An investigation into the effectiveness of using acoustic touch to assist people who are blind.

Wearable smart glasses are an emerging technology gaining popularity in the assistive technologies industry. Smart glasses aids typically leverage computer vision and other sensory information to translate the wearer's surrounding into computer-synthesized speech. In this work, we explored the potential of a new technique known as "acoustic touch" to provide a wearable spatial audio solution for assisting people who are blind in finding objects.

Self-reported use of technology by orientation and mobility clients in Australia and Malaysia before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since the 1960s, many electronic travel aids have been developed for people with low vision or blindness to improve their independent travel skills, but uptake of these specialist devices has been limited. This study investigated what technologies orientation and mobility (O&M) clients in Australia and Malaysia have, use, like, and want to support their travel, to inform technology research and development. This two-phase mixed-methods study surveyed O&M clients face-to-face in Malaysia ( = 9), and online in Australia ( = 50).

Use of technology by orientation and mobility professionals in Australia and Malaysia before COVID-19.

Purpose: Orientation and Mobility (O&M) professionals teach people with low vision or blindness to use specialist assistive technologies to support confident travel, but many O&M clients now prefer a smartphone. This study aimed to investigate what technology O&M professionals in Australia and Malaysia have, use, like, and want to support their client work, to inform the development of O&M technologies and build capacity in the international O&M profession.

Materials And Methods: A technology survey was completed by professionals ( = 36) attending O&M workshops in Malaysia.

Orientation and mobility outcome measures.

Despite orientation and mobility (O&M) being a significant factor determining quality of life of people with low vision or blindness, there are no gold standard measures or agreement on how to measure O&M performance. In the first part of this systematic review, an inventory of O&M outcome measures used by recent studies to assess the performance of orientation and/or mobility of adults with vision impairment (low vision and blindness) is presented. A wide variety of O&M outcome measures have been implemented in different fields of study, such as epidemiologic research and interventional studies evaluating training, assistive technology, vision rehabilitation and vision restoration.

Profiling guide dog handlers to support guide dog matching decisions.

This Australian study piloted a new measure of Orientation and Mobility to better understand the functional mobility of guide dog handlers with low vision or blindness. It is expected that this measure can be used to better match guide dogs to their handlers. The new Orientation and Mobility Outcomes tool scores a client in Stable/Familiar and Dynamic/Unfamiliar conditions, also considering Travel-Related Wellbeing.

Task sharing in the eye care workforce: Screening, detection, and management of diabetic retinopathy in Pakistan. A case study.

Purpose: Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a preventable cause of vision loss. Reducing vision loss due to DR and providing access to eye care services for people with diabetes have been severely constrained by a shortage in the number of ophthalmologists. This study aimed to explore the potential for task sharing in the eye care workforce for screening, detection, and management of DR.

Optimising technology to measure functional vision, mobility and service outcomes for people with low vision or blindness: protocol for a prospective cohort study in Australia and Malaysia.

Introduction: Orientation and mobility (O&M) specialists assess the functional vision and O&M skills of people with mobility problems, usually relating to low vision or blindness. There are numerous O&M assessment checklists but no measures that reduce qualitative assessment data to a single comparable score suitable for assessing any O&M client, of any age or ability, in any location. Functional measures are needed internationally to align O&M assessment practices, guide referrals, profile O&M clients, plan appropriate services and evaluate outcomes from O&M programmes (eg, long cane training), assistive technology (eg, hazard sensors) and medical interventions (eg, retinal implants).

Developing a Very Low Vision Orientation and Mobility Test Battery (O&M-VLV).

Purpose: This study aimed to determine the feasibility of an assessment of vision-related orientation and mobility (O&M) tasks in persons with severe vision loss. These tasks may be used for future low vision rehabilitation clinical assessments or as outcome measures in vision restoration trials.

Methods: Forty legally blind persons (mean visual acuity logMAR 2.

Rasch Analysis of the Independent Mobility Questionnaire.

Purpose: The Independent Mobility Questionnaire (IMQ) assesses participants' perceived ability for independent mobility. However, it has not been validated in a severely visually impaired population. The aim of this study was to explore the IMQ's psychometric properties in participants with severe visual impairment.

Developing an instrumental activities of daily living tool as part of the low vision assessment of daily activities protocol.

Purpose: To determine the validity, reliability, and measurement characteristics using factor and Rasch analysis of the Very Low Vision Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL-VLV) in persons with severe vision loss.

Methods: From an initial pool of 296 tasks, 25 were shortlisted after conducting a Delphi survey with persons designated legally blind. Using further input from occupational therapy and low-vision professionals, 11 activities were chosen to be pilot tested.