• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.311-323
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• 2021

Objective: The disabled are in a blind spot for obtaining information on drugs, and the pharmacies' counseling on drug use is centered on non-disabled people. Few studies have investigated the current statuses of drug use by type of disability. The purpose of this study is to understand the drug use by type of disability and by life cycle of visually impaired and hearing impaired in Korea. Methods: The study participants consisted of 16 people with visually impairments, 12 people with hearing impairments. One in-depth interview was conducted per participant, and each interview was recorded and documented. Results: Common barriers against safe medication and medical service uses across disability types are 'lack of consideration and service for the disabled, limited access to medical facilities due to disability, limited access to information regarding medication use, psychological anxiety about drug use and side effects, and inconvenience regarding COVID-19 epidemic. The specific factors were 'difficulties in identifying proper medicines and following prescribed dosages' in the case of visually impaired, and 'problems with sign language interpretation system' for the hearing impaired. Conclusion: Disabled people are hindered from using medicines properly due to various factors. Based on the content derived from this study, it is necessary to eliminate the inhibition factors and devise specific measures for the safety of each type of disorder such as developing a method for medication counseling considering disabilities and establishing communication support systems.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.69-83
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• 2013

This paper aims to determine the preference and use of electronic information and resources by blind/visually impaired users in the leading National Capital Region (NCR) libraries of India. Survey methodology has been used as the basic research tool for data collection with the help of questionnaires. The 125 in total users surveyed in all the five libraries were selected randomly on the basis of willingness of the users with experience of working in digital environments to participate in the survey. The survey results were tabulated and analyzed with descriptive statistics methods using Excel software and 'Stata version 11'. The findings reveal that ICT have a positive impact in the lives of people with disabilities as it helps them to work independently and increases the level of confidence among them. The Internet is the most preferred medium of access to information among the majority of blind/visually impaired users. The 'Complexity of content available on the net' is found as the major challenge faced during Internet use by blind users of NCR libraries. 'Audio books on CDs/DVDs and DAISY books' are the most preferred electronic resources among the majority of blind/visually impaired users. This study will help the library professionals and organizations/institutions serving people with disabilities to develop effective library services for blind/visually impaired users in the digital environment on the basis of findings on information usage behavior in the study.

• 한국HCI학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.02a
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• pp.251-255
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• 2008

We have developed an electronic aids, called SmartWand, which can help visually impaired people walk safely and tell them an object's color and environmental brightness SmartWand can inform visually impaired people of the dangerous obstacles around which they can't notice by the white cane such as a large panel with supporting poles on the street. Especially we have lmproved the previous version of SmartWand by reflecting the result of user study.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.201-208
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• 2023

Visually impaired people have difficulty accessing medical services and drug information, and it is not easy for them to take the correct drugs. A health law has been established to deal with this, but the plans are not unified and not applicable to all over-the-counter medicines. Therefore, we planned an application that provides instructions for taking general medicines using image recognition technology, bar code, and QR recognition technology for visually impaired people who are in the blind spot of taking general medicines. In this research, we will optimize the camera shooting environment standards and UI and UX screens for image recognition for the visually impaired, and improve the accessibility for the visually impaired to make it more convenient. If you can apply the results of your research to an application and provide it, it will help people with visual impairments learn the correct way to take over-the-counter medicines.

• 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.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.14 no.8
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• pp.3270-3294
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• 2020

Some things come easily to humans, one of them is the ability to navigate around. This capability of navigation suffers significantly in case of partial or complete blindness, restricting life activity. Advances in the technological landscape have given way to new solutions aiding navigation for the visually impaired. In this paper, we analyze the existing works and identify the challenges of path selection, context awareness, obstacle detection/identification and integration of visual and nonvisual information associated with real-time assisted mobility. In the process, we explore machine learning approaches for robotic path planning, multi constrained optimal path computation and sensor based wearable assistive devices for the visually impaired. It is observed that the solution to problem is complex and computationally intensive and significant effort is required towards the development of richer and comfortable paths for safe and smooth navigation of visually impaired people. We cannot overlook to explore more effective strategies of acquiring surrounding information towards autonomous mobility.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.205-208
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• 2024

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has evolved rapidly in recent years and is used in everything from banking to email management to surgery, but without the help of the visible, most of the fun features of the Internet include visual impairment. It benefits people with disabilities. The main purpose of this study is to find ways to help people with visual impairments using AI technology. A visually impaired request is made for the visually impaired. For example, when a message arrives that the program will notify you by voice (reads the sender's name, read the message, and replies to it if necessary), this is a special program installed on your mobile phone. This program uses a customized algorithm developed in Python to convert written text to voice, read text, and convert voice to written text on a message when a visually impaired person wants to respond. Then it sends the response in the form of a text message. Therefore, the research should lead to programs for people with visual impairments. This program makes mobile phones easier and more comfortable to use and makes the daily life easier for visual impairments.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.65 no.12
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• pp.2138-2144
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• 2016

People with visual disabilities suffer environmentally, socially, and technologically. Navigating through places and recognizing objects are already a big challenge for them who require assistance. This study aimed to develop an android-based assistive application for the visually impaired. Specifically, the study aimed to create a system that could aid visually impaired individuals performs significant tasks through object recognition and identifying locations through GPS and Google Maps. In this study, the researchers used an android phone allowing a visually impaired individual to go from one place to another with the aid of the application. Google Maps is integrated to utilize GPS in identifying locations and giving distance directions and the system has a cloud server used for storing pinned locations. Furthermore, Haar-like features were used in object recognition.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.35-41
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• 2017

We propose a face recognition and notification system that can transform visual face information into tactile signals in order to help visually impaired people. The proposed system consists of a glasses type camera, a mobile computer and an electronic cane. The glasses type camera captures the frontal view of the user, and sends this image to mobile computer. The mobile computer starts to search for human's face in the image when obstacles are detected by ultrasonic sensors. In a case that human's face is detected, the mobile computer identifies detected face. At this time, Adaboost and compressive sensing are used as a detector and a classifier, respectively. After the identification procedures of the detected face, the identified face information is sent to controller attached to a cane using a Bluetooth communication. The controller generates motor control signals using Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) according to the recognized face labels. The vibration motor generates vibration patterns to inform the visually impaired person of the face recognition result. The experimental results of face recognition and notification system show that proposed system is helpful for visually impaired people by providing person identification results in front of him/her.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.1329-1338
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• 2021

There are rarely effective methods to help visually impaired people when they want to know the expiration date of products excepted to only Braille. In this study, we developed an expiration date notification system based on YOLO and OCR for visually impaired people. The handicapped people can automatically know the expiration date of a specific product by using our system without the help of a caregiver, fast and accurately. The proposed system is worked by four different steps: (1) identification of a target product by scanning its barcode; (2) segmentation of an image area with the expiration date using YOLO; (3) classification of the expiration date by OCR: (4) notification of the expiration date by TTS. Our system showed an average classification accuracy of about 86.00% when blindfolded subjects used the proposed system in real-time. This result validates that the proposed system can be potentially used for visually impaired people.