Augmented Audio Reality Mobile Application Specially Designed for Visually Impaired People

Abstract

Up to date several applications have been developed for people with disabilities and especially for the visually impaired aiming to improve their quality of life. These applications are focused on guiding by the detection of obstacles in the surrounding environment. In this paper we present a mobile application which utilizes the modern technologies of GPS, Wi-Fi and 3G combined with Google maps in order to inform the visually impaired person through recorded sound messages about nearby points of interest. Having the end user in mind the application supports auto updates and does not require any additional settings. The development has been done under the Android platform.