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Contemporary urban and regional planning practice and scholarship often fails to address the full implications of technological change (technology blindness), lacks a clear or consistent definition of the long term (temporal imprecision) and seldom uses formal foresight methodologies. Discussion in the literature of time horizons beyond 10 years is, therefore, based on profoundly unrealistic assumptions about the future. The paper aims to discuss why conventional reasoning about possible futures is problematic, how consideration of long-term timescales is informal and inconsistent and why accelerating technological change requires that planners rethink basic assumptions about the future from 2030s onward.

The author reviews 1,287 articles published between January 2010 and December 2014 in three emblematic urban and regional planning journals using directed content analysis of key phrases pertaining to long-term planning, futures studies and self-driving cars.

The author finds that there is no evidence of consistent usage of the phrase long term, that timeframes are defined in fewer than 10 per cent of articles and that self-driving cars and related phrases occur nowhere in the text, even though this technology is likely to radically transform urban transportation and form starting in the early 2020s. Despite its importance, discussion of disruptive technological change in the urban and regional planning literature is extremely limited.

To make more realistic projections of the future from the late 2020s onward, planning practitioners and scholars should: attend more closely to the academic and public technology discourses; specify explicit timeframes in any discussion or analysis of the future; and incorporate methods from futures studies such as foresight approaches into long-term planning.

This paper identifies accelerating technological change as a major conceptual gap in the urban and regional planning literature and calls for practitioners and scholars to rethink their foundational assumptions about the long-term and possible, probable and preferable futures accordingly.

This chapter outlines the progression in the development of educational settings and services for students with visual impairments over the past several hundred years. Information is provided that explains how the education systems have advanced to the present state for students who are blind or have low vision. An explanation of the professionals who support the unique disability-specific needs of students with visual impairments in inclusive settings is also presented. This chapter concludes with a discussion of current issues related to the inclusion of students with visual impairments including personnel shortages, technological developments, and unemployment rates.

The purpose of this paper is to share the IT‐based experience of the first tele‐ophthalmology initiative in infant blindness prevention set up to serve rural India.

The paper describes the two‐plus years of experience of the “Karnataka Internet Assisted Diagnosis of Retinopathy of Prematurity (KIDROP) initiative” pioneered by one of the leading private tertiary eye care providers in India, Narayana Nethralaya Postgraduate Institute of Ophthalmology, Bangalore. KIDROP was the first tele‐ophthalmology initiative in the world to use trained non‐physicians (“trained technicians”) to capture images of the retinas of infants a few weeks old for a potentially blinding condition called retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) and validated them to store, process and analyze those images at the rural centre itself. In addition, these images were uploaded to a specially customized software‐hardware platform that allowed remotely situated experts to view these images and report real time either on a PC or on their smart phones. The success of this private initiative paved the way for the first public‐private partnership in infant blindness prevention in India which is poised for a statewide and subsequent nationwide expansion.

In a country like India, where experts are few and far between and found mostly in the big cities, the human ability of “image processing” allows non‐physicians to quickly gain the expertise to screen seemingly difficult cases by using the medium of digital images and a logical algorithm of triage. With an increasing caseload of these conditions, the standard of care can be delivered to the most underserved of areas with this little IT‐based innovation served with dollops of passion.

The experience of KIDROP is being used as a cornerstone for similar tele‐ophthalmology programs in India and other developing countries with similar demographics. A case for propagating the innovation as an example of “reverse innovation” for more developed economies to emulate has also been made.

The project described in the paper was the first that used non‐physicians to report images of infants for ROP screening, the first ROP network to cater to rural India and is currently the world's largest single hospital‐managed tele‐ROP network.

This study aims to explore the potential of mobile assistive technology (MAT) as a vocational tool for blind workers (BW). Specifically, it investigates: Can MAT-enabled BW to perform better at the workplace and will insight into MAT-enabled capabilities impact employer perception regarding BW employability.

Exploratory case study which draws on theories of fit to analyze observational and interview data at an organization familiar with employing, training and referring BW.

MAT can increase blind worker job fit, positively impacting their performance, self-reliance and managerial perceptions regarding their employability.

A conceptual framework is articulated which expands current literature on fit to better account for the assistive potential of mobile technology for differently abled workers.

The positive impact of MAT on managerial perceptions of BW fit and employability can inform the regimes of employers, job skills trainers, vocational rehabilitation specialists and policy makers.

Insights on the use of MAT as a vocational tool can reduce the systemic workplace disenfranchisement of blind people.

This paper presents novel theory which accounts for the impact of MAT on the job fit of differently abled workers.

The study aims to promote independent mobility for persons with visual impairment or legal blindness (VIB) by developing a Web-based wayfinding application using geographic information systems (GIS). While the literature mainly focuses on technical devices presenting results for wayfinding, a lack of integration of user needs is identified. The inclusive, participative developed application offers step-by-step directions for pre-trip planning through an accessible user interface.

The paper presents a semi-automated approach to extract a pedestrian routing network data set based on open government data and field survey. User profiles calculate different routes using a weighting scheme for landmarks, orientation hints, infrastructure of crossings and sidewalks. The adoption of ArcGIS Web AppBuilder widgets allows access of the user interface additionally through keyboard-only navigation and therefore screen-reader capability.

GIS offers a powerful tool to design network analysis for persons with VIB. The routing algorithm accesses different user profiles, returning individualized turn-by-turn directions. The complex set of attributes, including shorelines, landmarks and barriers, can be integrated by semi-automated processes.

The paper illustrates the benefit of GIS applications for wayfinding of persons with VIB to raise self-determination and independence.

A ubiquitous pedestrian sidewalk network for a medium-size city comprises a novelty, as research has mainly focused on small areas. The integration of shorelines next to a various number of hints, landmarks and potential barriers through semi-automated processes allows reproducibility and transferability of the model to other cities.

The purpose of this paper is to describe recent progress on the “Crosswatch” project, a smartphone‐based system developed for providing guidance to blind and visually impaired travelers at traffic intersections. Building on past work on Crosswatch functionality to help the user achieve proper alignment with the crosswalk and read the status of walk lights to know when it is time to cross, the authors outline the directions Crosswatch is now taking to help realize its potential for becoming a practical system: namely, augmenting computer vision with other information sources, including geographic information systems (GIS) and sensor data, and inferring the user's location much more precisely than is possible through GPS alone, to provide a much larger range of information about traffic intersections to the pedestrian.

The paper summarizes past progress on Crosswatch and describes details about the development of new Crosswatch functionalities. One such functionality, which is required for determination of the user's precise location, is studied in detail, including the design of a suitable user interface to support this functionality and preliminary tests of this interface with visually impaired volunteer subjects.

The results of the tests of the new Crosswatch functionality demonstrate that the functionality is feasible in that it is usable by visually impaired persons.

While the tests that were conducted of the new Crosswatch functionality are preliminary, the results of the tests have suggested several possible improvements, to be explored in the future.

The results described in this paper suggest that the necessary technologies used by the Crosswatch system are rapidly maturing, implying that the system has an excellent chance of becoming practical in the near future.

The paper addresses an innovative solution to a key problem faced by blind and visually impaired travelers, which has the potential to greatly improve independent travel for these individuals.

Guided by the proposed opportunity and resource integrative entrepreneurial growth model, the purpose of this paper is to explore how different opportunity type firms grow integrally and what the laws for different opportunity integration growth modes are.

A multiple case study on six firms in information and communication technologies industry in China is conducted.

Three types of entrepreneurial opportunities exist. These are identification type opportunity, discovery type opportunity, and creation type opportunity. Entrepreneurship among the three types of entrepreneurial opportunities operates under different laws. For each type of entrepreneurial opportunity, firms need to balance the two growth modes, namely, the opportunity identification and assessment/resource allocation mode and the opportunity utilization and resource identification/acquisition mode, in order to achieve a leveraging effect.

Vertical comparison is missing.

Firms need to balance the two growth modes, namely, opportunity identification and assessment and resource allocation mode and opportunity utilization and resource identification and acquisition mode, to achieve leverage effect.

This paper integrates system theory with entrepreneurship research and proposes the opportunity and resource integrative entrepreneurial growth model. This model is helpful, both in aiding firms to follow the laws for entrepreneurial opportunities and to identify entrepreneurial opportunities. The business model plays a vital role in entrepreneurship. Firms taking advantage of the Internet of Things are more likely to gain a competitive advantage and to achieve success in their entrepreneurial activities.

This article describes some of the work of the European Community funded project — Communication and Access to Information for People with Special Needs in the (CAPS) Programme Technology Initiative for Disabled and Elderly (TIDE). CAPS is developing ways of increasing access to information for a significant group of handicapped and elderly persons who have difficulty in accessing the printed word. The print disabled group includes the blind, the deaf blind, the visually impaired, the dyslexic and those with motor impairments which make it difficult to control paper documents.

This brief article outlines the various services that public libraries can offer to open up access to the blind and visually impaired, including providing email support, Internet access to library catalogues and archives, and in‐house workstations.

This study examines the role of the Internet and its usage on the level of perceived independence among people with physical disabilities. A questionnaire was posted on the Internet as well as distributed to two associations. It was answered by 24 people with physical disabilities who use the Internet, and 22 people with physical disabilities who do not use the Internet. The results of the two groups were compared. It was found that an increase in the number of Internet services used positively influences the perceived level of independence among individuals with physical disabilities. This was particularly true for independence related to the fields of employment and learning. The various Internet services used do not impact the same components of independence to the same degree. The usage of the World Wide Web and Telnet particularly benefits independence.