**6. Conclusion**

Psychological distress and reactions to visual impairment were caused by the interaction of personal factors and social factors. Therefore, it was difficult to solve these problems by single intervention. Although acquiring independent skills was effective for psychosocial adaptation, group counseling combined with individual cognitive therapy could be the effective tool to improve social influences and internal self of the person with visual impairment.

### **Author details**

Yukihiko Ueda

Address all correspondence to: y.ueda@okiu.ac.jp

Okinawa International University, Okinawa, Japan

#### **References**


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*5.1.5. Case example*

104 Causes and Coping with Visual Impairment and Blindness

**6. Conclusion**

**Author details**

Yukihiko Ueda

**References**

Address all correspondence to: y.ueda@okiu.ac.jp Okinawa International University, Okinawa, Japan

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Mr. O was a 34-year-old man who had acquired a visual impairment due to pigmentary retinal degeneration and had participated in the Living Skill Training program. Before participating in this program, he had attempted suicide. At first, he had a thought that "there is no meaning in the life with loss of vision." As treatment progressed, he began to clearly recognize the negative beliefs regarding his disability such as "people think that visually impaired person can do nothing." Hearing his peers' thoughts in group counseling, experiencing others attitudes in mobility training, and through cognitive modification in individual therapy, he could modify negative beliefs and have positive beliefs, such as "I'm not so poor." and "I don't want to be back to healthy person. I'm OK as I am now." The outcome was that there was improvement in his depression, attitudes, and acceptance of his disability. After this pro-

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**Chapter 7**

Provisional chapter

**Assistive Systems for the Visually Impaired Based on**

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.70679

Assistive Systems for the Visually Impaired Based on

In this chapter, we proposed three assistive systems for visually impaired individuals based on image processing: Kinect cane system, Kinect goggle system, and light checking system. The Kinect cane system can detect obstacles of various sizes and also recognize objects such as seats. A visually impaired user is notified of the results of detection and recognition by means of vibration feedback. The Kinect goggle system is another type of wearable system, and can make user's hands free. The light checking system is implemented as an application for a smartphone, and can tell a visually impaired user the ON/OFF states of room lights and elevator button lights. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed systems are effective in helping visually

Keywords: assistive system, Kinect, cane, goggle, smartphone, camera, image processing,

The world health organization estimated the number of visually impaired individuals to be approximately 285 million in 2014 [1]. Many of them use white canes to detect obstacles around them. However, the detectable ranges of white canes are very short. Guide dogs are also used to navigate visually impaired individuals to their destinations while avoiding obstacles. However, it is difficult to provide the sufficient number of guide dogs due to long-time periods and expenses to train them. In order to overcome these problems, extensive research

Obstacle detection is one of the representative research themes. Many research groups have proposed obstacle detection systems based on laser sensors [3–11], single charge-coupled

> © The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and eproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

has been dedicated to creating assistive systems for the visually impaired [2].

**Image Processing**

Image Processing

Abstract

1. Introduction

Hotaka Takizawa and Mayumi Aoyagi

Hotaka Takizawa and Mayumi Aoyagi

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.70679

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

impaired individuals in everyday environments.

obstacle detection, object recognition, light checking

Provisional chapter
