Mobile applications for assisting mobility for the visually impaired using IoT infrastructure

Visually impaired people (VI) face many challenges while travelling. Despite many research efforts in this area, no single solution has yet been widely accepted by the blind community, mainly because existing systems cannot satisfy all of VI´s mobility needs, and usually require additional dedicated hardware that is expensive and cumbersome. In our ongoing research to facilitate off-the-shelf smartphones that are useful travel aids and support a wide range of mobility challenges, in this paper, we propose three location-based services (LBS) that can be used from smartphones without requiring additional hardware. We demonstrate how Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure for positioning, and web APIs for retrieving relevant information based on user´s context can facilitate independent travel for VI. The evaluation of each LBS indicates that the proper use of IoT technology can support VI mobility effectively.