Mobile system to assist the teaching of geography for persons with visual impairments

Author: Dagna Turant

The purpose of this engineering thesis was to build a flexible system providing sound support for hypsometric maps. The system consists of two applications. The desktop application assists the sighted user at preparing the map. It helps creating map-related data like map legend and location of cities and rivers and preprocesses the image. The mobile application targets persons with visual impairments. The application represents the graphical map data in the audio form using both sound of different frequencies to communicate the elevation change and speech synthesis to announce cities and rivers. The user can also learn about the distance between two given cities which is communicated by the synthesizer after the cities have been tapped. Another feature is zoom, which enables enlarging a given area of the map. Application at the zoomed state provides the user with more data about a given area. The mobile application was tested by blindfolded users and received positive feedback.
The desktop application was written using JavaFx technology. The mobile application was written in Java for the Android platform.

More info:

Skulimowski Piotr, Turant Dagna; “Mobilny system wspomagający naukę geografii dla osób z niepełnosprawnością wzroku, s.418-423”, XVI Krajowa Konferencja Elektroniki KKE 2017.Darłowo, 2017, Przegląd Elektrotechniczny, 2017, rocznik 2017, nr 8, s. 124-126; ISSN: 0033-2097.

Mobile system aiding visually impaired in mathematics learning

Author: Izabela Borowiecka

The aim of the thesis was to develop a method to sound graphs of linear function and its implementation in mobile system aiding mathematics learning. The application is for visually impaired and blind people, therefore all available options are presented by voice communications. The major feature is to express graph of linear function, which coefficient are selected by user, with sound. Moving finger along the graph, generate high frequency tone and activate vibrations, as it moves away, the frequency reduced twice until generate and vibrate are stopped. In addition, pointing on axes causes generating low frequency tones. User also may get a feedback information about point: its coordinates and the information, if the graph contains the point.
Application is written in Java and it is available for mobile devices with Android operating system. The program has been tested by sighted and blind people. A positive feedback was given by testers, so application was done well.

More info:

I. Borowiecka, P. Skulimowski, M. Bujacz, A. Radecki, P. Strumiłło; “Interaktywna sonifikacja obrazów dla niewidomych – badania pilotażowe“, Przegląd Elektrotechniczny, ISSN 0033-2097, e-ISSN 2449-9544, nr 9, s. 98-101, 2016.