Recent Advances in Assistive Systems for Blind and Visually Impaired Persons: A Survey

The tendency to develop tools or assistive systems for blind or visually impaired people, in many ways and in different forms, is an essential solution to help them in their daily lives. They need systems that help them to be aware of their surrounding environment, in addition to help them to move on their own without the need for an accompanying person all the time. In this review, we present the auxiliary systems that have been developed in the recent period, including what have been used of physical devices, modern technologies and algorithms, in addition to software and libraries. Also, we discuss and analyze those systems in a simplified and easy way to find out what has been reached, and to serve as an aid to other researchers to know the systems that have recently appeared and work on developing them or creating other new systems in different ways to help the blind or visually impaired people.