Assistive technology is initiated to aid those visually impaired to fulfil their tasks independently, rapidly, and easily. As such, tactile map is an assistive technology that has been widely used for navigation to enable those visually impaired to visualize the geographical information about a particular place. Nevertheless, its usability and availability in Malaysia are scant. This paper aims to investigate the usability issues of tactile map, identify the requirements and proposed a conceptual prototype named TacTalk. Qualitative research method in the form of face to face interviews were carried out with the visually impaired residing at Saint Nicholas’ Home for the Blind in Penang. Results from the findings identified four emerging usability issues: poor design of tactile map due to limited space, misinterpretation of information, complexity of symbols used and difficulty in memorizing directions. The proposed solution, ‘TacTalk’, refers to a ‘talking tactile map’ incorporated with audio support. TacTalk is comprised of two components, which are: a tactile map with built-in buttons, and a mobile application that plays the audio files. There is a connection between the buttons on the map and the TacTalk mobile application via Bluetooth. An audio instruction is played when the button is pressed by the user. The results of this work hope to overcome the fear of the visually impaired to travel alone. Hopefully, it can inspire and empower them to explore the use of assistive technology in future.
This study aimed to understand the problems faced by self-planning
travellers when they plan for a trip by searching travel information from
the Internet and propose a system to facilitate the self-planning travellers
to obtain useful travel information. An online survey was conducted via
social media to understand the problems, the search criteria and types of
content of travel itinerary needed in facilitating the planning. A total of
65 responses were collected. The results showed that there were too many
unrelated information on the Web and travellers were unsure of where to
start the search. Also, the result revealed that the search criteria needed to
generate travel itinerary were travel date, travel duration, travel country
and travel budget. Finally, flight schedule, hotel accommodation, sightseeing
places, travelling route and things to do were the information required by
travellers for their travel itineraries. Based on the results, a travel itinerary
recommendation system named eTravelPlanner is proposed.