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Top1. Introduction
According to the overview report distributed by the World Health Organization (WHO), there are over 230 million visually impaired people with 37 million blind people (WHO, 2011). Therefore there would be a persistent need for assistive services for blind individuals. Modern assistive approaches such as White Canes and Guide Dogs are most common. Nonetheless, they do not include information about the external environment that a person with normal vision usually perceives. Scientists have built various portable or wearable assistive devices to support the VI in indoor or outdoor environments. To overcome the lack of vision issue, researchers developed multiple systems which can be categorized into (Varpe & Dhore, 2020; Manjari, et al. 2020; Tapu, et al. 2018; Proença, et al. 2013):
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Assistive technology programs: It works on off-the-shelf computers. It can enlarge the text in a web browser, a word processor, an e-mail program, or any other application. Besides, it is possible to utter the text on the screen.
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Standalone products: The e-book player is one of the various independent tools that can be used within this category. It supplies portable access to books, appointment calendars, phone numbers, and more products designed mainly to help visually impaired people.
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Optical Character Recognition systems (OCR): It scans the printed material and converts it to text then the text is converted to speech. Braille embossers can generate printed material using the Braille writing system.
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Wearable devices for Blind: It is a much-underused form of natural interaction in the real world. Some examples may include mobile devices, bracelets, hand watches, and smart glasses. It is flexible to use for visually impaired or blind, as well as the sighted people who can have visual information seamlessly and quickly.
Technology has overcome many barriers to employment and education for visually impaired people. They can do research, complete homework, take exams, and read books along with their sighted classmates. Visually impaired adults can continue to work and join an enormous range of jobs due to the development of many technical devices and special equipment. A growing number of specialized tools and software are available for use by VI persons. Much effort and research are being devoted to caring for the lifestyles of the blind and the visually impaired. Recognition and reading devices could make tablets, smartphones, and smart glasses as an essential agent to help visually impaired people (Varpe & Dhore, 2020; Manjari, et al. 2020).
Several tools used by visually impaired or blind people for accessing electronic information or accessing print are also used for writing. For example, if you use a computer, you will be able to write using a word-processing program with a refreshable braille display, a screen-reading program, or a screen magnifier to read what you have just written. Another approach of “writing” is dictating information to an audio recording device or talking to a computer with a voice recognition software instead of writing or typing in print (Tapu, et al. 2018).
Moreover, a screen magnification system can be employed to increase graphics and text on a computer screen. It is loaded into the computer memory and functions like a magnifying glass moving on a page, following the cursor, and enlarging the area around it. Using keyboard commands or a mouse, a user locates the cursor on the part of the screen to be enlarged or has the cursor move automatically across and down an enlarged page at a preset speed. Full-featured screen magnifiers can enlarge all items on a screen such as text cursor, mouse pointer, buttons, icons, title bars, and support a group of mouse tracking features (Maus, et al. 2020).
Visually impaired people may not use a screen magnification program. They may need a larger monitor that lets for larger graphics or text while maintaining all material on the screen. This is done by lowering the screen resolution so that larger pixels are used. Lately, screen reader manufacturers have used the text-to-speech output to their products. This supports people with low vision to use a mixture of magnification and text-to-speech conversion. A screen reader may be a better choice if a user needs a voice output or is about to lose sight (Maus, et al. 2020).