• Korean Journal of Artificial Intelligence
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.1-14
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• 2017

This research proposes a method to provide visually impaired persons with better medical services and to mitigate their difficulties in taking medicines in their daily lives. Normally, pharmaceutical information are distributed in a form of printed materials, but it is not accessible by those who are visually impaired. Since persons who are visually impaired by accidents or diseases are required to take more types of medicines compared to other handicapped persons, and thus it is an important matter to let them have appropriate medicines at the right time. Although there are several web sites which are run by the Ministry of Health and Welfare providing pharmaceutic information, the information on those web sites are duplicated and some of the menus are similar, and thus giving users difficulties and discomfort in finding appropriate pharmaceutical information. Since ontology can define and describe the resource in an information system more clearly, in this research, an ontology consists of pharmaceutical information and knowledge on medicines is constructed to give patients more precise information more efficiently. Also, a service in which users can have voice guidance on pharmaceutical information retrieve from the ontology-based information system by contacting RFID sticker on the medicine to the reader.

• Journal of the HCI Society of Korea
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.5-12
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• 2016

The number of visually-impaired people using a smartphone is currently increasing with the help Text-to-Speech(TTS). TTS converts text data in a mobile application into sound data, and it only allows sequential search. For this reason, the location of buttons and contents inside an application should be determined carefully. However, little attention has been made on TTS service environment during the development of mobile newspaper application. This makes visually-impaired people difficult to use these applications. Furthermore, a mobile application interface which also reflects the desire of the low vision is necessary. Therefore, this paper presents a mobile newspaper interface which considers the accessibility and the desire of various visually impaired people. To this end, the proposed interface locates buttons with the consideration of TTS service environment and provides search functionality. The proposed interface also enables visually impaired people to use the application smoothly by filtering out the words that are pronounced improperly and providing the proper explanation for every button. Finally, several functionalities such as increasing font size and color reversal are implemented for the low vision. Simulation results show that the proposed interface achieves better performance than other applications in terms of search speed and usability.

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.11-20
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• 2019

In this study, a novel virtual reality (VR) experience environment is proposed for enabling walking adaptation of visually impaired people. The core of proposed VR environment is based on immersive walking interactions and deep learning based braille blocks recognition. To provide a realistic walking experience from the perspective of visually impaired people, a tracker-based walking process is designed for determining the walking state by detecting marching in place, and a controller-based VR white cane is developed that serves as the walking assistance tool for visually impaired people. Additionally, a learning model is developed for conducting comprehensive decision-making by recognizing and responding to braille blocks situated on roads that are followed during the course of directions provided by the VR white cane. Based on the same, a VR application comprising an outdoor urban environment is designed for analyzing the VR walking environment experience. An experimental survey and performance analysis were also conducted for the participants. Obtained results corroborate that the proposed VR walking environment provides a presence of high-level walking experience from the perspective of visually impaired people. Furthermore, the results verify that the proposed learning algorithm and process can recognize braille blocks situated on sidewalks and roadways with high accuracy.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.41-56
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• 2020

This study suggests multisensory interaction techniques to help visually impaired people appreciate and understand artworks through non-visual senses such as tactile, auditory, and olfactory senses. A user study was conducted on the basis of a qualitative interview about the experience of appreciating artwork through the multisensory interaction system to visually impaired people so as to verify the development of the interaction techniques. The user test shows that the multisensory interactions in artwork generally not only help them appreciate and understand it but also give them satisfaction through artwork appreciation. However, it also indicates that some multisensory interactions caused the visually impaired people confusion and could not be perceived during the appreciation. On the basis of these outcomes, implications in this study are as follows. This study has contributed to providing specific development guidelines and indicators of non-visual multisensory interactions as a technical alternative to improve accessibility to cultural and artistic activities for the visually impaired. Furthermore, this study is expected to contribute to building a technical background, which can provide comprehensive sensory experiences with not only blind people but also non-blind people such as children and the elderly through universal interaction techniques beyond existing visual-oriented fragmentary experience.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.54-62
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• 2020

According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, "Status of Registered Persons with Disabilities", the number of people with disabilities is 2,494,460 as of 2015. The lowest rates of children with disabilities were intellectual disabilities (23%) and mental disorders (33.3%). The highest rates of screening were blindness (97%), heart failure (94.4%), and hearing impairment (92.7%). 65.2% of visually impaired people who have already had a disability at the time of marriage, and the remaining 34.8% can be thought to be the cause of high incidence of disability after marriage. 'SID (Seed in the Dark)' project was designed to recapture the visually impaired parent's desire for attachment and the space difficulties of the blind who want to be a normal parent to their children through a visual impairment of a father with 7-year-old daughter. Using Gear VR(Virtual Reality), the general public was able to feel the surroundings as if they had no vision and focused on the hearing. Especially, We expressed the sound wave visually and added the hilarious game element which grasps the terrain of the maze by sound wave like a 'blind person who perceives the surroundings by sound' and catches up with daughter. People with disabilities who are far from mental illness often have a form of family with children. The fact that the rate of childbirth is high means that there is relatively little problem in daily life. It is wondered that the rate of blindness among the visually impaired, which accounts for 10% of the total disabled, is the highest at 97%. This is because, in the case of the visually impaired, the obstacle is often caused by aging, accidents, or diseases due to inherited causes rather than the visual disorder. In particular, However, the fact that there is an obstacle in vision that accounts for 83% of the body's sensory organs causes other difficulties in the nursing process of children who are non-disabled. Parents do not know the face of child when their visual impairment is severe. Parents are extremely anxious about worry that they will be lost or abducted if their children are not by their side. And that the child recognizes the disability of his or her parents other than the other parents easily and takes it as a deficiency. Since visually impaired parents are mentally mature parents with non-disabled people, they may want their children not to feel deprived of their disability. The number of people with visual impairments has been increasing since 2001, and people with impairments often become disabled. In addition, there is much research on the problem of nondisabled parents who have children with disabilities, while there is relatively little interest and research on the problem of nondisabled child rearing of parents with disabilities.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.7-15
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• 2016

Purpose: There are the number of color tactile walking surface indicators installed in Korea, because of indefinite regulation in blind and vision-impaired persons' tactile walking surface indicators. In case of yellow tactile walking surface indicators, it shows a deviation severe color. In this study, the researchers suggested color and brightness reference for helping blind and vision-impaired persons' walking through analyzing the color references of tactile walking surface indicators and the color luminance between tactile walking surface indicators and sidewalk currently used. Method: Reasonable luminance contrast criteria is suggested by examining ways of improving the recognition and recognition of objects according to color contrast visually impaired through literature review and analyzing standards of tactile walking surface indicators and the Europe, Japan and Australia of color and luminance contrast criteria. And by examining the color of the tactile walking surface indicators reported in Korea currently used to derive the problem presented by the luminance contrast in the reference and comparison. Finally, the visually impaired tactile walking surface indicators is set for color selection criteria for the recognition rate improves. Results: In order to improve the recognition rate to be tactile walking surface indicators of the contrast of the visually impaired and the environment than the color of the tactile walking surface indicators itself to secure always a certain level or more of brightness contrast values in the set of the color of the tactile walking surface indicators so important. Implication: In order to set the blind tactile walking surface indicators color recognition based on the verification of the real pedestrian based on the results presented in this paper it is required. It is to be understood as an element of the barrier free configuration for securing the walking pedestrian safety.

• 재활복지
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.75-93
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• 2014

This study attempted to verify the impacts of the level of satisfaction in the user of alternative materials among people with visual impairment on their social participation, and the mediation effect of self-efficacy during such process. The subject of the study was the visually impaired who were live in Gyeonggi Province and were registered in the Korea Blind Union. The data of final 120 participants through a telephone survey were analyzed. The subject of the study used the recorded materials the most for the purpose of leisure and information research mainly at the braille library. The analysis of the mediation effect demonstrated that the level of satisfaction in the user of alternative materials among people with visual impairment had a statistically significant influence on social participation, and self-efficacy had a full mediation effect. These results imply the importance of alternative materials to assure the right to information access which can ultimately expand the social engagement of the visually impaired. Based on these study results, political suggestions are proposed to vitalize alternative materials in the future.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.117-122
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• 2023

This paper introduces the improved and expanded contents of the previous research that implemented a system that guides the visually impaired using the vibration of a smart watch. In the previous study, we proposed an algorithm that recommends the most safe route based on calculating negative and positive values for the topography of the route and the features installed on the route. In addition, by designing several vibration patterns, a system that guides the user through vibration was proposed and implemented. In this paper, the user's personal preferences are reflected in the algorithm that recommends the safe route first. In addition, an automatic feedback function was added to the algorithm so that the user's satisfaction evaluation on the recommended route was immediately reflected. A history simulation function was added so that the past route could be reviewed, and the compass of a smart watch was used to help visually impaired people find directions at junctions.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.366-372
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• 2016

This paper advances the software, hardware and mechanical design that the visually impaired can recognize the position and distance of the obstacle while walking. The first software implementation is proposed a method to implement the algorithm graph for the ratio of the distance measuring ultrasonic sensors for voltage. And it was extracted by the precise distance measuring parameter values from simulation to measure the precise distance. Second hardware implementation was designed to be able to detect obstacles in a relatively simple sensor-based walking aid for the visually impaired. In addition, using the switching regulator IC of high performance it was designed to be used to boost the Li-ion battery 3.7V to 5V. The third mechanism was developed by analyzing the sensor angle and the cane angle.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.10
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• pp.1-10
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• 2022

Visually impaired people have very difficulty using retail stores due to the absence of braille information on products and any other support system. In this paper, we propose a basic algorithm for a system that recognizes products in retail stores and explains them as a voice. First, the deep learning model detects hand objects and product objects in the input image. Then, it finds a product object that most overlapping hand object by comparing the coordinate information of each detected object. We determine that this is a product selected by the user, and the system read the nutritional information of the product as Text-To-Speech. As a result of the evaluation, we confirmed a high performance of the learning model. The proposed algorithm can be actively used to build a system that supports the use of retail stores for the visually impaired.