TY  - JOUR
AU  - Lancioni, Giulio E.
AU  - Alberti, Gloria
AU  - Filippini, Chiara
AU  - Singh, Nirbhay N.
AU  - O’Reilly, Mark F.
AU  - Sigafoos, Jeff
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/11/27
TI  - Technology to Help People with Blindness and Intellectual Disability Manage Indoor Travel: Anticipating and Bypassing Obstacles
JO  - OBM Neurobiology
SP  - 313
VL  - 09
IS  - 04
AB  - Recent work with people with blindness and intellectual disability assessed a technology-aided program intended to help eight participants travel indoor routes to reach relevant destinations. The technology included a smartphone, two barcode readers worn by the participants at their ankles, barcodes displayed at specific points of the travel routes, and a mini speaker. The technology ensured that participants received verbal instructions on how to proceed (e.g., take a left turn, cross from one side to the other of a corridor, or go straight ahead and follow the handrail) when their barcode readers detected the barcodes along the routes. The present study was an extension of the aforementioned work with the same eight participants. It was aimed at enabling the participants to (a) anticipate and bypass obstacles available on the routes in relation to verbal warnings and (b) maintain the ability to travel the routes correctly with the help of verbal instructions. In practice, the study (a) added a second module to the technology system used in previous work (i.e., a module consisting of a smartphone fitted with a special application that informed the participants about obstacles on the routes), (b) assessed the suitability and impact of such module in helping the participants anticipate and bypass obstacles, and (c) monitored the participants’ ability to travel the routes correctly (i.e., the ability that they had acquired previously) by continuing to use the same technology-regulated instructions. The results showed that introducing the second technology module enabled all participants to anticipate and bypass obstacles encountered along the routes. The participants also maintained their ability to travel the routes and reach the target destinations. Based on these results, it might be argued that combining the previously developed technology system with the technology module added in this study can be an effective strategy for helping people with blindness and intellectual disability travel indoor routes in a relatively accurate and safe manner.
SN  - 2573-4407
UR  - https://doi.org/10.21926/obm.neurobiol.2504313
DO  - 10.21926/obm.neurobiol.2504313
ID  - Lancioni2025
ER  -