An exploration of navigation technologies for visually challenged students at a university

Abstract

Education is an important aspect of individual life and key to the region’s development. Education of disabled people has long been regarded as an area of concern. Visually disabled people struggle with a myriad of challenges for education. These challenges can be attributed to the absence of an enabling environment. The environment should provide them with proper facilities to get the education and also tools to navigate without any discomfort. Navigation in an unfamiliar environment is the common problem faced by visually impaired people. Earlier navigation in an outdoor environment was a challenge for visually disabled. With introduction of technologies like GPS (Global positioning system) it is no longer a challenging task. A GPS voice enabled smart phone will be able to do turn-by-turn navigation. A small application, Google Maps[2] with GPS Tracker on your mobile uploads your GPS position periodically over either General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) or 3G, which updates your position on a moving Google Map. GPS locates and identifies major landmarks encountered by the users and typically do not work indoors. There should be a technology to overcome this problem of indoor navigation for visually impaired. This paper studies the different technologies available for outdoor navigation, the pros and cons of each technology and proposes an ideal/best fit solution for indoor navigation in an environment like a University.