and satisfaction that tactile maps of the proposed automatic transforming method and the manually generated tactile maps of braille textbooks. Experimental results, the recognition and satisfaction that the tactile maps of the proposed method generated are very similar to those of the tactile maps of braille textbooks. Therefore, it could hugely be reduced the time and money of production education materials, and it could greatly improved educative results because it can add more easily that many image data of education materials.

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