MannAccess: A Novel Low Cost Assistive Educational Tool of Digital Image for Visually Impaired

Abstract

This paper proposes the MannAccess, a novel low cost assistive educational tool of digital image for Visually Impaired (VI), aiding the teaching-learning process of visual content. It consists of an assistive environment composed of interactive software and a refreshable pin display with a novel 3-axis pin activation mechanism, decreasing its development cost substantially. The MannAccess allows the integration with different image recognition methods using a proposed image intermediary representation. In order to accomplish evaluations, we developed a prototype of MannAccess and integrated it with MannAR, an automata image recognition method. We carried out experiments with VI students which pointed out that our tool provided proper accessibility, usability, and user experience. In addition, we accomplished a monetary cost evaluation, indicating that MannAccess had the most accessible monetary cost compared to related devices. In a nutshell, MannAccess showed that it is possible to develop a low-cost assistive technology to aid the VI visual content education, integrating different image recognition methods in a single assistive tool.