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The paper addresses the importance of clarifying terminology such as visually impaired and related terms before embarking on accessibility studies of electronic information resources in library contexts. Apart from briefly defining accessibility, the paper attempts to address the lack of in-depth definitions of terms such as visually impaired, blind, partially sighted, etc. that has been noted in the literature indexed by two major Library and Information Science (LIS) databases. The purpose of this paper is to offer a basis for selecting participants in studies of accessibility of electronic information resources in library contexts and to put discussions of such studies in context.

Clarification of concepts concerning visual impairment following a literature survey based on searching two major databases in LIS. To put the discussion in context accessibility is also briefly defined.

Although visually impaired and a variety of related terms such as blind, partially sighted, visually disabled, etc. are used in the LIS literature, hardly any attempt is made to define these terms in depth. This can be a serious limitation in web and electronic accessibility evaluations and the selection of participants.

Clearly distinguishing between categories of visually impaired people and the ability of sight of participants is important when selecting participants for studies on accessibility for visually impaired people, e.g. the accessibility evaluation of web sites, digital libraries and other electronic information resources.

The paper can make a contribution to the clarification of terminology essential for the selection of participants in accessibility studies, as well as enriching the literature on accessibility for visually impaired people in the context of LIS.

The purpose of this paper is to design and test effective indoor navigation solutions for visually impaired people in situations where GPS, bluetooth or Wi-Fi signals are unavailable. The authors use the inertial measurement units (IMU), the compass and the barometer of a smart phone.

The authors have used commercial Android smart phones with IMU, compass and barometer to record a path and to give navigation instructions in an adapted way using a mobility-specific vocabulary. The method proposed is to save paths taking into account different indoor waypoints such as the stairs (change from one floor to another) and the change of direction of the trajectory of the path (e.g. one-fourth turn right or left), recording data from the IMU sensor’s, compass and barometer of the smart phone. Having this information and the characteristics of the each segment (distance, azimuth to the north and pressure) of the path, it is possible to provide functional navigation guidance to the visually impaired subject. Three different visually impaired people (one partially sighted and two fully blind) and three sighted people have tested the paths. The efficiency of the navigation is analyzed in terms of distance and time using the comparison between blind and sighted people.

The main finding is that it is possible to guide visually impaired people some hundreds of meters just using the sensors of a smart phone under certain conditions: the visually impaired person has to understand the guidance instructions and respect some strategies (e.g. not to walk diagonally across vast spaces). Additionally it is observed that the visually impaired participants walked distances, which are not much different to the optimal values. On the other hand; because of their hesitations using their white cane to find free paths, they take in some cases 50 percent more time to arrive (for a few minutes path, this time is not critical and even more efficient than looking for a guide). One thing to highlight is that even with this hesitation, the subjects arrived to the final destination.

This paper demonstrates how an IMU coupled to a compass and a barometer from a Smart Phone employing a spoken mobility language (e.g. next corridor to the left; at the end of the stairs turn right, turn left, etc.) can guide visually impaired people inside buildings.

Discusses various strategies for the provision of library and information services to visually impaired students in Tanzania. Considers the benefits and problems associated with each strategy and proposes steps to ensure that the highest priority is given to service quality and the care of users.

Dialogue in Darkness (DID) is a global social enterprise, which provides products and services such as workshops, exhibitions and activities in the dark in China. The corporate workshops are designed for companies, institutions and government agencies to provide unique leadership training and some other training in teamwork, communication, innovation and change management. And education workshops are aimed at providing young people with unique leadership training and training in teamwork, innovation and empathy and so on for the educational institutions. Over the past five years, DID, headquartered in Shanghai, has expanded to Beijing, Chengdu and Shenzhen, realizing strategic coverage of East, West, North and South of China. DID achieved break-even within less than one year since its inception. Its sound and healthy development offers an innovative way for the sustainable development of social enterprises.

This study aims to address policy, implementation and management, the three stages of inclusive open space. It compares both the level of design and implementation of open space in Beijing, Hong Kong and Taipei by following the inclusive guidelines. It also identifies recommendations for policy, implementation and management of inclusive open space and its facilities.

Field observations were conducted in 27 parks within three cities. In-depth interviews were conducted with a variety of participants, including visually impaired persons, government officers, representatives of non-governmental organisations, local communities and experts.

Most of the so-called inclusive environments and facilities have not been user-friendly in actual practice. The findings suggest that policies are an essential precondition; however, implementation and management must not be ignored because they ensure the effectiveness of inclusive design.

Comprehensive and continuous studies on the proposed framework are recommended throughout the policy, implementation and management processes.

The findings serve as a reference and direction for taking a holistic approach to inclusive design of open space in densely populated cities.

This study examines the levels of inclusive open space and illustrates how to provide barrier-free environments that can be used by the widest spectrum of people.

This study evaluates policy, implementation and management in the three cities based on 29 guidelines generated from seven principles of inclusive design. A research framework is proposed for researchers and policymakers to consider how to achieve effective inclusive open spaces.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the copyright law in relation to access to information by persons with visual impairments. It assesses the barriers placed by the copyright law on access to information by the visually impaired persons, and then the exceptions and limitations therein with a specific focus on Marrakesh treaty. It further explores the benefits conveyed by the Marrakesh treaty in relation to the challenges. Finally, the paper makes suggestions on methods that can be employed to make the Marrakesh treaty benefit the persons with visual impairments to the fullest.

The paper reviews the copyright law and its requirements in relation to reproduction of copyrighted works, and then narrows down to the provisions of Marrakesh treaty as an exception in the copyright law. It then reviews existing literature on the challenges caused by copyright requirements on access to information by persons with visual impairments. Having looked at these two aspects, the paper then identifies from literature the benefits that come in the Marrakesh treaty in relation to access to copyrighted information by persons with visual impairments. Authors finally give their views on what can be done to make the treaty more beneficial to the visually impaired persons.

The paper finds that a there are many challenges that persons with visual impairments face while they seek to access information that is copyrighted, and these challenges cause both direct and indirect negative effects. However, looking at the provisions of the Marrakesh treaty against these challenges, the paper identifies the benefits that come with the treaty to avert the challenges.

This paper does an in-depth analysis of the copyright-related challenges that persons with visual impairments face while accessing copyrighted information, and derives solutions to these challenges from the Marrakesh treaty. The paper will be helpful to the librarians to make sure that none of their users continue to suffer from those challenges in this era of the Marrakesh treaty. The methods suggested herein for reaping as much as possible from the Marrakesh treaty will be beneficial to information managers toward fashioning ways of ensuring that persons with visual impairments are able to access information freely and easily.

Millions of visually impaired people (VIP) in the world still face difficulties browsing the Web and accessing information. This paper aims to present a proxy service that takes advantage of the concept of context-aware to help contextualizing web pages for visually impaired users.

The VIP-aware proxy combines five components to utilize the user preferences, adapts the requested web page and reorganizes its content to best match the preferences set by the user. This new scenario will assist VIP in browsing the Web more effectively.

A preliminary evaluation of the system resulted in general user satisfaction.

The VIP-aware proxy will provide users with a clean, accessible web page, save them time when screen readers examine content related to their preferences and save them money when unnecessary content is not downloaded.

The VIP-aware proxy presented in this paper is the first of its kind targeting VIP.

The purpose of this paper is to overcome the limitations of sensory substitution methods (SSDs) to represent high-level or conceptual information involved in vision, which are mainly produced by the biological sensory mismatch between sight and substituting senses. Thus, provide the visually impaired with a more practical and functional SSD.

Unlike any other approach, the SSD extends beyond a sensing prototype, by integrating computer vision methods to produce reliable knowledge about the physical world (at the lowest cost to the user). Importantly though, the authors do not abandon the typical encoding of low-level features into sound. The paper simply argues that any visual perception can be achieved through hearing needs to be reinforced or enhanced by techniques that lie beyond mere visual-to-audio mapping (e.g. computer vision, image processing).

Experiments reported in this paper reveal that the See ColOr is learnable and functional, and provides easy interaction. In moderate time, participants were enabled to grasp visual information of the world out of which they could derive: spatial awareness, ability to find someone, location of daily objects and skill to walk safely avoiding obstacles. The encouraging results open a door toward autonomous mobility of the blind.

The paper uses the “extended” approach to introduce and justify that the system is brand new, as well as the experimental studies on computer-vision extension of SSDs that are presented. Also, this is the first paper reporting on a terminated, integrated and functional system.

This chapter presents a case study of the University of South Africa (Unisa), an Open Distance and e-Learning (ODeL) institution, to highlight the innovative strategies the university adopts to create inclusive learning spaces for students with hearing and visual disabilities and impairments in an ODeL environment. In doing so, this chapter first highlights the obstacles that students with hearing and visual disabilities and impairments face in the higher education sector in South Africa in general, and then closely examines the challenges these students face within a distance-learning context, with particular reference to the post-apartheid era. Subsequently, the discussion steers towards the specific context of Unisa and the approaches embraced by its Advocacy and Resource Centre for Students with Disabilities (ARCSWiD) to create an inclusive learning environment for these students. A close examination of the various sound and audio formats, as well as support services for documents in Braille, for example, for students with visual impediments and a discussion of the support systems, such as sign language interpretation, among other support structures, for students with hearing difficulties are then put forward. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the ethical issues associated with the use of assistive devices and other support structures for these students, before putting forth recommendations, and making suggestions for possible future studies.

To provide a review of the past studies on use of information and communications technology (ICT) for people with special education needs (SEN) to inform a major research project on using ICT to facilitate self‐advocacy and learning for SEN learners.

Literature review, encompassing academic journals indexed in education, information science and social sciences databases, books, grey literature (including much internet‐based material), and government reports. Information was gathered on the perceived benefits of ICT in SEN, and the use of some specific applications with people having various conditions. A number of usability studies, mainly Internet and web technologies, are also outlined.

Although the literature shows a great number of ICT initiatives for people with all kinds of disabilities, there has been a surprising lack of research into the usability of the various applications developed, and even less concerning those with learning difficulties. The review of existing literature indicates a lack of attention to the application of ICT for people with SEN, compared to the other groups of disabled people such as visually impaired.

Findings highlight the need for more research on usability aspects of current and potential applications of ICT for people with SEN.