• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.119-133
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• 2022

Due to the improvement of surveying, mapping and communication techniques, various apps for road direction guides and vehicle navigations have been developed. Although such a development has impacted on walking and driving, there is a limit to improving the daily convenience of the socially impaired people. This is mainly due to the fact that the software have been developed for normal pedestrians and drivers. Therefore, visually impaired people still have problems with the confusion of direction and/or non-provision of risk factors in walking. This study aimed to propose a scheme which constructs data for mobility-impaired or traffic-impaired people based on various geospatial information. The factors and components related to walking for the visually impaired are selected by geospatial data and a walking route guidance network that can be applied to a commercial software. As a result, it was confirmed that road direction guidance would be possible if additional contents, such as braille blocks (dotted/linear), sound signals, bus stops, and bollards are secured. In addition, an initial version of the application software was implemented based on the suggested data model and its usefulness was evaluated to a visually impaired person. To advance the stability of the service in walking for the visually impaired people, various geospatial data obtained by multiple institutes are necessary to be combined, and various sensors and voice technologies are required to be connected and utilized through ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) technology in near future.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2012.06d
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• pp.79-81
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• 2012

Nowadays as smartphones are becoming increasingly popular, smartphone applications are making people's life much more convenient than before. In the past, various forms of technology were developed to help visually impaired people. So the idea of how the prevalent smartphone applications could help the visually impaired to make their life better came into our mind. In this paper, we describe an application aiming at meeting the visually impaired people's basic needs in their daily life. Our application includes three basic functions, a new way of calling, date and time prompt, and emergency use.

• 한국디지털정책학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.229-244
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• 2004

The purpose of this paper is to find the method to improve the web accessibility of Korean Government's web sites through the investigation on the evaluation result of visually impaired people and the accessibility evaluation tool. Twenty five Korean Governments' web sites are chosen for this experiment. First, all of the sites are evaluated by accessibility evaluation tool (A-Prompt) based on Priority one of the Web Contents Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 of W3C. Second, three visually impaired people tried to find information or resister for the sites to check the accessibility. All of the sites are failed to conform to WCAG 1.0 and most of those are not accessible to information. The last part of this paper presents the method to improve the web accessibility of the Government's web sites.

• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.186-200
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• 2023

This study aims to improve the usability of the white cane, which is walking equipment that most local visually impaired people use and carry when going out, and to contribute to the prevention of safety accidents and the walking rights of visually impaired people by providing improvement and resolution measures for the problems identified. Also, this study is a study on the visually impaired, primarily targeting the 1st to 2nd degree visually impaired people, who cannot go out on their own without walking equipment such as a white cane, corresponding to 20% among approximately 250,000 blind and low vision people in the Korean population. In the study process, the concept has been developed from the user's point of view in order that the white cane becomes a real help in the walking step of the visually impaired and the improvement of usability of the white cane, the main walking equipment for the visually impaired, are done by problem identification through the Double Diamond Model of Design Thinking (Empathize → Define → Ideate → Prototype → Test (verify)). As a result of the investigation in the process of Empathy, a total of five issues was synthesized, including an increase in the proportion of the visually impaired people, an insufficient workforce situation to help all the visually impaired, an improvement and advancement of assistive devices essential for the visually impaired, problems of damage, illegal occupation, demolition, maintenance about braille blocks, making braille block paradigms for the visually impaired and for everyone. In Ideate and Prototype steps, situations derived from brainstorming were grouped and the relationship were made through the KJ method, and specific situations and major causes were organized to establish the direction of the concept. The derived solutions and major functions are defined in four categories, and representative situations requiring solutions and major functions are organized into two user scenarios. Ideas were visualized by arranging the virtual Persona and Customer Journey Map according to the situation and producing a prototype through 3D modeling. Finally, in the evaluation, the final concept derived is a device such a smart cane for guidance for the visually impaired as ① a smart cane emphasizing portability + ② compatibility with other electronic devices + ③ a product with safety and convenience.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.92-104
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• 2021

Purpose: This study aimed to understand and describe the diabetes self-management experience of visually impaired people with diabetes. Methods: Ten participants were recruited through a website used by the visually impaired from February to March 2020. Data were collected through two focus group interviews conducted in June 2020; each group consisted of five participants. All interviews were recorded with the consent of the participants and transcribed verbatim. The transcribed data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results: Seven categories were as follows; a two-faced, lifelong companion, an unprepared encounter, struggle to live, love-hate relationship with family, strategies to adapt, lessening attention to self-management, the desire to learn properly. Conclusion: It can be concluded that the visually impaired have fewer opportunities for receiving diabetes self-management education than general diabetic patients. Consequently, plans to improve the education available to such patients are required. Additionally, psychological counseling and diabetes education for patients' families are necessary, and improving the perception of medical workers regarding the visually impaired will be prove useful.

• 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.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.7
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• pp.664-673
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• 2015

The assistive devices for disabled people are being highlighted even in industrial aspects through the policy and support for disabled people, enactment of regulation for the improvement of accessibility of disabled, technological innovation and product development. Recently, internet access with the sense of touch and hearing and utilizing electronic publishing contents and e-mailing are being convenient through the product of ICT development such as screen reader for visually impaired people, braille display, screen enlarger, text converter and others. Even so, in rapidly changing digital media smart era, the accessibility of visually impaired people is still poor and assistive devices and alternative formats are in need of improvement. Therefore, in aspect of the research and development innovation, this study proposes the implementation directions for improvement of accessibility by analyzing the current situation and structure of alternative formats and assistive devices for visually impaired people. As a result, in the future, various types of digital information are expected to be converted into a customized and realistic forms and distributed through a dedicated disability products or smart devices.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2013.05a
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• pp.93-95
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• 2013

The conventional assistive tool for visually impaired people provide Simple service using a ultrasound, or an RFID tag to identify the obstacles. It is impossible to clear guide and has a vulnerability to unforeseen circumstances because of short recognition distance, The ARM Cortex-A9 Platform based implementation of the Portable Navigation System and Service Center will help the visually impaired gait. The Service Center will also provide solution for the lack of jobs due to the increase of the aging population. Navigation System that the visually impaired can carry possessing devices such as a camera, GPS, Audio, Ethernet transmit Image shown at the location of the visually impaired, GPS information and Sound Via TCP / IP. The staff of the service center receives information and can provide directions by communicating with them. So, the system can provide effective guidance to the visually impaired.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.10
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• pp.131-135
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• 2017

We developed a portable card reader for the visually impaired. In South Korea, there is insufficient development of lifestyle aids for people with disabilities. Living aids for people with disabilities are being developed using information technology, smart phones, Internet of Things(IoT) devices, 3D printers, and so on. Blind people were interviewed, which showed that the card recognition function using a currently developed smart phone app was not able to recognize the screen of the smart phone by the hand of the visually impaired, and it was inconvenient to operate. In recent years, devices that enable the visually impaired to recognize cards have been studied in foreign countries and are emerging prototypes. But what is currently available is expensive and inconvenient. In addition, visually impaired people are most vulnerable to low-income families, which makes it difficult to purchase and use expensive devices. In this study, we developed a card reader that recognizes a card using a Raspberry Pi, which is an open-source hardware that can be applied to IoT. The card reader plays it by voice and vibration, and the visually impaired can use it at a low price.

• 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.