Tele-guidance based navigation system for the visually impaired and blind persons

Abstract The design and development of tele-assistance services have taken a great consideration in the domain of healthcare lately. With the growing proportion of dependent people (ageing, disabled users) in the society, tele-assistance and tele-monitoring platforms will play a significant role to provide an efficient and economical remote care. It will allow aged or disabled persons to maintain their independence and lessen the burden and cost of care by caregivers. The concept of proposed tele-guidance system is based on the idea that a blind pedestrian can be assisted by spoken instructions from a remote caregiver who receives a live video stream from a camera carried by the visually impaired persons (VIP). The ICT based assistive tools have acceptance issues by visually impaired persons. It is important while designing navigation tools for the VIP to keep in view the factors that restrain them from the adoption of assistive technology. This paper presents a tele-guidance based navigation assistance system for the VIP and blind persons and reports a qualitative study about attitude of VIP towards technological navigation assistance