Title:  Utilizing NFC and BLE Technologies to Support Independent Indoor Navigation for the Visually Impaired

Speakers:

Dr. Abir Benabid, Assistant Professor, Software Engineering Department, College of Computer and Information Sciences, KSU

Mona Alzuhair, MSc Student, Software Engineering MSc program in KSU

Abstract:  Recent technological developments can provide the technical assistance that enables supporting people with visual disabilities in their everyday tasks and improve their quality of life. Considering that about 90% of the world visually impaired people live in developing countries, particularly in the local context, in Saudi Arabia, there is a lack of assistive tools and adapted environment supporting people with visual disabilities. Hence, our focus would be on the assistive technologies, which are relatively inexpensive for both the blind and the businesses, to support visually impaired people so that they could integrate perfectly in society.
One of the relatively recent technologies in the communication field is the BLE and NFC communication technologies. There has been a fast growing progress in mobile devices and the number of new generation smartphones equipped with BLE and NFC readers is increasing nowadays. In this seminar, we will present the adaptation of these technologies for visually disabled people and introduce their practical applications to assist them in the challenging task that they may face every day.
 

Date/Time: Tuesday, Jun 3 12:00-12:30pm

Location: Maria Auditorium, F50 in Building 6 (Broadcast to Room 2079 in CCIS Building 31)