Computer Assistive Technologies for Physically and Cognitively Challenged Users

The majority of physically challenged and elderly people demand a lot of care when it comes to assistive technologies that can provide tailored services to their needs. The primary concern of advancement in Assistive technology is to address a wide variety of disabilities and intellectual impairments for societal benefits by reducing welfare costs and allowing for an efficient workforce. To better respond to changes brought on by modernity, it is necessary to understand how assistive technology interacts in that group. The broad range of assistive devices in the continuum of assistive technology can help people with various impairments. Based on the underlying technology, the Categorization of assistive devices has important implications for clinical usage when examined through the perspective of social phenomenon. In the realm of Assistive Technology, a consistent focus on the relationship between the individual and the supported activity within certain contexts is essential. Assistive technology can be viewed from the perspective of various performance areas. The Ontology-based Assistive Devices that are among the finest within common, everyday contexts for more relevant applications are interesting. This chapter explores all those essential elementary and general considerations of assistive devices that form the bases of Assistive technology and brings out the categories of assistive devices and the various application domains where assistive devices can be served as a derivative of a particular ontology. The chapter focuses on the various performance areas by addressing the issues associated with Assistive technology Practice.

The phenomenal growth in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is rapid and is responsible for changing disruptively the way various day-to-day tasks were being performed earlier. A plethora of user categories has benefitted immensely from this upward growth. It is also providing society with a multitude of entertainment options. The support of user-friendly software platforms for various ICT applications and tools is crucial in all these activities. Unfortunately, in the past, the designers of many software and hardware systems have not appropriately considered the Persons with Disability (PwD) as the active co-fellows of this journey and are being left behind in most of such applications of ICT. Thus, this significant part of the world population often seems to be neglected. Accessibility to every user with specific reference here to the ICT has always been a very important issue. What may be easily accessible to a set of persons may not be completely or partially accessible to another set of persons with disabilities. In this chapter, we discuss various types of disabilities along with the accessibility of hardware and software. Further, we highlight the concept of web accessibility and ICT accessibility for PwDs.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a minimum of 2.2 billion individuals worldwide have impaired vision or are blind. In contrast to hereditary blindness, gained visual impairment is frequently identified as a result of aging, lifestyle habits, or hereditary influences. Aging-related presbyopia has the largest influence on visual impairment and is the second most prevalent cause of blindness globally, and the rate of acquired blindness is predicted to rise dramatically as life expectancy rises. When performing most of the everyday tasks that non-disabled individuals do, visually and blind people face several problems. Thus, assistive gadgets have been utilized to help the blind and visually impaired overcome physical, social, infrastructural, and accessibility hurdles to independence, allowing them to live engaged, creative, and fruitful life as equal members of society. The usage of assistance equipment has increased, and numerous electronic help devices have been produced in recent years, which have been superseded by traditional aid gear, such as white canes. Currently, ATs are created by integrating various types of sensors, cameras, or feedback channels that combine with various implementation methodologies to increase movement for the visually handicapped. Assistive systems based on computer vision or machine learning approaches have emerged, and as technology has advanced, so has assistive technology. Assistive technology is a priority in the field of education and rehabilitation for individuals with blindness or low vision because it “equalizes the ability to access, store, and retrieve information between sighted people and those with visual impairments”. Nowadays, technological advances are making a difference in their ability to overcome difficulties to some extent. Every day, they encounter a slew of challenges, the most significant of which are establishing one's position, determining one's heading and movement directions, and comprehending the placements of things. The goal of assistive technology is to boost impaired people's faith, comfort, security, independence, and quality of life by enhancing their mobility and decreasing their impairment.

Every second, individuals with physical and cognitive disabilities struggle so much to do some actions that normal people easily do within seconds. Assistive Technologies (AT) are those modules or sets of arrangements that aim to make life easy for disabled people, by stopping blockage and improving their mental and physical power. They improve their working capability, confidence, standard of living, and optimism. In modern times, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and technologies are developing rapidly, and new machines, motors, and mostly electronic devices powered by powerful batteries are being built every second. These are making it possible for disabled people to become self-dependent. Today, Assistive technology devices are efficient and suitable for disabled people. This chapter aims to provide in-depth knowledge about various types of disabilities, how disabled people face different problems and challenges, and how they can select and use assistive devices and mobile apps to live independently and comfortably.

This chapter discusses various technologies developed for deaf people using Indian sign language synthetic animations. An automatic translation system for English Text to Indian Sign Language synthetic animations in the real domain has been developed, which consists of a parsing module that parses the input English sentenceto- phrase structure grammar representation on which Indian sign language grammar rules are applied to reorder the words of the English sentence. The elimination module eliminates the unwanted words from the reordered sentence. Lemmatization is applied to convert the words into the root form. The words (or their synonym in case the word is not available in the database) in the sentence are replaced by their HamNoSys code. In case the word or its synonym is not present in the lexicon, the HamNoSys code will be taken for each alphabet of the word. The HamNoSys code is converted into SiGML tags, which are sent to the animation module, which converts the SiGML tags into synthetic Animation using an avatar.
Prototypes for announcement systems for deaf people at railway stations, airports and bus stands have been developed. The announcements are categorized and sent to the system in written form. These announcements are dynamically converted to ISL sentences and then animated using HamNoSys and SiGML tags.
These translation and announcements systems are the only systems in the country that use continuous synthetic animations of the words in the sentence. Existing systems are limited to the conversion of words and predefined sentences into Indian sign language, whereas our conversion system converts English sentences into Indian sign language in the real domain.

Data-driven technologies aid in effective communication for deaf people. Research on sign language recognition, sign language generation and tools based on them is going at a fast pace. With the easy availability of depth sensors, specialized data sets, efficient machine learning algorithms, and computational capabilities provided by specialized hardware, the development of efficient data science-based solutions for deaf users and people with difficulty in hearing is possible now. This chapter focuses on recent research on Automatic Sign Language Recognition (ASLR), Sign Language Production (SLP) and tools based on them. A major focus of this chapter is research and tools using Sign Languages since they are the most commonly used communication medium by deaf people. Research on sign languages from different parts of the world as well as the effectiveness of Machine Learning techniques for ASLR and SLP, are discussed in detail.

Initially, text-based terminals were used as computers with DOS OS. The terminal had a cursor, and text was typed into the terminal. Accessibility for users was provided by using the text and events related to the user. The accessibility formats were voice and text in various font levels. The web has evolved, and accessibility support for the web is very important. HTML5 helps us to design websites for PDAs, Mobile, TV browsers, and other devices. Web browsers use the accessibility API for disabled users. Accessibility APIs used in the browsers are MSAA, UIA, and Microsoft UIA. This chapter in the book talks about accessibility software and hardware used in software design and development.

Numerous health problems, particularly those involving the eyes, are associated with advancing age. It is difficult to live a normal life when you're blind. Visually impaired people face navigational difficulties both inside and outside of an environment, particularly those who are blind because of ageing. Numerous tools are available in the outdoor environment, such as pavement paths and kerbs. These, on the other hand, are ceramic, concrete, or metallic in nature, and once installed, their alignment cannot be altered. As a result, there is a need for adhesive-based tactile that is easily replaceable to meet the needs of the occupants of the house. The purpose of this paper is to design and develop various types of tactile using Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU) material and a 3D printer. These tiles include a Warning tile, a Straight tile, a Turning tile, and a Junction tile with surface indicators; elderly people can easily navigate their homes with the help of these tiles.

People with impairments frequently struggle to carry out daily activities alone or even with assistance. They encounter obstacles in the environment, movement, interaction, access to writings, personal health maintenance, handling medical issues and behavioral equality. One of the subjects that have received a lot of attention from researchers is computer-based Assistive Technology (AT). Disabled people utilize AT to tackle things previously practically impossible for them. Various forms of disabilities necessitate the use of AT, which can help people with disability to do their regular work. Therefore, these technological innovations have the power to play a substantial role in supporting huge segments of society to operate and lead a normal life. The fundamental goal of AT is to continually increase a person's ability to perform independently, hence improving their overall health. Individuals who use technological aids can lead healthy, dignified, independent and respectable lifestyles. On the whole, AT aims to enable disabled individuals to join nearly every facet of life, including at home, education and community, as well as to increase their opportunities for social interactions and meaningful employment. AT devices simply gives disabled individuals more freedom and control. The significance of AT and AT devices, current trends, approaches, limitations and some of the major challenges identified in previous assessments as well as recent research findings in the field of AT, are all effectively discussed in this chapter.