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Technology-Enabled Independent Shopping for the Visually or Mobility Impaired

Technology-Enabled Independent Shopping for the Visually or Mobility Impaired

Recercaixa 2011

In developed countries, citizens with serious disabilities (like blind people and wheelchair users), enjoy almost universal accessibility thanks to extensive legislation passed to that end. However, accessibility, that is, the ability to go places, is only an initial goal.  The final objective of citizens with disabilities is independent living. By independent living it is generally understood the ability to carry out all or most everyday activities with no or minimum assistance from others.
Accessibility does not always lead to an independent living experience.  An important example of this situation is shopping, one of the central activities in everyone's life, fundamental to the procurement of all basic necessities, and one of the most important occasions for social interaction.  Blind people or people in wheelchairs can access practically every store, but the fact is that they cannot shop without receiving constant, intrusive assistance from others, whether they are relatives, friends, or staff.
The UbiCA Lab (Ubiquitous Computing Applications Lab) research group has long believed that Ubiquitous Computing technology in general, and RFID, RTLS, and NFC technologies in particular can go a long way towards creating an Independent Shopping Experience for people with visual or mobility impairments.  For the last  few years, the research group has worked on base technologies, now in prototype form that provide information in real time about every item in a store, including its precise location (RFID).  The research group has also developed prototypes of systems to track customers in real time in the store (RTLS), and systems for secure login, secure payment, and privacy protection of consumers using Ubiquitous Computing technologies in the store (NFC). In this project, the UbiCA Lab research team proposes to test these prototypes for the benefit of blind people and wheelchair users by creating an initial version of a store that interacts directly with these special-need shoppers through a specially designed Ubiquitous Computing system that lets them browse the store and make purchasing decisions independently for the first time in their lives.

First, the RFID system will have to be enhanced during the project to include detection of consumer-item interactions.  A content database will also have to be created, gathering every relevant piece of information about the products in the store, and how they are commonly related in a shopping  experience.  Then, the specialized interfaces between the real-time information, the content database, and the users will have to be developed.  A first version of an audio interface will be developed for the blind users, and a first version of an augmented reality interface will be developed for the wheelchair users.  Finally a system for basic secure login, secure payment and privacy protection will be developed, based on some initial UbiCA Lab developments using NFC technology.
We have chosen to focus our efforts during the project on a few well-chosen tasks, that will conform the first version of an Independent Shopping experience.  For this reason, we have chosen to leave for future projects the development of a full natural-language interface, a full augmented reality interface, the development of the full set of use cases comprised in the Independent Shopping experience, and the development of a pilot in a real store with real users.  We will also skip for now the development of a bank-grade NFC payment system.
Our hypothesis is that, although the results of the project will be developed for the benefit of the disabled, they will create a radically improved shopping experience for everyone too, and that, with further development, these results will turn into successful highly innovative commercial products.