Standardising Electronic Travel Aid Interaction for Visually Impaired People

Orientation, Navigation and Mobility are perhaps three of the most important aspects of ordinary human life. Most aspects of the dissemination of information to aid navigation and cues for active mobility are passed to humans via the most complex sensory system, the vision system. This visual information forms the basis for most navigational tasks and so with impaired vision an individual is at a disadvantage because appropriate information about the environment is not available. This project is concerned with addressing this inequality by proposing and modelling a system of mobility extensions integrated into a Personal Digital Assistant, to provide appropriate Orientation, Navigation and Mobility cues, such that current disparate technologies can be integrated into one useful system. Declaration No Portion of the work referred to in this thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institution of learning.