scholarly journals Multi-Sensory Color Expression with Sound and Temperature in Visual Arts Appreciation for People with Visual Impairment

Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1336
Author(s):  
Jorge Iranzo Bartolome ◽  
Gilsang Cho ◽  
Jun-Dong Cho
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Sensory System ◽  
Sensory Substitution ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Multimodal Systems ◽  
Impaired People ◽  
Sound Color ◽  
Sensory Color ◽  
Musical Sounds

For years the HCI community’s research has been focused on the hearing and sight senses. However, in recent times, there has been an increased interest in using other types of senses, such as smell or touch. Moreover, this has been accompanied with growing research related to sensory substitution techniques and multi-sensory systems. Similarly, contemporary art has also been influenced by this trend and the number of artists interested in creating novel multi-sensory works of art has increased substantially. As a result, the opportunities for visually impaired people to experience artworks in different ways are also expanding. In spite of all this, the research focusing on multimodal systems for experiencing visual arts is not large and user tests comparing different modalities and senses, particularly in the field of art, are insufficient. This paper attempts to design a multi-sensory mapping to convey color to visually impaired people employing musical sounds and temperature cues. Through user tests and surveys with a total of 18 participants, we show that this multi-sensory system is properly designed to allow the user to distinguish and experience a total of 24 colors. The tests consist of several semantic correlational adjective-based surveys for comparing the different modalities to find out the best way to express colors through musical sounds and temperature cues based on previously well-established sound-color and temperature-color coding algorithms. In addition, the resulting final algorithm is also tested with 12 more users.

scholarly journals Improving the Audio Game–Playing Performances of People with Visual Impairments through Multimodal Training

2017 ◽  
Vol 111 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oana Bălan ◽  
Alin Moldoveanu ◽  
Florica Moldoveanu ◽  
Hunor Nagy ◽  
György Wersényi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sound Localization ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Visual Impairments ◽  
Sensory Substitution ◽  
Training Procedure ◽  
3D Audio ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Impaired People ◽  
Haptic Learning

Introduction As the number of people with visual impairments (that is, those who are blind or have low vision) is continuously increasing, rehabilitation and engineering researchers have identified the need to design sensory-substitution devices that would offer assistance and guidance to these people for performing navigational tasks. Auditory and haptic cues have been shown to be an effective approach towards creating a rich spatial representation of the environment, so they are considered for inclusion in the development of assistive tools that would enable people with visual impairments to acquire knowledge of the surrounding space in a way close to the visually based perception of sighted individuals. However, achieving efficiency through a sensory substitution device requires extensive training for visually impaired users to learn how to process the artificial auditory cues and convert them into spatial information. Methods Considering all the potential advantages game-based learning can provide, we propose a new method for training sound localization and virtual navigational skills of visually impaired people in a 3D audio game with hierarchical levels of difficulty. The training procedure is focused on a multimodal (auditory and haptic) learning approach in which the subjects have been asked to listen to 3D sounds while simultaneously perceiving a series of vibrations on a haptic headband that corresponds to the direction of the sound source in space. Results The results we obtained in a sound-localization experiment with 10 visually impaired people showed that the proposed training strategy resulted in significant improvements in auditory performance and navigation skills of the subjects, thus ensuring behavioral gains in the spatial perception of the environment.

scholarly journals Thermal Interaction for Improving Tactile Artwork Depth and Color-Depth Appreciation for Visually Impaired People

Electronics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 1939
Author(s):  
Jorge Iranzo Bartolomé ◽  
Jun Dong Cho ◽  
Luis Cavazos Quero ◽  
Sunggi Jo ◽  
Gilsang Cho
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Algorithm Design ◽  
Art Appreciation ◽  
Thermal Interaction ◽  
Mapping Algorithm ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Multimodal Systems ◽  
Impaired People ◽  
Color Depth

Visually impaired people can take advantage of multimodal systems in which visual information is communicated through different modes of interaction and types of feedback. Among the possible interaction modes, thermal interaction in the context of assistive devices for visually impaired people lacks research in spite of its potential. In this paper, we propose a temperature-depth mapping algorithm and a thermal display system to convey depth and depth-color of artworks’ features in the context of tactile exploration by visually impaired people. Tests with a total of 18 sighted users and six visually impaired users were performed both during the mapping algorithm design and after developing a tactile temperature prototype artwork model to assess the potentials of thermal interaction for recognizing depth and color-depth in tactile art appreciation. These tests showed both an existing correlation between depth and temperature and that the mapping based on that correlation is appropriate for conveying depth during artwork tactile exploration.

scholarly journals Sensory Substitution for the Visually Impaired: A Study on the Usability of the Sound of Vision System in Outdoor Environments

Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (14) ◽  
pp. 1619
Author(s):  
Otilia Zvorișteanu ◽  
Simona Caraiman ◽  
Robert-Gabriel Lupu ◽  
Nicolae Alexandru Botezatu ◽  
Adrian Burlacu
Keyword(s):  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Haptic Feedback ◽  
Vision System ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Sensory Substitution ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Impaired People ◽  
Outdoor Environments ◽  
White Cane

For most visually impaired people, simple tasks such as understanding the environment or moving safely around it represent huge challenges. The Sound of Vision system was designed as a sensory substitution device, based on computer vision techniques, that encodes any environment in a naturalistic representation through audio and haptic feedback. The present paper presents a study on the usability of this system for visually impaired people in relevant environments. The aim of the study is to assess how well the system is able to help the perception and mobility of the visually impaired participants in real life environments and circumstances. The testing scenarios were devised to allow the assessment of the added value of the Sound of Vision system compared to traditional assistive instruments, such as the white cane. Various data were collected during the tests to allow for a better evaluation of the performance: system configuration, completion times, electro-dermal activity, video footage, user feedback. With minimal training, the system could be successfully used in outdoor environments to perform various perception and mobility tasks. The benefit of the Sound of Vision device compared to the white cane was confirmed by the participants and by the evaluation results to consist in: providing early feedback about static and dynamic objects, providing feedback about elevated objects, walls, negative obstacles (e.g., holes in the ground) and signs.

scholarly journals Visual Echolocation Concept for the Colorophone Sensory Substitution Device Using Virtual Reality

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 237
Author(s):  
Patrycja Bizoń-Angov ◽  
Dominik Osiński ◽  
Michał Wierzchoń ◽  
Jarosław Konieczny
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Evaluation System ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Sensory Substitution ◽  
Assistive Device ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Impaired People ◽  
3D Information ◽  
Distance Position ◽  
2D And 3D

Detecting characteristics of 3D scenes is considered one of the biggest challenges for visually impaired people. This ability is nonetheless crucial for orientation and navigation in the natural environment. Although there are several Electronic Travel Aids aiming at enhancing orientation and mobility for the blind, only a few of them combine passing both 2D and 3D information, including colour. Moreover, existing devices either focus on a small part of an image or allow interpretation of a mere few points in the field of view. Here, we propose a concept of visual echolocation with integrated colour sonification as an extension of Colorophone—an assistive device for visually impaired people. The concept aims at mimicking the process of echolocation and thus provides 2D, 3D and additionally colour information of the whole scene. Even though the final implementation will be realised by a 3D camera, it is first simulated, as a proof of concept, by using VIRCO—a Virtual Reality training and evaluation system for Colorophone. The first experiments showed that it is possible to sonify colour and distance of the whole scene, which opens up a possibility to implement the developed algorithm on a hardware-based stereo camera platform. An introductory user evaluation of the system has been conducted in order to assess the effectiveness of the proposed solution for perceiving distance, position and colour of the objects placed in Virtual Reality.

scholarly journals Software Design for Low-Latency Visuo-Auditory Sensory Substitution on Mobile Devices

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Maxime Ambard
Keyword(s):  
Software Design ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Video Stream ◽  
Sensory Substitution ◽  
Low Latency ◽  
Moving Obstacles ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Auditory Transduction ◽  
Impaired People

Visuo-auditory sensory substitution devices transform a video stream into an audio stream to help visually impaired people in situations where spatial information is required, such as avoiding moving obstacles. In these particular situations, the latency between an event in the real world and its auditory transduction is of paramount importance. In this article, we describe an optimized software architecture for low-latency video-to-audio transduction using current mobile hardware. We explain step-by-step the required computations and we report the corresponding measured latencies. The whole latency is approximately 65 ms with a capture resolution of 160 × 120 at 30 frames-per-second and 1000 sonified pixels per frame.

Application of IoT Based Stick for Visually Impaired People in CVIS System

CICTP 2020 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ammar Muhammad ◽  
Qizhou Hu ◽  
Muhammad Tayyab ◽  
Yikai Wu ◽  
Muhammad Ahtsham
Keyword(s):  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Impaired People

Widening the horizons: Information space of the library for the blind as the resource to improve quality of life of visually impaired people

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Novikova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Continuing Education ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Information Space ◽  
Advanced Training ◽  
Improve Quality ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Impaired People ◽  
Special Library

The special library acts as the cultural and educational center for visually impaired people, and as the center for continuing education. The multifunctional performance of the library is substantiated. The joint projects accomplished in cooperation with theatres and museums and aimed at integrating the visually impaired people into the society are described. Advanced training projects for the library professionals accomplished in 2018 are discussed.

Touching Blind Bodies: A Critical Inquiry into Pedagogical and Cultural Constructions of Visual Disability in the Nineteenth Century

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Tilley ◽  
Jan Eric Olsén
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Blind People ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Visual Disability ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Educational Challenges ◽  
Impaired People ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Cultural Constructions

Changing ideas on the nature of and relationship between the senses in nineteenth-century Europe constructed blindness as a disability in often complex ways. The loss or absence of sight was disabling in this period, given vision’s celebrated status, and visually impaired people faced particular social and educational challenges as well as cultural stereotyping as poor, pitiable and intellectually impaired. However, the experience of blind people also came to challenge received ideas that the visual was the privileged mode of accessing information about the world, and contributed to an increasingly complex understanding of the tactile sense. In this chapter, we consider how changing theories of the senses helped shape competing narratives of identity for visually impaired people in the nineteenth century, opening up new possibilities for the embodied experience of blind people by impressing their sensory ability, rather than lack thereof. We focus on a theme that held particular social and cultural interest in nineteenth-century accounts of blindness: travel and geography.

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