A Systematic Literature Review of the Application of Information Communication Technology for Visually Impaired People

Abstract

Technological advancement in general is providing better and cheaper solutions to assist the visually impaired (VI) community. Although information communication technology (ICT) has great potential to support the inclusion of VI people in educational, social and workforce settings, there are far fewer ICT projects for VI people compared to other projects. This systematic literature review provides our findings on the existing state of ICT projects and describes outstanding issues in ICT support of VI people. Based on our findings, we suggest increased collaboration among healthcare professionals, caregivers, programmers, engineers, as well as policy makers; and adoption of policies in future ICT projects for VI people. A wide search of seven journal databases found a relevant cross-section of articles that were published between 2010 and 2015. Software Zotero Standalone and EndNote were used to screen and maintain metadata. After the initial screening of 6993 titles, 683 abstracts were scrutinised, from which 55 full text articles were selected for final review. We analysed and synthesised 37 articles. Our findings show the progress, awareness, interest, and issues in ICT integration to improve the quality of life for VI people. Three emergent topics for VI people are (a) assistive technology, (b) e-accessibility, and (c) virtual interfaces. Our findings suggest that ICT-aided applications can bring positive changes for VI people. We advance several issues that should be addressed and further developed, collaboratively, to spread awareness and invoke new policies aimed to improve the quality of life of VI people.