Towards Smartphone-Based Navigation for Visually Impaired People

Mobility – the ability of users to navigate from one point to another and the environmental awareness – knowing about one’s surroundings (indoor and outdoor) are some of the challenging tasks for blind people. They either rely on their human companions for navigation or traditional/technological assistive solutions including a guide dog, white cane and electronic travel and orientation aids. It is the position put forward here that these solutions are either too much expensive to afford (e.g., human guide and guide dogs), limited in offering full navigational support (e.g., white cane), or also costly in adopting them as they need customizations in the targeted building. To mitigate this issue, low-cost smartphone-based solutions can be developed that exploit color and text/pattern recognition algorithms to sense objects, buildings, and important landmarks to aid blind users in mobility, navigation, and environmental awareness. This position paper uncovers such possibilities and proposes one possible solution that may open new avenues of research and development in making the life of blind users much easier especially in mobility, navigation, and obtaining information about their surroundings.