SHOPTALK: TOWARD INDEPENDENT SHOPPING BY PEOPLE WITH VISUAL IMPAIRMENTS Technical Report: USU_CSATL_01_04_08

Independent shopping in modern grocery stores that carry thousands of products is a great challenge for people with visual impairments. ShopTalk is a prototype of a wearable system designed to assist visually impaired shoppers with finding shelved products in grocery stores. Using synthetic verbal route directions and descriptions of the store layout, ShopTalk leverages the everyday orientation and mobility skills of independent visually impaired travelers and eliminates any need for additional hardware instrumentation. This article describes ShopTalk and presents the results of the shopping experiments with ten visually impaired participants performed in a supermarket in Logan, Utah. The scope of the reported investigation is confined to shopping for items stocked on aisle shelves. The scope is further restricted to small-scale shopping when the shopper needs to buy a few items that can be carried in a hand basket or by hand.