This document proposes connecting a Braille display to a smartphone to improve public transit accessibility for blind and deaf-blind people. It discusses challenges they face using public transit which relies on visual cues. The framework connects an Android phone and Braille display via WiFi/3G so the display can access the phone's GPS, compass and transit arrival info. A tool is described allowing deaf-blind users to check bus arrival times at their current stop using this system. The goal is to help blind/deaf-blind people more independently locate stops and know when to disembark.

1. IMPROVING PUBLIC TRANSIT
USABILITY FOR BLIND AND
DEAF-BLIND PEOPLE BY
CONNECTING A BRAILLE
DISPLAY TO A SMARTPHONE
9978607 劉志銘

2. Outline
 Purpose
 Related work
 Patten and challenges of public transit use
 The mobraile framework
 A tool for deaf-blind people
 Conclusions
 Reference

3. Purpose
 Connecting a Braille Display to a Smartphone.
 Improve the usability of the public transit
system for blind and deaf-blind people.
 Because people with severe visual
impairments cannot drive, they must use the
public transit system.

4. Related work
Interviews with Blind People
Three key challenges that blind people faced
 locating a bus stop.
 boarding the correct bus.
 knowing when to disembark a bus.
Have to relied heavily on the bus driver to announce
their stop and carried Braille notetakers when on-
the-go.

5. Related work
 Interviews with Deaf-Blind People
 They relied heavily on cards describing a bus
route and the stop at which they must disembark.
Cards were printed in advance, often with the
assistance of a sighted person.
 They read Braille and owned Braille displays,
which are the most common way for deaf-blind
people to access digital information.

6. Patten and challenges of public
transit use
 The use of public transit generally relies on visual
cues that are unavailable to people who are blind or
deaf-blind.
 Example:
 People must see the route number of an approaching bus.

 The landmarks that indicate their stop is near.

7. The mobraile framework
 The Braille display is tethered to the Android
phone over Wi-Fi or 3G.
 The Braille display user loads a MoBraille
webpage on the display’s built-in browser.
 The webpage sends requests to the Android
phone that are processed by a Java servlet
running on the phone.
 Braille display user access to a 3G network, GPS,
a compass, and other features.

8. A tool for deaf-blind people
 When waiting at a bus stop, a deaf-blind
person can use our tool to find out how much
longer he must wait for his bus to arrive.
 Android application uses the GPS and
compass to identify the current stop and
queries the One BusAway API to get arrival
information for the route at the current stop.
The arrival information is displayed in Braille.

9. Conclusions
 MoBraille has the potential to improve the
public transit experience for blind and deaf-
blind people.
 They plan to develop additional tools that
enable blind and deaf-blind people to locate a
bus stop and disembark a bus at the right time
more independently.

10. Reference
 Shiri Azenkot and Emily Fortuna, Improving
Public Transit Usability for Blind and Deaf-
Blind People by Connecting a Braille
Display to a Smartphone, ASSETS '10
Proceedings of the 12th international ACM
SIGACCESS conference on Computers and
accessibility