Smart Seeing Eye Dog Wheeled Assistive Robotics

Introduction: In spite of the vast amount of literature on pet therapy and dog companionship, limited studies exist on older adults with vision loss and the experience of owning a dog guide. The purpose of this study is to explore the facilitators and barriers of first-time ownership and utilization of a dog guide as experienced by older adults with vision loss. Methods: Data were gathered among seven participants using open-ended semistructured telephone interviews. Participants described their experiences related to owning a dog guide. Using phenomenological analysis, themes were extracted from verbatim transcriptions. Results: Through constant comparison methods, five themes emerged: increased responsibilities for new dog guide owners, changes in habits and routines, quick human–dog guide bonding, increase in community integration, and enhancement of autonomy through dog guide ownership. Discussion: The study results suggest that obtaining a dog guide increased the older adults with vision loss everyday engagement in community activities. The increased confidence in independent mobility may have led participants to engage in activities in unfamiliar environments, thus improving their autonomy, self-esteem, and physical abilities. These changes resulted in increased feelings of independence and freedom for the older adults with vision loss. Participants also revealed positive changes in their daily habits. Due to the increased physical ability and motivation needed to complete activities, making adjustments to owning a dog guide became easier. Furthermore, a human–dog guide bond was prevalent among all seven participants. Implications for practitioners: Themes extracted provide health practitioners and dog guide organizations insight into how owning dog guides may empower older adults with vision loss.

Ocular causes of reading impairment following stroke include visual field loss, eye movement impairment and poor central vision. Non ocular causes may include cognitive errors or language impairment. The purpose of this study was to identify all patients referred with suspected visual impairment who had reported reading difficulty to establish the prevalence of ocular and non ocular causes. Prospective, multicentre, observation study with standardised referral and assessment forms across 21 sites. Visual assessment included visual acuity measurement, visual field assessment, ocular alignment, and movement and visual inattention assessment. Multicentre ethical approval and informed patient consent were obtained. A total of 915 patients were recruited, with a mean age of 69·18 years (standard deviation 14·19). Reading difficulties were reported by 177 patients (19·3%), with reading difficulty as the only symptom in 39 patients. Fifteen patients had normal visual assessment but with a diagnosis of expressive or receptive aphasia. Eight patients had alexia. One hundred and nine patients had visual field loss, 85 with eye movement abnormality, 27 with low vision and 39 patients with visual perceptual impairment. Eighty-seven patients had multiple ocular diagnoses with combined visual field, eye movement, low vision or inattention problems. All patients with visual impairment were given targeted treatment and/or advice including prisms, occlusion, refraction, low vision aids and scanning exercises. Patients complaining of reading difficulty were mostly found to have visual impairment relating to low vision, eye movement or visual field loss. A small number were found to have non ocular causes of reading difficulty. Treatment or advice was possible for all patients with visual impairment.

The capabilities of modern photocopy machines have advanced beyond the simple duplication of documents. In addition to the standard functions of copying, collating, and stapling, such machines can be a part of telecommunication networks and provide printing, scanning, faxing, and e-mailing functions. No longer just copy machines, these devices are more aptly described as multifunctional document centers. In the past, the accessibility of basic photocopy machines was not a significant issue for people with visual impairments (that is, those who are blind or have low vision). Typically, copiers had simpler user interfaces, with tactile keypads for selecting the number of copies and Start, Clear, and Stop buttons. As technology has advanced, the user interface was redesigned and has become more complex. Many multifunctional document centers also include a small, embedded touchscreen visual display. Advancements in technology and changes to the user interface of multifunctional document centers created accessibility barriers for employees with visual impairments that previously did not exist. In addition, legislation and demographic factors contributed to the need to develop accessible multifunctional document centers. Although estimates vary, it has been reported that approximately 21.2 million Americans have vision loss, 6.2 million of whom are aged 65 and older (Pleis & Lethbridge-Cejku, 2007). People with vision loss were defined by the 2006 National Health Interview Survey are those who reported that they have trouble seeing, even when wearing eyeglasses or contact lenses, are blind, or are unable to see at all. Recent employment data shows that of working age Americans with significant vision loss, nearly 60% are not employed or in the labor force (U.S. Department of Labor, 2009). As it has been commonly noted for more than a decade, nearly 70% of individuals in the United States who are legally blind are unemployed (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1995). Many factors contribute to this high unemployment rate, including the inaccessibility of common workplace technology. Over time, the problem will be compounded as the baby-boomer generation ages, because the population of older people with visual impairments will increase significantly. The enactment of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998 prohibits the federal government from procuring, developing, maintaining, or using electronic and information technology that is inaccessible to people with disabilities. In addition, more than 20 states have also implemented this law. Section 508 applies to office equipment products including multifunctional document centers. In recent years, Canon and Xerox have introduced multifunctional document centers that provide accessibility features. Although they provide a similar level of access, these manufacturers use different product architecture to address the requirements of accessible design. This report presents an evaluation of the accessibility and usability of the access solutions for people who are visually impaired of Canon's and Xerox's multifunctional document centers. It also takes the first steps in addressing the lack of a display standard for small visual displays, such as those used in both multifunctional document centers described here, and investigates how to optimize for people with visual impairments the parameters of designs of such displays (see Box 1). METHOD Eghtesadi et al. (2002) noted that office workers who are blind or have low vision need to use all the major functionalities of a multifunctional document center, including duplicating, collating, and stapling. To create office equipment that is accessible to a wide range of people, manufacturers need to take a universal design approach. The seven principles of universal design focus on creating products that are usable by the widest possible array of people and that can be operated in the widest range of conditions. …

Objective: To analyze the causes of blindness and residual vision at the Quanzhou Blind School and provide information to help prevent childhood blindness and low vision. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study of all the students (n=126) at the Quanzhou Blind School. All students received routine ophthalmology examinations. A detailed individual-level questionnaire was administered that addressed the causes of blindness and low vision. Results: Among the 126 students, 66 had low vision, and 60 were blind. The major causes of blindness were retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) (23.3%), corneal degeneration (13.3%), optic nerve atrophy (13.3%), and congenital glaucoma (11.7%). The major causes of low vision were congenital cataract (27.3%), nystagmus (13.7%), optic nerve atrophy (10.6%), and corneal degeneration (9.1%). Conclusions: Congenital or hereditary diseases were the leading causes of vision loss at the Quanzhou Blind School. ROP was the principle cause of blindness. Most low vision cases were due to congenital cataract. Key words: blind school; low vision; pathogeny

Introduction to dual sensory loss issue.

Telehealth clinical applications, which allow medical professionals to use telecommunications technologies to provide services to individuals remotely, continue to expand in areas such as low vision rehabilitation, where evaluations are provided to patients who live in rural areas. As with face-to-face low vision rehabilitation, the goal of clinical video telehealth is to help patients cope with a loss of vision, as well as accept and recognize challenges and provide skills to maintain independence and safety, and to prevent depression. Important aspects of implementing clinical video telehealth are increasing access, building capacity, saving time, and decreasing travel costs for patients and providers in several clinical specialties. Reducing barriers to care is achieved through telehealth by enabling patients to avoid traveling long distances when they feel they are unable to drive safely or when they rely on family or friends for transportation. The purpose of this article is to illustrate the development, need, and benefits of establishing a low vision clinical video telehealth clinic, and to increase access to low vision rehabilitation among the aging population with vision loss. Uncorrectable vision loss due to conditions such as macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy often restricts mobility and travel of older adults (especially by automobile), which is one of the barriers to receiving low vision rehabilitation faced by partially sighted individuals who live in rural areas. Telehealth is defined as the use of electronic communication and information technologies to provide or support long-distance clinical health care, patient and professional health-related education, public health, and health administration (National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services, 2015). In order to provide better care to veterans with visual impairments, especially those residing in rural or highly rural areas, in 2011 the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Blind Rehabilitation Services began pursuing innovative care delivery strategies. Federal funding was allocated to VA low vision clinics throughout the United States to purchase telehealth equipment, which challenged providers to develop protocols and best practices for low vision clinical video telehealth rehabilitation. This expansion of telehealth services improved access to care and increased patient satisfaction (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 2015). Nonprofit rehabilitation agencies that provide low vision rehabilitation services to older adults within their own communities also have challenges regarding innovative care delivery strategies, especially in rural or highly rural areas. By using this rapidly expanding technology, other public and private sectors can also improve access to care for patients with visual impairments who live in rural areas. Telemedicine continues to advance and has been critical to improving health outcomes in rural regions in the United States. Rural regions are those outside of urban areas that generally have populations smaller than 2,500 (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2015). Residents in rural regions often experience challenges in accessing medical and rehabilitation services because of the vast distances that may separate them from more densely populated regions, where services are typically located. To address the problem of access to health care, VA telehealth service clinics are set up around the United States for cardiology, neurology, psychiatry, and a range of other medical services that patients can access electronically without being physically in the presence of the health professional. Ophthalmology and optometry clinics within several VA hospitals utilize store and forward telehealth technology for virtual encounters by which they capture digital retinal images and then send them electronically to physicians for medical opinions or diagnoses (U. …

Simple SummaryGuide dogs are important service animals. They cannot be trained without the input of volunteer puppy raisers, who serve as custodians for the animals for around 12 months. To date very little research has considered the experience of being a guide dog puppy raiser, including the costs and benefits to psychological, physical and social health. In this study one litter of puppies and their raisers were followed from before the animal arrived until one year had passed. Overall, less positive experiences were reported than more negative ones. This has implications for the organisations that seek volunteers to raise service animals.There are no published studies that consider the experiences of guide dog puppy raisers. As these people are volunteers, their continued willingness to participate in the training of dogs for assisting the vision impaired and blind is essential for the viability of guide dog schools around the world. Using a qualitative, longitudinal methodology, data were collected from nine guide dog puppy raisers at four time points: before receiving the puppy, one week, then three months after the puppy arrived, and 13 months after the puppy arrived (at which time all puppies had left the raisers). Participants reported more challenges than benefits in raising the puppies. Volunteering to be a guide dog puppy raiser may not be the pleasant experience that is anticipated when community members first offer their services. Understanding what it is like to be a puppy raiser and working towards ways in which to address problems is essential, given that, without volunteers to train and care for puppies, vision impaired and blind people would not have access to guide dogs.

Con el presente proyecto de investigación para el desarrollo del desapego en los cuidadores de perros guía, queremos rendir homenaje a todos los cuidadores que de manera voluntaria, realizan una acción tan loable y necesaria para las personas invidentes. Hemos querido abordar el proceso de apego y desapego desde una perspectiva de regulación emocional diferente. A través de encuestas en profundidad a una muestra cualitativa con 3 cuidadores de perros guía que actualmente desempeñan esta función, nos adentramos en su vida cotidiana, conociendo de primera mano las situaciones, emociones y resistencias que encuentran en este proceso. Con la ayuda de referencias bibliográficas de personas psicoanalistas, psiquiatras, biólogos y profesionales en estas áreas, hemos podido evidenciar ciertos rasgos de comportamiento y estados emocionales que impactan en el vínculo afectivo de los seres humanos con los perros.

As I look back at the 50-plus years I have spent in my profession, and as I look at its current and potential future leaders, I am filled with pride as I remember past accomplishments and as I consider its strong and dynamic future. Recently, I began a list of the four great accomplishments of educators in the field of visual impairment and blindness over the last half of the 20th century. The list soon expanded to seven, and it is these accomplishments that I would like to discuss in this essay. SEVEN GREAT ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF EDUCATORS IN THE FIELD Professionalization of teaching students with visual impairments The first great accomplishment is that teaching students with visual impairments has become a profession. In the not-too-distant past, teaching and working with visually impaired students and adults was considered a folk art. There was very little writing on the education of visually impaired students. Only two methods books were available to me when I first started teaching: Education and Health of the Partially Seeing Child, by Winifred Hathaway (1994), and The Blind Child and His Reading, by Kathryn Maxfield (1928). Today, thanks largely to the commitment of the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), we have many excellent, state-of-the-art books. There was almost no research being conducted in the field 50 years ago. Today, we have many outstanding researchers. We no longer pass along information and techniques verbally from one generation of teachers to the next, as happened when I first started to teach. Today, we are a profession, and we can stand tall and proud of the status we have worked so hard to achieve. Professionalization of O&M The second major accomplishment is that O&M instruction has also became a profession. In the 1950s, individuals in the field heard about those working with blinded veterans at the Hines Veterans Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. But it was not until Boston College established the first formal, university-based O&M personnel preparation program in 1960 that O&M began to achieve professional status. In less than 50 years, O&M has significantly changed the educational lives of visually impaired children, largely because the professionals of this field were eager to look at the O&M needs of all children and adults with vision loss. Education of children with multiple disabilities The third significant accomplishment is that the education of visually impaired children with additional disabilities became our responsibility. Long before PL 94-142 (the Education for All Handicapped Children Act) was passed in 1975, many teachers of visually impaired students were working with children with complex additional disabilities. We did not do this because it was required by law--we did it because it was the right thing to do. Recognition of low vision Thanks to the research of Natalie Barraga, our fourth major accomplishment occurred when we recognized that many legally blind children, in reality, had low vision. After Dr. Barraga taught us that these children had usable vision, over the course of a few years, in the early 1960s, many children with low vision who were learning to read braille were switched to reading print. For a while, the utilization of vision among low vision students may have been embraced to an extreme as we desperately tried to help these children learn to read. But, as a profession, we continued to study and research how best to serve low vision children, and the current status of the education of these children is excellent and continually improving. Expansion of personnel preparation Personnel preparation of teachers of visually impaired children has grown, invented, and re-invented itself since the middle of the 20th century, and this growth is our fifth major accomplishment. When I decided to become a teacher of the visually impaired, I had six choices of universities, and two of them had part-time programs in my area of study. …

Despite poor vision being a risk factor for falls, current hospital policies and practices often do not include a vision assessment at patient admission or in the hospital's incident reporting system when a fall occurs. Our purpose was to document the prevalence of vision loss in hospital general medicine units to increase awareness of poor vision as a potential risk factor for falls that occur within the hospital, and inform future preventative practice. This cross-sectional study took place in medicine units of an acute care hospital. Participants were adult in-patients. Visual acuity (VA), contrast sensitivity and stereoacuity were measured, and patients were screened for field loss, extinction and neglect. 115 participants took part (average age 67±17, 48% female). Overall, 89% had a visual impairment defined as being outside the age-norms for one or more vision measure, 62% had low vision, and 36% had vision loss equivalent to legal blindness [VA equal to or poorer than 1.0 logMAR (6/60, 20/200) or ≥10x below age-norms]. There was a considerable discrepancy between the prevalence of low vision and the percentage of patients who reported an ocular diagnosis that would result in visual loss (30%). Ten patients fell during the study period, and of these 100% had visual impairment, 90% had low vision and 60% had vision loss equivalent to legal blindness, which compares to 58%, 22% and 9% for non-fallers. Similar high prevalences were found in those whose reason for admission to the hospital was a fall (92%, 63% and 33% respectively). Vision loss has a high prevalence among patients in hospital medicine units, and is higher still among those who fall. Since vision loss may be a contributing factor to falls that occur in hospitals, implementing an assessment of vision at hospital admission would be useful to alert staff to those patients who are at risk for falls due to poor vision, so that preventative measures can be applied.

BackgroundFalls are an increasingly important and costly public health problem. Vision is key to postural stability as we age and this puts adults with visual impairments at greater risk of...

Guide dogs for the blind help blind people physically and mentally in their daily lives. Their qualifications are based on health, working performance and temperament; approximately 70% of dogs that fail to qualify are disqualified for behavioral reasons. In order to achieve early prediction of qualification, it would be essential as the first step to identify important temperament traits for guide dogs. Therefore, we administered a questionnaire consisting of 22 temperament items to experienced trainers to assess candidate dogs at the Japan Guide Dog Association after three months of training, which was at least three months prior to the final success (qualified as a guide dog) or failure (disqualified for behavioral reasons) judgment. Factor analyses of question items stably extracted three factors with high internal consistency, Distraction, Sensitivity and Docility. When we compared factor points between successful dogs and failed dogs, the successful dogs showed significantly and consistently lower Distraction points and higher Docility points. Additionally, Distraction points could predict qualification with 80.6% accuracy and detect 28.2% of the failed dogs that had higher Distraction points than any of the successful dogs. Of the nine question items not included in the three factors, two items (;Aggression' and ;Animal interest') were consistently associated with qualification. These results suggest that Distraction is stably assessable and has the strongest impact on success or failure judgment; therefore, it will be the first target to establish a behavioral test that may lead to early prediction of guide dog qualification.

Guide dogs can vastly improve vision-impaired people's daily-life quality by guiding them to destinations while avoiding obstacles. Animal guide dogs are costly for training. This paper presents a robot guide dog system to take a vision-impaired user to a destination while avoiding obstacles in the environment for both the user and the robot dog. A novel human-robot kinematic model and an MPC-based motion planning and control algorithm are proposed. We implement the method on a wheeled ground robot. All the sensors are mounted on the robot, and the human user does not have to take additional sensor devices. Simulation and real-world experiment results show that the proposed method can tackle challenging navigation tasks in narrow corridors for vision-impaired people.

Visual impairment (blindness or low vision) is a leading cause of disability among older adults and is most often due to age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The prevalence of AMD is rapidly increasing with the aging of the population; from 1991 to 1997, it increased from 5.0% to 27.1% in a cohort of Medicare beneficiaries (Crews, 1991; Lee, Feldman, Ostermann, Brown, & Sloan, 2003). It is predicted that 2.95 million people will have AMD by 2020 (Eye Diseases Prevalence Research Group, 2004). Compared to older people with typical vision, those with AMD report greater difficulty with a variety of daily activities (Williams, Brody, Thomas, Kaplan, & Brown, 1998). For example, in a community sample of 872 older people, those with AMD were 9.7 times more likely to have impairments in instrumental activities of daily living (such as taking medication and shopping) than were people with typical vision (Rovner & Ganguli, 1998). Unfortunately, there is no cure for AMD, nor can lost vision be restored. Although there are interventions to slow the progression of the condition, treatment is primarily rehabilitative. Services for people with low vision include low vision rehabilitation, occupational therapy, social support programs, and orientation and mobility training. Assistive devices include magnifiers, large-print materials (such as books, clocks, and calculators), audio materials (such as books and magazines), electronic reading devices, and speech-output systems. Despite the availability of these rehabilitative services and devices, they are underutilized. A series of focus groups that were conducted by the National Eye Institute (NEI) indicated that many older persons with low vision have little or no awareness of these services, and, as a consequence, few take advantage of them (National Eye Institute, 2001). Similar findings were reported in the Lighthouse National Survey on Vision Loss (Lighthouse International, 1995). Among adults with low vision, only 30% were using optical devices, 21% were using large-print reading materials, and 6% received rehabilitation. The most common reason for the lack of utilization of low vision devices and services was the participants’ unawareness of them. Ophthalmologists may not be informing and educating their patients about these resources. Some studies have reported that ophthalmologists refer only 28%–35% of appropriate patients to low vision rehabilitation services (Greenblat, 1988). Leinhaas and Massof (2001) found that only 15% of ophthalmologists and 21% of optometrists “always or often” prescribed low vision devices, and only 44% of ophthalmologists and 27% of optometrists “always or often” referred patients for low vision services. The goal of the current study was to obtain more detailed information on the use of low vision services and devices by older adults with AMD and to determine whether knowledge and use of such services are related to the severity of vision loss.

ABSTRACTPurpose: Vision loss has been associated with negative health outcomes, but population-level data on vision loss are lacking, and there are limited data on low vision-associated outcomes among women, minorities, and older age groups. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of vision loss in a nationally representative sample of older US adults and examine its association with hip fracture, depression, anxiety, and dementia.Methods: Cross-sectional analysis of Medicare claims data from 2014. Blindness and low vision, hip fracture, depression, anxiety, and dementia were identified using Chronic Condition Warehouse indicator variables based on ICD-9 and CPT codes. Multivariable logistic regression models were built to examine whether sociodemographic factors were associated with vision loss and to determine the relationships between vision loss and hip fracture and neuropsychiatric outcomes.Results: The prevalence of low vision in the Medicare population was 994/100,000 and increased significantly with age, Black (1,854/100,000) or Hispanic (2,862/100,000) race/ethnicity, female gender (1,181/100,000), and Medicaid eligibility (2,975/100,000). After adjusting for relevant comorbidities, low vision was significantly associated with hip fracture (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 2.54, 95% CI: 2.52–2.57), depression (AOR 3.99, 95% CI: 3.97–4.01), anxiety (AOR 2.93, 95% CI: 2.91–2.95), and dementia (AOR 3.91, 95% CI: 3.88–3.93).Conclusion: Blindness and low vision are common in older Americans, especially among racial and ethnic minorities and lower income individuals, and associated with hip fracture, depression, anxiety, and dementia. The prevention and treatment of vision loss may reduce health disparities and negative health outcomes in the aging population.