"Access Technology for Blind and Low Vision Accessibility, the second edition of 2008's Assistive Technology for Students Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired: A Guide to Assessment, uses clear language to describe the range of technology solutions that exists to facilitate low vision and nonvisual access to print and digital information. Part 1 gives teachers, professionals, and families an overview of current technologies including refreshable braille displays, screen readers, 3D printers, cloud computing, tactile media, and integrated development environments. Part 2 builds on this foundation, providing readers with a conceptual and practical framework to guide a comprehensive technology evaluation process. As did its predecessor, Access Technology for Blind and Low Vision Accessibility is focused on giving people who are blind or visually impaired equal access to all activities of self-determined living, allowing them to be seamlessly integrated within their home, school, and work communities"--

Robotic systems consist of object or scene recognition, vision-based motion control, vision-based mapping, and dense range sensing, and are used for identification and navigation. As these computer vision and robotic connections continue to develop, the benefits of vision technology including savings, improved quality, reliability, safety, and productivity are revealed. Robotic Vision: Technologies for Machine Learning and Vision Applications is a comprehensive collection which highlights a solid framework for understanding existing work and planning future research. This book includes current research on the fields of robotics, machine vision, image processing and pattern recognition that is important to applying machine vision methods in the real world.

The first book in this rapidly expanding area, Computer Vision Technology for Food Quality Evaluation thoroughly discusses the latest advances in image processing and analysis. Computer vision has attracted much research and development attention in recent years and, as a result, significant scientific and technological advances have been made in quality inspection, classification and evaluation of a wide range of food and agricultural products. This unique work provides engineers and technologists working in research, development, and operations in the food industry with critical, comprehensive and readily accessible information on the art and science of computer vision technology. Undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers in universities and research institutions will also find this an essential reference source.· Discusses novel technology for recognizing objects and extracting quantitative information from digital images in order to provide objective, rapid, non-contact and non-destructive quality evaluation. · International authors with both academic and professional credentials address in detail one aspect of the relevant technology per chapter making this ideal for textbook use· Divided into three parts, it begins with an outline of the fundamentals of the technology, followed by full coverage of the application in the most researched areas of meats and other foods, fruits, vegetables and grains.

In Portugal between 2005 and 2010, “modernization through technology” was the major political motto used to develop and improve the country’s peripheral and backward condition. This study reflects on one of the resulting, specific aspects of this trend—the implementation of public video surveillance. The in-depth ethnography provides evidence of how the political construction of security and surveillance as a strategic program actually conceals intricate institutional relationships between political decision-makers and common citizens. Essentially, the detailed account of the major actors, as well as their roles and motivations, serves to explain phenomena such as the confusion between objective data and subjective perceptions or the lack of communication between parties, which as this study argues, underlies the idiosyncrasies and fragilities of Portugal’s still relatively young democratic system.

Assistive technology is essential in today's world to enable people who are blind or visually impaired to participate fully in school, work, and life. But which assistive technology tools are right for your students? This comprehensive handbook is the essential resource for teachers of students with visual impairments, administrators, technology professionals, and anyone who needs to keep up with the ever-changing world of technology. Assistive Technology For Students Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired: A Guide to Assessment contains a wealth of technical information translated into clear, user-friendly terms, including: - An overview of the full range of assistive technology that students can use to manage information in print or electronic formats-whether they use vision, touch or hearing to access information - How to select appropriate tools and strategies - A structured process for conducting a technology assessment - Detailed assessment forms that can be used to determine students' technology needs and solutions to address them - Advice on writing up program recommendations based on assessment results - Reproducible, blank assessment forms

Assistive technology has made it feasible for individuals with a wide range of impairments to engage in many activities, such as education and employment, in ways not previously possible. The key factor is to create consumer-driven technologies that solve the problems by addressing the needs of persons with visual impairments. Assistive Technology for Blindness and Low Vision explores a broad range of technologies that are improving the lives of these individuals. Presenting the current state of the art, this book emphasizes what can be learned from past successful products, as well as what exciting new solutions the future holds. Written by world-class leaders in their field, the chapters cover the physiological bases of vision loss and the fundamentals of orientation, mobility, and information access for blind and low vision individuals. They discuss technology for multiple applications (mobility, wayfinding, information access, education, work, entertainment), including both established technology and cutting-edge research. The book also examines computer and digital media access and the scientific basis for the theory and practice of sensory substitution. This volume provides a holistic view of the elements to consider when designing assistive technology for persons with visual impairment, keeping in mind the need for a user-driven approach to successfully design products that are easy to use, well priced, and fill a specific need. Written for a broad audience, this book provides a comprehensive overview and in-depth descriptions of current technology for designers, engineers, practitioners, rehabilitation professionals, and all readers interested in the challenges and promises of creating successful assistive technology.

We live in the world where nothing is difficult, if there is market. There is therefore the dilemma of want and need. Technology wants, what life wants. Using technologies, it seems, it is possible to do anything and produce anything. The centre of gravity of engineering profession is shifting. The world wants confident engineers who can foresee and manage the unknown and unexpected problems. Engineers are expected to understand global issues, and the nuances of working in a culturally diverse space. They are expected to appreciate, more than before, the human dimensions of emerging technologies. There are many questions, such as - Do I take pride in designing a thing and manufacturing it, as I take pride in packaging it? Are we cultivating the right kind of engineering mindset? What a general engineering toolkit must contain? Are there enough challenging jobs in the manufacturing industry to attract good engineers? Is it right to allow the creation of future elites who have augmented themselves with artificial intelligence and genetic engineering, without inventing a way to manage their superhuman abilities? Can there be better engineering than life itself? Should we be optimistic about the future of technology? Are we working harder than we are required to work? Can technology improve work-life balance? Is the society ready to accept the exponential development challenges? These, and many such issues are the concerns of science, engineering, technology and society. This book is an attempt to deliberate upon these issues for the welfare of humankind.

An investigation of the computational turn in visual culture, centered on the entangled politics and pleasures of data and images. If the twentieth century was tyrannized by images, then the twenty-first is ruled by data. In Technologies of Vision, Steve Anderson argues that visual culture and the methods developed to study it have much to teach us about today's digital culture; but first we must examine the historically entangled relationship between data and images. Anderson starts from the supposition that there is no great divide separating pre- and post-digital culture. Rather than creating an insular field of new and inaccessible discourse, he argues, it is more productive to imagine that studying “the digital” is coextensive with critical models—especially the politics of seeing and knowing—developed for understanding “the visual.” Anderson's investigation takes on an eclectic array of examples ranging from virtual reality, culture analytics, and software art to technologies for computer vision, face recognition, and photogrammetry. Mixing media archaeology with software studies, Anderson mines the history of technology for insight into both the politics of data and the pleasures of algorithms. He proposes a taxonomy of modes that describe the functional relationship between data and images in the domains of space, surveillance and data visualization. At stake in all three are tensions between the totalizing logic of data and the unruly chaos of images.

This groundbreaking book defines the emerging field of information visualization and offers the first-ever collection of the classic papers of the discipline, with introductions and analytical discussions of each topic and paper. The authors' intention is to present papers that focus on the use of visualization to discover relationships, using interactive graphics to amplify thought. This book is intended for research professionals in academia and industry; new graduate students and professors who want to begin work in this burgeoning field; professionals involved in financial data analysis, statistics, and information design; scientific data managers; and professionals involved in medical, bioinformatics, and other areas. Features Full-color reproduction throughout Author power team - an exciting and timely collaboration between the field's pioneering, most-respected names The only book on Information Visualization with the depth necessary for use as a text or as a reference for the information professional Text includes the classic source papers as well as a collection of cutting edge work

These fifteen contributions by distinguished vision and imaging scientists explore the role of human vision in the design of modem image communication systems. A dominant theme in the book is image compression—how compression algorithms can be designed to make best use of what we know about human vision. Electronic image communications, which encompass television, high-definition television, teleconferencing, multimedia, digital photography, desktop publishing, and digital movies, is a rapidly growing segment of technology and business. Because these products and technologies are designed for human viewing, knowledge of human perception is essential to optimal design. This book provides a timely compendium of important ideas and perspectives on such subjects as the key aspects of human visual sensitivity that are relevant to image communications and, conversely, the major problems in image communications that vision science can address; the mathematical models of human vision that are useful in the design of image comunications systems; reliable and efficient methods of evaluating visual quality; and aspects of human vision that can be exploited to provide substantial improvements in coding efficiency. Andrew B. Watson is Senior Scientist for Vision Research at NASA. Contributors: Albert J. Ahumada, Jr. E. Barth. V. Michael Bove, Jr. Gershon Buchsbaum. Phillipe Cassereau. Pamela C. Cosman. Scott J. Daly. Michael Eckert. Bernd Girod. William E. Glenn. Robert M. Gray. Paul J. Hearty. Bradley Horowitz. Stanley Klein. Jeffrey Lubin, Cynthia Null. Karen L. Oehler. Alex Pentland. Todd Reed. Andrew B. Watson. B. Wegmann. Christof Zetsche.